Go to Motown!
/By Don Varyu
Jul 2024
here’s a chance you’ve never heard Motown music. Or there’s a chance you might recognize just a song or two. And there’s a very good chance this music did not form the personal soundtrack for your high school and college years, like it did for me.
None of that matters. Here’s what does: if you like any kind of music at all, GO TO MOTOWN!
he Motown sound was infectious, rhythmic and irrepressible. It was impossible not to either sing along or get up and dance--and most likely, both. But even in saying this much, I’m proving the old maxim that writing about music is like dancing to architecture. So I’ll refrain from playing music critic. Instead, if you’re unfamiliar with the sound (or simply want to reminisce) please check out this perfect six minute medley of dozens of hits by the uber-talented acapella group Committed…
hile the Motown sound of the 60’s speaks for itself, there are equally compelling stories behind the songs. That’s what makes a visit to the Motown Museum in Detroit, including the single home where it all began, is a must. Consider this:
1.The sound that burst from Detroit via Motown represents what is probably the richest concentration of music talent in history.
Over the centuries, places like Vienna, New York and the Hollywood Hills could claim to be the center of the music universe. But those claims are based on the history of those places attracting musical talent. And yes, that ultimately happened in Detroit as well. But the original stars at Motown were different. They emerged organically from Detroit—in fact, largely from one confined section of one city.
Among the locals who became national legends were Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves Mary Wells, Gladys Knight (and Aretha Franklin, although she did not record with Motown). In addition, both the super groups The Temptations and the Four Tops trace their roots to the halls of a single school, Detroit’s Pershing High. This is beyond improbable. It’s as if Mozart and Beethoven and Bach had all grown up at the same time in one section of Vienna.
The Motown label would ultimately add out-of-town finds like Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Lionel Richie, Sam Cooke, DeBarge, Boyz II Men and Erykah Badu. But from day one, the soul of Soul Music was Detroit. It was not merely the product of an era or a vision. It was the product of a neighborhood.
2. How in the world dud that happen? It was the melding of raw talent with uniform structure.
Motown’s founder, owner and chief talent scout was Berry Gordy, Jr. Even as a boy, he was an aspiring songwriter, but to him, his great talent was recognizing diamonds in the rough:
I have this ability to find this hidden talent in people that sometimes even they didn't know they had.
That may sound like bragging, but the results can’t be argued. Consider this: in one ten-year period, Motown placed 79 separate hits on the Billboard top ten.
All that didn’t happen without hard work. And Gordy’s vision for how work needed to proceed was a product of his upbringing.
His father moved the family from the deep south to avoid a surge in lynchings. He settled in Detroit and got down to business—actually several businesses. He ran three small enterprises simultaneously, and the Gordy household was anchored in discipline and togetherness.
Gordy walked out of high school in his junior year after being kicked out of music class(!) He set out on a career as a boxer until Uncle Sam decided he’d be better off as part of an infantry unit fighting in Korea. After that, he opened and failed at running a record store. Then, he worked on an assembly line in one of Detroit’s auto plants. He fought tedium by composing songs in his head, and later explained how the experience inspired him musically:
Every day I watched how a bare metal frame, rolling down the line would come off the other end, a spanking brand-new car. What a great idea! Maybe, I could do the same thing with my mujsic; create a place where a kid off the street could walk in one door, an unknown, go through a process, and come out another door, a star.
On his musical assembly line, Gordy built in multiple steps, all under the heading of “artist development.” The process was arduous and constant. Performers were instructed on harmony, choreography, diction, dress, and exactly how to represent Motown on their long road tours across the country. Foremost, of course, was musical technique, taught under the rigid direction of Maurice King. His pupils included a trio of idealistic young girls calling themselves the Primettes, who would emerge a few years later as the international super group, the Supremes.
In the telling of the Motown Museum, Gordy demanded, “clean-cut, elegantly dressed performers dancing and singing love songs.” Simple as that. And his assembly line worked. Through most of those years, that line was confined to a single former residential building on West Grand Avenue.
Gordy placed Motown’s reception, administration offices and single cramped recording studio on the main floor. He and his wife lived upstairs. The studio was open 22 hours a day (closed two hours in the morning for cleaning).
But eventually, Motown would need to grow and change with the times.
3. Race infused what Motown was doing—in unexpected ways.
As a descendent of blues and early jazz, Motown came to be identified simply as “soul music” or “black music.” It featured almost entirely African American performers. But Gordy adamantly refused to market that way:
Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.
He put that credo into effect in at least one way that would offend people today--and some even back then.
He understood the only way to discover new pop music in those years was on the radio. By definition, you could not see who was singing. Individual 45s were sold in paper sleeves in record stores. On many early releases, Gordy refused to put photos of the acts on those sleeves. It may have seemed like a slight, but that way, even if you were dead against “black” music, that was fine with Gordy. He simply wouldn’t let you see who you were buying.
On the road, this goal of “music for everyone” often bloomed organically. Smokey Robinson said he saw audiences walk in and segregate themselves by race…blacks and whites sitting separately. But he recalled that when the music started, everyone began dancing together in the aisles—and then sat down together when they took a break. Gordy’s vision was unfolding.
However, Gordy wasn’t deaf to the racial tensions of the era. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously delivered his “I have a dream” speech on the mall in Washington, D.C. in front of a quarter million people. But its debut came a couple months earlier on the streets of Detroit. That day saw what was to that point the largest civil rights demonstration in U.S. history—125,000 marchers strong. Gordy was among those listening. He contacted King, and King agreed to a recording of the upcoming D.C. version. Gordy released it as an LP on a new label.
Gordy declared, “every white child and every black child” should hear it.
ven while King dreamed of better times in Detroit, America appeared to much of the outside world as a sunny and prosperous place. Then, by the end of that year, everything changed. A sniper’s bullet killed President John F. Kenndy as he rode in an open car through Dallas. In my mind, the shock and horror that gripped America that day even surpassed that of 9/11. It was the moment twhen innocence died.
By the end of 1968, John Kennedy’s brother, Bobby, and Martin Luther King Jr. himself were also dead by assassin’s bullets. Anti-Vietnam war protests raged on campuses. And inside Motown, some artists decided it was time to put the happy dance music aside and address the crises of the time.
Marvin Gaye challenged Gordy with new pieces that spoke directly to a changing society. At first, Gordy objected…but eventually relented. The result was a string of hits including Mercy, Mercy Me, Inner City Blues, Sexual Healing, and Gaye’s masterpiece, What’s Goin’ On.
Stevie Wonder also pushed to address modern ills, but with musical forms that were distinctly “not Motown”. Again, Gordy balked, but finally agreed. And he certainly welcomed the profits from Wonder’s hits like Up-Tight, I Was Made to Love Her, and For Once in My Life.
Times had changed, and so had Gordy. He moved the operation from Motown to Los Angeles to accommodate a new side interest in movie production (Lady Sings the Blues, etc.)
But the halcyon, happy days of Motown Detroit were over.
The Unhappy Backstories
To be sure, all was never bliss behind the doors of Hitsville, USA. Life for many of the stars was far more complex than the simple “he loves me”/”she left me” lyrics of the label’s leading songwriters.
Mary Wells overcame spinal meningitis, partial blindless and tuberculosis as a child. After high school she auditioned for Gordy. She soared to three consecutive top-ten pop hits, and then took the #1 spot with My Guy. She and the Beatles became friends, ane they had her open for them on one tour. She was the first female from the label ever to win a Grammy. They called her “the queen of Motown.”
Then it all turned. She and Gordy fought over a new contract. Lawsuits were filed, and eventually she won a settlement that allowed her to leave Motown. But outside its doors, things were never the same. The hits withered on new labels.
The worst was yet to come. She was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx…ravaging her vocal chords. Without insurance, she was forced to sell her home. Contributions poured in from old Motown friends and other musical admirers, including Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart and Aretha Franklin. It was not enough.
She died in 1992, at the age of 49.
Smokey Robinson married group member Claudette Rogers in what was the equivalent of a royal wedding inside Motown. He wrote the global smash hit My Girl as a tribute to her. They planned to raise a family.
But Claudette miscarried their first child. Then another…and another after that. Before their river of sorrow ended, seven different miscarriages resulted in eight losses—the last being still-born twin girls.
So, Robinson went back to songwriting for his wife. He recorded a moderate hit, More Love, whose lyrics were an atempt to salve her grief. It begged her not to lose hope, and pledged what he would do to accomplish that:
Open your heart and let the love come in,
I want the moment to start when I can fill your heart
With more love, and more joy
Than age or time could ever destroy.
My love will be so sound
It would take a hundred lifetimes
To live it down…wear it down…tear it down…
The couple eventually had two healthy children.
My personal favorite, Marvin Gaye, married Barry Gordy’s sister. That did not last. He eventually moved overseas and descended into sporadic drug use and depression. He began to talk openly of suicide and death.
He was fatally shot the day before his 45th birthday by his own father, in the house he had purchased for his parents in Los Angeles.
he reality that life is both happiness and grief is proven in the history of Motown. I can only scratch the surface of those backstories here. These are among endless reasons to visit the museum and explore for yourself.
And that includes the one highlight that can not occur anywhere else.
Shortly after being welcomed on a tour, you’ll sit down in a small theatre to see a moving, 15-minute film history of Motown. It celebrates both the unique music and the unlikely stars who created it. The film doesn’t exist anywhere else—not via streaming, not online, not on any BluRay or DVD. It is incomparable.
As I mentioned, I had the good fortune to live though those Motown years. So maybe in watching the film, it was just nostalgia at work. But it infected me. Several times, I couldn’t hold back tears. But the the tears were not bittersweet…lamenting times long gone. Instead, It was pure joy being back in my Motown world again.
And the reason for that joy is singular: the songs are SO DAMN GOOD!
Go to Motown!
Have a comment or thought on this? Just hit the Your Turn tab here or email us at mailbox@cascadereview.net to have your say.
