How Motown became America's greatest independent record label
Al Abrams had come up with Motown’s most famous slogan, ‘The Sound of Young America,’ in the early 1960s. Motown had been a successful independent label during its first five years, but it was hardly a household name. The company really began to live up to Abram’s words in 1964 and 1965 at the height of Beatlemania and the British Invasion that dominated the Billboard charts.
It certainly didn’t hurt that three of the biggest British bands, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Dave Clark Five, were Motown fans and recorded some of the label’s songs. The Beatles covered Barrett Strong’s “Money”, the Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman”, and the Miracles’ “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me” on their second Capitol album in the U.S.A.
It was Berry Gordy Jr.’s vision that was the real key to Motown’s success, however. His record production method was inspired by his time working at the Lincoln-Mercury assembly plant in Detroit. He wrote in his memoir: “At the plant, cars started out as just the frame, pulled along by conveyor belts until they emerged at the end as brand-new cars rolling off the line. I wanted the same concept for my company, only with artists and songs and records.” The songwriters wrote the track, the Funk Brothers laid down the music, and then the singers overdubbed the vocals.
By the early 1960s, Gordy had put together a crack studio band composed of some of Detroit’s finest jazz musicians. They called themselves the Funk Brothers, and they would provide the classic backing tracks on all the great songs produced at Hitsville’s Studio A, also known as ‘the snake pit.’ Because Motown did not credit its backing musicians on its recordings, most of the world was unaware of the Funk Brothers until the award-winning documentary Standing In The Shadows Of Motown was released in 2002.
Gordy also instituted his own form of quality control in production evaluation meetings. Every Friday morning, Motown staffers would gather in his office to listen to new recordings and decide which should be released, rating each cut on a scale of one to ten. Sometimes records got shot down only to be reworked and brought back.
According to Berry Gordy, the songs that were released on the Motown labels had to have four key elements: 1. It has a great beat 2. It tells a story 3. It has a memorable melody and 4. It features an expressive vocal. The end result was that 75% of the 537 singles that Motown released during the 1960s made the charts, and 79 were Billboard Top Ten hits on the Hot 100.
Motown’s biggest stars were on the company’s three principal labels: Tamla, Motown, and Gordy; and those records got a great deal of radio play. But because Motown was releasing so many high-quality records, Berry Gordy felt the need to form some more subsidiary labels to maintain airplay on radio stations reluctant to program too many records from one company.
Gordy formed the Soul label to release records that featured a more blues-based type of R&B that could compete with the records being released by Stax Records in Memphis. Shorty Long’s “Devil With A Blue Dress On” was the label’s first release, and Gladys Knight & The Pips would start recording on Soul in 1967. But it was Jr. Walker & The All Stars who became the Soul label’s first important artist.
Jr. Walker was born Autry DeWalt Jr. in Arkansas in 1931, and he learned to play the sax as a teenager after his family moved to South Bend, Indiana. By the early 1960s, he and his band had moved to Michigan and were playing regularly at the El Grotto club in Battle Creek, sometimes backing a vocal group called The Creations featuring a young singer named Al Green. It was there that Jr. Walker & The All Stars were discovered. They signed with Harvey Fuqua’s record company, and they released their first singles on the Harvey label.
Jr. Walker & The All Stars became part of Motown after Berry Gordy purchased Fuqua’s labels and signed them to his new Soul label in 1964. After their first single failed to chart, the band went back to playing the El Grotto in Battle Creek. One night at the club, Walker became intrigued by a dance in which the participants were employing moves that imitated shooting a gun. When he asked one of the girls on the dancefloor what it was called, she said it was ‘the shotgun’, and Walker wrote a tune for it.
In 1964, Motown was still small enough that an artist could call Berry Gordy directly, and that’s how Jr. Walker & The All Stars got to record their breakout hit. Walker called Gordy to tell him that he had a new dance song. Gordy liked the idea and had Walker and the band drive to Detroit to record it.
When the original singer failed to show up for the session, Walker reluctantly did the lead vocal. “Shotgun” was an immediate hit when it was released in early 1965, spending 4 weeks at # 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart and crossing over to # 4 on the Hot 100.
The hit led to appearances on Shindig, Hullabaloo, and American Bandstand; and Jr. Walker would sing lead on all of the band’s songs from that point on. Jr, Walker & The All Stars went on to chart 14 more hits on the Hot 100 through 1969.
Besides establishing new labels to market his product, Gordy was also open to any novel ideas that might help promote Motown artists and their recordings to the larger white audience. These included the production of early videos that could be sent to televised teen dance programs like American Bandstand or regional shows like Swingin’ Time in Detroit, Upbeat in Cleveland, or The Lloyd Thaxton Show in Los Angeles. One of the earliest and most memorable of these videos was Martha & The Vandellas’ “Nowhere To Run” clip that was shot at Ford’s Dearborn assembly plant as new Mustangs were going down the line.
Unlike black stars such as Sam Cooke and Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions, Berry did not address the civil rights movement in his Motown anthems. Touting his company instead as ‘The Sound of Young America,’ he concentrated on giving the people what they wanted and brought the races together with their common love of his label’s infectious hits. Gordy was an early supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King, however, and h released recordings of several of his important speeches on Motown’s Black Forum label.
Early on, Gordy recognized the value of controlling every aspect of his Motown operation, especially caring for his ever-growing stable of young and inexperienced artists. In this regard, he created a company that he named International Talent Management Inc. to act as a personal manager to the Motown artists. I.T.M.I. would get set up personal appearances, provide career guidance, and make sure they paid their taxes.
Gordy also formed an Artist Development Department, initially headed by his sisters Gwen and Anna. Besides selecting costumes for the artists, Berry’s sisters brought in Maxine Powell, owner of a local finishing school, to work with Motown’s female artists. Miss Powell instructed them on basic table manners, how to properly apply makeup, and how to sit and carry themselves in a lady-like manner on stage and off.
To handle the all-important performance choreography, famed dancer Cholly Atkins was recruited to work with artists, both individually or in classes. Atkins, who had worked with Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Cadillacs, and other doo wop groups, showed them special dance steps as well as basic entrances and exits that would soon become Motown trademarks.
As dominant as Berry Gordy’s labels were in Detroit, there was one record company that emerged as Motown’s main rival in the 1960s. The Golden World and Ric-Tic labels were run by Ed Wingate, a businessman whose interests extended into real estate, hotels, including the famous 20 Grand Motel, and a taxi cab company. Wingate was known as the go-to guy to get anything of magnitude done in Detroit if you were black.
Unlike the other local labels, Golden World had its own recording studios, writers, and artists. It also wasn’t above secretly using the Funk Brothers on its recording sessions. Wingate was color-blind when it came to talent, and one of his early signings was a white doo wop group from Livonia, Michigan, called The Reflections. Their Golden World recording of “(Just Like) Romeo & Juliet”, featuring backing by several Funk Brothers, was a # 6 hit on the Hot 100 in early 1964 as the Beatles were dominating the charts.
Wingate’s Golden World label released records in a variety of styles, including the girl group sound of the Adorables and an early single by the Sunliners who would become very successful in the 1970s as Rare Earth. It was the success of Wingate’s Ric-Tic label, however, that gave Berry Gordy the most concern. Like Motown, Ric-Tic specialized in soul music and had an impressive roster of artists including Gino Washington, Carl Carlton, J. J. Barnes, the Flaming Ember, the Fantastic Four, the Detroit Emeralds, and Edwin Starr.
In 1965, Edwin Starr’s career was launched by “Agent Double-O-Soul,” a reference to the James Bond films popular at the time. The record featured some of the Funk Brothers, and Gordy, frustrated that Wingate’s labels were stealing some of Motown’s thunder, bought out the company and its artists in 1966 for a rumored $1 million. From that point on the Golden World Studio became Motown Studio B.
Edwin Starr was the most successful of the artists that Motown acquired from Ed Wingate. Starting with is # 5 hit “Twenty-Five Miles” in 1969, Starr would chart four singles by the end of the decade, including his # 1 hit “War.”
Another very important factor that contributed to Motown’s success was the family atmosphere that Berry Gordy developed at his company. Gordy would not give up on an artist he believed in, even if they were not an immediate success. A prime example of this philosophy was The Temptations.
The group struggled as their first seven singles failed to make the Hot 100. Instead of dropping the Temptations from his label, Gordy stuck with them until he found the right team of songwriters and producers to take them to the top of the charts.
In the Temptations’ case it was Smokey Robinson and Bobby Rogers of the Miracles who wrote a song for them called “The Way You Do The Things You Do”. Smokey produced the single, featuring the falsetto lead vocal of Eddie Kendricks, and it reached # 11 on the Hot 100 in early 1964.
Smokey Robinson wrote and produced seven more hit singles for the group including the # 1 smash, “My Girl” in early 1965. The first three songs Robinson wrote for the group featured Eddie Kendricks, but he and Ronnie White wrote “My Girl” specifically for David Ruffin. Smokey taught the Temptations the song backstage at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, and the Temptations recorded it when they got back to Detroit.
By 1966, the Temptations began working with writer/producer Norman Whitfield. Whitfield began what would be an incredible eight-year run with the group with “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.” Ruffin sang lead on “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg,” a big hit in the summer of 1966, and on the year’s other Top Ten singles: “Beauty Is Only Skin Deep,” and “(I Know) I’m Losing You.”
David Ruffin was a very talented singer and a dynamic force onstage, but he was also very egotistical and often tried the patience of the rest of the group. Although the Temptations were enjoying great fame and fortune, there was serious trouble brewing in the group as Ruffin started using cocaine regularly. He missed performances, showed up late, and insisted that he travel to gigs in a private limousine. He also demanded that the group be renamed David Ruffin & The Temptations.
Things came to head in June of 1968 when Ruffin missed an engagement in Cleveland to attend a show featuring his girlfriend, Dean Martin’s daughter. In July, David Ruffin was fired by the other four Temptations, but he remained at Motown as a solo artist. Ruffin was replaced by singer Dennis Edwards who had a similar vocal sound and had been a member of the Contours.
David Ruffin’s solo career started off well in early 1969 with his Top Ten single, “My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)”. His first solo album, named after his hit, reached #1 on the R&B album chart. Things went downhill from there, however, and Ruffin would not have another Top Ten hit for six years.
The addition of Dennis Edwards to the Temptations coincided with the adoption of a new sound for the group from producer Norman Whitfield. In the fall of 1968, Whitfield began producing psychedelic-based soul material for the group, inspired primarily from the sound of bands like Sly & The Family Stone and Funkadelic. This new style, which debuted with the Top Ten single “Cloud Nine”, was a marked departure from the songs of the David Ruffin era. The song also won Motown its first Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance.
1969 was a big year for the Temptations. The group had Top Ten singles with “Runaway Child, Running Wild.” “Psychedelic Shack,” and a duet with Diana Ross & The Supremes on “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me”. In addition, the Temptations ended the decade with their second # 1 hit on the Hot 100, “I Can’t Get Next To You”.
The other male vocal group that helped Motown take off in 1964 and 1965 was The Four Tops. They were a little older than the other Motown acts, and they had started singing together in Detroit in 1954 as The Four Aims. They changed their name to the Four Tops to avoid any confusion with the Ames Brothers after signing their first recording contract in 1956.
The Four Tops recorded singles for a number of different labels over the years but, like the early records of the Temptations, none made any impact with the record buying public. The group survived by playing small nightclubs; especially the Flamingo and Paradise clubs at the black resort in Idlewild, Michigan, that featured big name entertainers like Jackie Wilson and Della Reese during the 50s and 60s.
The turning point for the Four Tops came in 1963 when they signed with Motown Records. The next year, Berry Gordy placed the group with Motown’s hot production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland.
H-D-H were riding a series of hits with Martha & The Vandellas and the Supremes, and they had a song called “Baby I Need Your Loving” that was originally intended for one of Motown’s female groups. It was given to the Four Tops instead, and they recorded their first memorable hit at a 3 a.m. session at Hitsville’s Studio A on West Grand Boulevard in the spring of 1964. “Baby I Need Your Loving” spent 12 weeks on the Billboard charts, peaking at # 11.
The Four Tops and Holland-Dozier-Holland really hit their stride with 1965’s # 1 smash, “I Can’t Help Myself”. The up-tempo song was powered by Funk Brother James Jamerson’s bass and the impassioned lead vocal of Levi Stubbs. The group’s biggest all-time hit spent two weeks at the top of the Hot 100 and nine weeks as # 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart.
The partnership of the Four Tops and Holland-Dozier-Holland proceeded to put together eight more Top 20 hit singles. These included “It’s The Same Old Song,” “Something About You,” “Shake Me, Wake Me,” “Standing In The Shadows Of Love,” “Bernadette,” “7 Rooms Of Gloom,” and “You Keep Running Away.” They also enjoyed a second #1 hit with “Reach Out I’ll Be There” in 1966.
1967 would bring some changes to Motown in the midst of its unparalleled success. The deadly and destructive race riot in the summer of 1967 seemed to foreshadow the beginning of the end of the relationship between the company and the city of Detroit. Hitsville U.S.A. was near the center of the hardest hit area, and although Motown suffered no damage, all of Motown’s personnel were deeply affected by the turmoil in the streets.
The ’67 riots also signaled the beginning of what is referred to as the ‘white flight’ from the city of Detroit to the suburbs. Soon after the riot, Motown’s administrative offices were moved from West Grand Boulevard to the Donovan building, a ten-story high-rise on Woodward Avenue. As a result, Motown began to lose some of the family feeling that had been such an important ingredient in its ascendancy in the music business.
The biggest musical change at the company occurred when Holland, Dozier, and Holland left Motown in early 1968 in a dispute with Berry Gordy over profit sharing and royalties. It was a major blow to Motown and the Four Tops to lose this talented team or writers and producers.
Holland-Dozier-Holland went on to start their own record labels, Hot Wax and Invictus, and they wrote and produced hits for Freda Payne, the Chairmen of the Board, the Honey Cone, and the Flaming Ember. Because of the pending legal action all of those hits were written and produced under pseudonyms. The lawsuit and countersuit that resulted from their leaving weren’t settled until 1972, after Motown had moved its operation from Detroit to Los Angeles.
Despite losing their ace songwriting and production team of HDH, the Four Tops continued their string of hits. The group had Top 20 singles with cover versions of “Walk Away Renee” and “If I Were A Carpenter” in 1968, but the group would no longer be a force at Motown with original material as the decade came to an end.
