Gordy, Berry, Jr.

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Gordy, Berry, Jr.

(1929-)
Motown Records

Overview

Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Motown, the fledgling record company of 1959 that grew into the most successful African–American enterprise in the United States and was responsible for a new sound that transformed popular music.

Personal Life

Berry Gordy Jr., was born on November 28, 1929, and reared in Detroit. He was not the first businessman in the family; both parents were self–employed, his father as a plastering contractor, his mother as an insurance agent. Gordy dropped out of Northeastern High School in his junior year to pursue a career as a featherweight boxer. Between 1948 and 1951, he fought 15 Golden Gloves matches, 12 of which he won, but his fighting career was clipped short when he was drafted to serve in the Korean War.

Berry Gordy married Thelma Coleman in 1953. They had two sons, Berry IV and Terry, and one daughter, Hazel, who married Jermaine Jackson in 1973. Gordy's second marriage was to Raynoma Liles in 1959; they had one son, Kerry. Gordy also had a son with Margaret Norton in 1964 whom they named Kennedy, after John F. Kennedy. He later changed his name to Rockwell and recorded for Motown in 1984. Gordy lives in the Los Angeles area on a Bel Air estate. He highly values his privacy and rarely deals with the press.

Throughout his career Gordy has received numerous awards, including Business Achievement Award from the Interracial Council for Business Opportunity (1967), the Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award (1969), an award for Outstanding Contribution to the Music Industry at the Second Annual American Music Awards (1975), the Whitney Young Jr. Award from the Los Angeles Urban League, the Black Achievement Award from the Brotherhood Crusade (1988), the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Award (1991), the Trustee Award (1991), Black Radio Exchange Lifetime Achievement Award (1995), the Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame award for Excellence in Music (1996), and the American Legend Award (1998). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and into the Association for Independent Music Hall of Fame in 2001.

Career Details

Upon his discharge from the army in 1953, Berry Gordy returned to Detroit and used his service pay to open the Three–D Record Mart. His love for the jazz of Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker, and Thelonius Monk influenced his inventory more than his customers' requests for "things like Fats Domino," and his business soon failed.

Gordy worked for his father for a short period and then as a chrome trimmer on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company. The monotony was formidable, and Gordy's way of overcoming it was to write songs in his head, some of which were recorded by local singers. Decca Records bought several of his compositions, including "Reet Petite" and "Lonely Teardrops" (both recorded by Jackie Wilson), and when Gordy compared his royalty checks to what Decca made from the modest hits, he realized that writing the hits wasn't enough; he needed to own them.

At the suggestion of a friend, teenage singer William "Smokey" Robinson, Gordy borrowed $700 from his father and formed his own company to manufacture and market records. Motown Records was headquartered in a row house on Detroit's West Grand Boulevard, where Gordy slept on the second floor and made records on the first. In time, the company expanded, with nine buildings on the same street housing its branches: Jobete, music publishers; Hitsville USA, a recording studio; musical accompanists; International Talent Management Inc; the Motown Artist's Development Department (the embodiment of Gordy's personal interest in his performers, where they were taught to eat, dress, and act like polished professionals); and the Motown Record Corporation, an umbrella for several labels of Motown, including Gordy, Tamla, VIP, and Soul (the last being reserved for the hit song–writing machine of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland).

In 1960 Motown released "Shop Around," written by Smokey Robinson and performed by him and the Miracles. The song sold more than a million copies, and with that gold record, Berry Gordy's company launched the most successful and influential era in the history of popular music.

The Motown Sound was a musical genre that combined classic African–American gospel singing with the new rock–and–roll sound that was being shaped by Elvis Presley and the Beatles. In a sense, this reflected the old "R & B" (for rhythm and blues), but it defined a new generation.

Motown produced over 110 number one hit songs and countless top–ten records, including "Please Mr. Postman," "Reach Out, I'll Be There," "My Girl," "Stop! In the Name of Love," "For Once in My Life," "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved by You," "Heard It Through the Grapevine," "My Guy," "Dancing in the Streets," "Your Precious Love," "Where Did Our Love Go," "Baby Love," "I Hear a Symphony," "I Want You Back," and "I'll Be There." Equally impressive is a list of artists that Gordy brought into the spotlight: Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Jackson Five, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes, Mary Wells, and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.

By the mid 1970s, some of the Motown artists had begun to resist Gordy's tight control. Defectors began to break up Gordy's "family" of stars. The first to leave was Gladys Knight and the Pips, and in 1975 the Jackson Five announced that they would be moving to Epic Records when their Motown contract expired.

Although Gordy kept Stevie Wonder at Motown by promising him $13 million over seven years in the famous "Wonderdeal" of 1975, Gordy's public statements usually expressed disappointment that his superstars came to value money over loyalty. This sentiment was heard often from Gordy when, in 1981, Diana Ross announced her move to RCA Records.

Ross' move was particularly surprising and bitter for Gordy in view of the fact that in 1972 he moved his headquarters to Los Angeles to begin a career in film, not only for himself but so he could turn Diana Ross into a movie star. His first production was the 1972 Paramount release Lady Sings the Blues, the story of Billie Holiday starring Ross. The picture was nominated for five Academy Awards and grossed more than $8.5 million. In 1975 Gordy directed Ross in Mahogany, the story of a African–American fashion model's rise to fame. Although the film did well at the box office, it was not nearly the critical success of Lady.

Other Gordy films were The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings (1976), Almost Summer (1978), The Wiz (1978), starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, and The Last Dragon (1985).

In June 1988, Gordy sold his company to MCA, Inc. He retained control of Jobete, the music publishing operation and Motown's film division but sold the record label to the entertainment conglomerate for $61 million. He told the newspaper Daily Variety that he wanted to "ensure the perpetuation of Motown and its heritage." Although Gordy was less successful in attracting stellar talent in the 1990s, he did score well with a few acts, including Johnny Gill, Boyz II Men, and Queen Latifah. In 1997 Gordy sold half of his interest in Jobete music publishing to EMI.

Social and Economic Impact

Esther Edwards, Berry Gordy's sister, was also interested in preserving Motown's heritage. The brick house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, once modestly and unknowingly named "Hitsville USA," is now the site of the Motown Museum, thanks to the pack–rat tendency of Edwards. She saved hundreds of boxes of memorabilia, including original music scores, posters, and photographs, and until 1988 most of the mementos were stuck to the walls with thumbtacks. In an effort to have the collection professionally preserved, Michael Jackson, whose ties to Berry were still strong in 1990, donated the proceeds of the Detroit stop of his "Bad" tour—$125,000—to the Motown Museum.

Gordy's autobiography, To Be Loved: The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown, was published by Warner in 1994. In the New York Times Book Review, Milo Miles called Gordy "an African American cultural hero of historic stature." This is partly because Gordy almost single–handedly moved so–called "race music" (the term widely used at the time for recorded music sung by black artists), or "rhythm and blues," into the mainstream of American popular music. Gordy's influence boosted the careers of African–American artists, making them superstars and profoundly shaping musical tastes across racial lines. So important was his contribution to American popular culture that Entertainment Weekly pronounced the founding of Motown Records to be the number seventh greatest moment in the history of rock music.

Chronology: Berry Gordy, Jr.

1929: Born.

1948: Became featherweight boxer.

1953: Opened short–lived Three–D Record Mart.

1959: Founded Motown Records.

1960: Released Smokey Robinson's smash hit "Shop Around."

1972: Released first movie production, Lady Sings the Blue.

1975: Announced much publicized contract with Stevie Wonder for $13 million over seven years.

1981: Superstar Diana Ross announced her defection from Motown to RCA Records.

1988: Sold Motown to RCA for $61 million; retained control of music publishing segment, Jobete Music,

1990: Inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame.

1994: Released autobiography, To Be Loved.

1997: Sold half his interest in Jobete Music to EMI.

2000: Established the Gwendolyn B. Gordy Fund to assist former Motown artists in need of financial assistance.

The popularity of the "Motown sound" forced the music industry to stop publishing separate charts for rhythm and blues music and to incorporate all best–selling songs into one list. "Motown was the first bridge between white and black music," noted Smokey Robinson in Entertainment Weekly in 1999. "It was one of the great barrier breakers. . . . Berry told us we were going to make music for everybody. I hear it on the radio now, almost as much as I did then—and it still holds up."

In 2000 Gordy established the Gwendolyn B. Gordy Fund to assist former Motown artists, musicians and writers from the 1960s and 1970s who are in need of financial assistance. Gordy donated $750,000 to the charity, which he named in memory of his deceased sister, Gwendolyn. Along with numerous books on the history of Motown, both Berry's second wife and his father have written accounts of their lives with Berry, titled Berry, Me, and Motown (1990) and Movin' Up: Pop Gordy Tells His Story (1979), respectively.