The Motown Story: How Berry Gordy Jr. Created the Legendary Label

As surely as Atlantic was the greatest independent record company of the Fifties, Motown was the greatest of the Sixties. As one after another of the independents have sold themselves to the conglomerates, and as each, to one degree or another, has lost touch with its original source of strength, only Motown continues to reflect the musical as well as business vision of its founder: namely, Berry Gordy, Jr. It is a flawed vision but a consistent one and the fruits of his labor have been on view since he started running the company; they will continue to multiply until the day he stops.

Independent record companies are started by men personally involved with the art they intend to distribute. The late Leonard Chess discovered his artists in his bar, recorded them himself, and then sold their releases from out of the trunk of his car. He knew blues so he recorded blues. I would venture to guess that for most of his years at Chess it never occurred to him that he might be recording anything else. And consequently, for the twenty years he ran the company, the Chess label signified something musically.

The inner determination of a Leonard Chess, the personal commitment to a specific musical outlook, has always been the strength of the independent. Ultimately – in a business sense – it is their weakness too. For when the blues market (or country, or gospel, or whatever the case may be) can no longer support the company financially, these are not the men who know how to diversify: they have no heart for it. (The major exception: Atlantic.) And it is then that they sell their company to the anonymous men of the conglomerates, men who lack any musical vision at all, men who only know how to read a bottom line, men who don’t care what puts it there.

Unfamiliar with the market and the music, the new men (as well as the older record men still active) do not run an in-house operation with all of its fixed expenses, but instead prefer a system of independent production in which the company invests in specific projects, finances and distributes them, and occupies itself as little as possible with the actual details of artistic production, about which it knows very little. Today, no one on the Atlantic staff has anything to do with the actual recording of Led Zeppelin or Emerson, Lake and Palmer, no one at Warners pretends to understand the musical virtues of Black Sabbath, and when the Band goes into the studio for Capitol these days, one assumes they do as they please. As long as these artists can turn out profitable records, the executives of their companies are happy to let them do as they wish. Most of them freely admit their ignorance of the new artists’ musical techniques.

Of all the major companies, only Motown remains completely an in-house operation. One has the feeling, whether it is true or not, that Berry Gordy passes personal judgment on every single that comes out on his label. There is still a Motown look to the album covers, a Motown touch to the song-writing, a Motown style of singing, and, above all, a Motown sound. Anyone with ears can still tell a Motown record ten seconds after it comes on the air.

So the history of Motown over the last 10 years is the history of two things: the growth of an independent corporation and the development of a creative musical collective (factory) responsible for a specific musical style. That style has resulted in a series of records and a body of music so commanding, so sophisticated, and so fine, as to make Motown a contender for the supreme pop achievement of the last ten years.

Motown began the decade groping for a style. Originally, it was just another R&B label, noteworthy primarily for the consistent high quality of its singles. Through the early Sixties and out of the combined efforts of artists such as the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, the Contours, and producers like Smokey Robinson, Mickey Stevenson, and Berry Gordy himself, Motown records began to achieve a certain stylistic identity. In 1964 Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier began producing the Supremes and with the unprecendented success of that group, the Motown sound came into full flower.

For the next three years Holland and Dozier defined, expanded and elaborated on that sound, their achievements towering over and affecting the work of their colleagues in both the largest and smallest of ways. In 1967 they left the company and Motown moved into its modern phase. No one production team has been allowed to dominate the creative process the way Holland and Dozier did in the middle Sixties. Instead a variety of men and women have emerged, each with their own special talents, each capable of consistently producing top ten records. As a result, the Motown sound today is more diversified than at any time since its earliest days, and yet, like those early records, they are all clearly Motown records.

What was the Motown sound? In its heyday, in the middle Sixties, it consisted of: 1) simply structured songs with sophisticated melodies and chord changes, 2) a relentless four-beat drum pattern, 3) a gospel use of background voices, vaguely derived from the style of the Impressions, 4) a regular and sophisticated use of both horns and strings, 5) lead singers who were half way between pop and gospel music, 6) a group of accompanying musicians who were among the most dextrous, knowledgeable, and brilliant in all of popular music (Motown bassists have long been the envy of white rock bassists) and 7) a trebly style of mixing that relied heavily on electronic limiting and equalizing (boosting the high range frequencies) to give the overall product a distinctive sound, particularly effective for broadcast over AM radio.

It is safe to say that from 1965 to 1967 ninety percent of all Motown records possessed every one of these qualities. But it is not true, as has been charged from time to time, that as a result, all Motown records sounded the same. They only did in the sense that all Warner Brothers detective pictures looked the same in the Forties. If you listen for the common elements, that’s what you hear. But the beauty of the records is in the differences, subtle as they may be, that separate one from another. The nuances, the shadings, the giving and taking away of things to emphasize points: this became the area of personal creativity at Motown.

And as the song writing——both melody and lyrics——became ever more beautiful and singing ever more direct, the quality of the records improved at a pace that was all but astounding. For, like all great popular art, Motown confined itself in formal ways to liberate itself in other ways. You can’t shatter conventions when none exist. And conversely, you can’t invent a meaningful convention if you don’t feel it.

Just as all Motown records do not really sound alike, so too must it be understood that the sound itself was not a contrivance but a style that grew out of the musical wisdom of some true rock and roll revolutionaries. They didn’t add the four beat to the drum part because everyone else was doing a two-beat: they did it because it felt right to them. When it proved right to millions of record buyers, it only served to confirm their personal judgment, not to determine it. As slick as Motown records may sometimes sound, the sense of conviction and commitment seldom fails them; it’s just that to fully appreciate it their records must be listened to as a totality.

I say as a totality, because it is often hard to know who to call the artist on a Motown record. No matter how much Sam Philips did for Jerry Lee Lewis in the studio no one has ever thought of calling a Jerry Lee Lewis record a Sam Phillips record. But, was “Baby Love” a Supremes record or a Holland and Dozier record? The only thing that can be said for sure is that the record wouldn’t exist without either component. Diana Ross played her part so well it would be ludicrous to suggest that anyone else could have done it justice.