| Beginnings
The story behind Motown is primarily of one Detroit man's burning ambition, perseverance, and talent. The company's beginnings go back to the late 1950's, when Berry Gordy, Jr. finally caught a break as a songwriter after a few years of scratching at the surface of the music business. It was a pivotal event in a career marked by several fits and starts.
Berry Gordy
One of eght children, Gordy was born November 28,1929. He dropped out of high school and went through careers as a boxer and soldier before dipping his toes in musical waters by opening a jazz record store, the 3-D Record Mart, after he got out of the service in 1953, however, and Gordy moved on to several other jobs, including a stint on the ford assembly line in Detroit.
In his spare time, Gordy began to write R & B songs and tried to sell them to local performers. He spent the next couple of years writing, recording demos, and promoting his compositions - sending them to magazines, songwriting contests, and record companies - with little to show for it other than a small name for himself within the Detroit music scene.
Everything changed when a song he wrote for Jackie Wilson,"Reet Petite" became a hit for Brunswick Records in 1957. Although he pocketed only $1000 on the project. Gordy fueled his reputation as an up-coming songwriter and producer by following up with several other successes for Wilson over the next year or so, including "Lonely Teardrops" the first song Gordy wrote that reached number one on the R & B chart and cracked the top ten on the pop chart.
At this point in his career, Gordy primarily still sold his compositions to other record labels, who then produced the songs themselves. But Gordy was unsatisfied with the quality of many of the releases and he longed to run his own company - to write, produce, and market his music himself. So in 1959, armed with his modest reputation, the money form his recent songs, and $800 borrowed from his family, Berry Gordy officially launched his new career as an independent record producer.
 The Marvelettes
From the start, Gordy tirelessly scoured Detroit for talent. One of the most important connections he made early on was Smokey Robinson, the lead singer and songwriter for a group called The Miracles. He and Robinson were the heart and soul of the early organization, personally handling almost all the songwriting and production chores. The pair continued to solicit and nurture some of the best songwriting, production, and performing talent in the area, plowing the fields for the incredibly fertile period that was to come.
The Miracles themselves were responsible for the first real chart successes completely owned by Gordy, who continued to sell his increasingly popular songs to other record labels - including tunes by The Miracles, Marv Johnson and future Motown label, Tamla. (Motown,Gordy,and Tamla were the principal labels: Soul,V.I.P.,and Rare Earth joined the fold by the end of the 1960's.) While Gordy, Robinson, and their skeletal staff scored enough modest successes early on to keep spirits up, the company's ultimate survival was hardly a foregone conclusion in the early part of the decade - Motown was not yet automatic hit machine it would become. Gordy, however,remained relentless, and constantly exhorted his troops to think big, Everybody pitched in at all levels - sending out records, contacting disc jockeys, etc.
Before long, the commitment paid off. Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)" was the first solid Motown Hit in 1960. The Miracles' "Shop Around," released later the same year, was the first million-seller, reaching number two on the pop chart by january 1961. The Motown era had arrived.
Over the next ten years, Motown would transform itself into the largest independent record company in the world (and the largest business of any kind owned by an African-American), steadily refining a unique assembly line song production process that was as inventive as it was successful. The initioal hits by Strong and The Miracles at the beginning of the decade and the explosion of The Jackson 5 in the early 1970s were simply bookends to an unprecedented run of commercial and artistic coups. In the mid-sixties Motown was especially dominant, and the company-more than any other American group or record label- fought toe-to-toe with the British invasion bands on the charts.
Martha & The Vandellas The numbers are astounding: Between 1960 and 1970 sixty-seven percent of the singles Motown released hit the charts (the industry standard "hit ratio" is around ten percent). Fifty-six of those songs were number one on either the pop or R & B charts, and twenty-one topped both. In 1964, when the Beatles began setting some records of their own, Motown released sixty singles, seventy percent of which hit the charts-and nineteen made it to number one. The Supremes alone racked up five consecutive number one pop hits starting with "Where Did Our Love Go?" in 1964. In 1966, Motown's hit ratio topped seventy-five percent.
But the numbers, as impressive as they are, don't necessarily tell the whole story. Bobby Vinton's "There! I've Said It Again" and the Dixie Cups' "Chapel of Love" both spent more time at number on in 1964 than the Supremes "Where Did Our Love Go?" Which song of the three sounds freshest today? "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Loavely Daughter" by Herman's hermits was the fourth most popular song of 1965, while "My Girl" by the Temptations checked in at number seventeen (both reached number one). When was the last time you sat down at the piano and knocked off a few bars of "Mrs. Brown...?"
As the sixties progressed, Motown continued to expand, absorbing rival record labels, and resuscitating the careers of acts (like The Four Tops) who had languished with other record companies before hooking up with Motown's crack songwriting and production corps. (By 1966 the company had one hundred performing acts under contract.) As its chart dominance continued-spearheaded by the songs of Smokey Robinson and the Holland-Dozier-Holland Trio, performed by The Supremes, The Four Tops, and The Temptations-Motown appeared to realize its self-declared title as "The Sound of Young America. "The roster of artists and staff continued to grow, and although it had taken over six other houses sorrounding the original office on Grand Boulivard, Motown was obliged to relocate to downtown Detroit in 1968.
| | Remembering 'Motown's Mother:' Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Stefan 'Redfoo' Gordy of LMFAO, Others on Esther Gordy EdwardsAugust 26, 2011 By Gary Graff, MotownNews of Esther Gordy Edwards' death on Wednesday night quickly spread throughout the Motown family. Several of the label's artists and others associated with the company's famed history shared their memories and thoughts about "The Mother of Motown" passing:
Duke Fakir, Four Tops
Esther Gordy, man, she was just as important as Berry (Gordy, Jr.) for the guidance and how she protected her artists. She was like everybody's mother and we were like her little puppies. She would direct us and counsel us and fight for us and protect us, and she was the hardest and best businesswoman you'd ever meet -- and sweet as pie on top of it. She negotiated every deal for her artists, made sure we got proper treatment and were shown in the right way. Everything she did with a purpose, and she made sure everything you did had a purpose. She made the best deals financially, the best deals for your visibility. She was probably one of the best managers other than (the Beatles') Brian Epstein out there. She helped develop all those artists through her direction and loving care. And she saved everything and documented everything. She was Ms. Hitsville museum.
Otis Williams, The Temptations
I am extremely saddened to hear that she has passed. She was one of our first managers before Shelly Berger. Such a wonderful woman. She was very influential in the embryonic stages of the Temptations. She will always be in my heart.
Smokey Robinson
She was very near and dear to my heart, a wonderful person in my personal life. I loved her very much. She was one of our top executives, a very important person in Motown. She was the head of our management department, did a lot of overseas transactions and stuff like that with Berry. She was tough, she was firm and she was very thorough. She was a chaperone...looking out for the girls, keeping the guys away from the girls. No hanky-panky around her, absolutely. And it's because of her that we have the Motown museum. We have all the paraphernalia and the pictorial history. She was taking pictures from the time we started; every step we took as artists, she would take a picture. We used to think it was humorous -- "She's taking another picture!" -- but thank God for her.
Norma Barbee Sairhurst, The Velvelettes
She was a great lady. I admired her a lot even when we made the first trip down (to Motown) in the 60s...mainly because of her dress and her personality. She was quite a lady, and it was obvious she was very smart. She was like a mother figure because, obviously, our mothers couldn't travel with us. My fondest memory with her was when she would take us shopping...to purchase uniforms to wear on stage. I remember how patient she was; to have the patience with these young teenagers to walk all over the darn store and see what we want to purchase to perform in, that takes a lot of patience.
Sylvester Potts, The Contours
Basically she was Berry's right-hand man. She handled a lot of the bookings that came through...and she went out on the show. She was like the chaperone for the girls, but she was nice. She had a way of making you understand that she's in charge. She kept it nice, and we tried to slip away from her, but we couldn't.
Frances Nero, Motown artist
She meant a lot to me. She was just nice to me and gave me a lot of advice that I've taken to heart and appreciated -- just about being a lady and what it meant to be with Motown, how people would be watching you and that the way you carried yourself was important, those types of things. She was kind of a stern lady, but she had to be with the business she was in. But there was a gentle side to her, too.
Billy J. Wilson, Motown Alumni Association President
Ms. Edwards was the Matriarch of Motown. She was the sold strength to back up her brother in a business she was skeptical of. Even through her skepticism she endured the ups and downs of Motown's rise to the top. She was my hero in that company.
Stevie Wonder
I'm taken back by the loss of Esther Gordy Edwards. She meant so much to me as a human being -- she embodied the idea of never giving up. She was ever determined in everything she did, she was full of energy and her spirit will continue live on. She loved the idea of what we were creating in Motown. She believed in me -- when I was 14 years old and many other people didn't or could only see what they could at the time, she championed me being in Motown. I shared with her many of my songs first before anyone else. She was like another mother to me, she was an extension of that same kind of motherly love. I'm in Washington D.C. right now celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King and Esther, who was also a friend of Coretta Scott King, without question will be celebrated here this week and weekend, and her spirit will continue live on. When we lose someone, we often think "they don't make people like this anymore." It is my hope that younger generations and the world will know of her spirit and her pride in world culture.
Redfoo (aka Stefan Gordy), LMFAO
Some of my greatest childhood moments were spent with my Aunt Esther. Her honesty, humor and the ability to make people feel special have influenced me greatly. I will love you forever Aunt Esther.
Berry Gordy, Jr.
Today our family mourns the loss of our beloved Esther Gordy Edwards.
Esther Gordy Edwards was a top Motown executive, businesswoman, civil and political leader, who received numerous awards, commendations and accolades. She was the most educated in our family and was the go-to person for wisdom in business. Whatever she did, it was with the highest standards, professionalism and an attention to detail that was legendary. She always came out a hero. Esther wasn't concerned with being popular. She was dedicated to making us all better --the Gordy family and the Motown family. Esther turned the so-called trash left behind after I sold the company in 1988 into a phenomenal world-class monument where Hitsville started -- the Motown Museum. She preserved Motown memorabilia before it was memorabilia, collecting our history long before we knew we were making it. She nurtured and held it together through the years, protecting the Motown legacy for generations to come -- which is only one of the reasons people all over the world will remember and celebrate Esther Gordy Edwards. Despite my sorrow, I will proudly continue to honor and celebrate her. She will always be my big sister and she will forever live in my heart.
Audley Smith, Chief Operating Officer of the Motown Historical Museum
I've known Mrs. Edwards since I was an undergraduate at (Detroit's) Wayne State University...and she was involved with the Gordy scholarship and grant program. She took a liking to me and I to her, and just as they did with Motown artists she realized I could probably benefit from some of her experiences and she became my mentor. I had the same experience that Motown artists went through in terms of coming through that door fairly raw and going through that process of refinement. I have nothing but the utmost respect for Mrs. Edwards and cherish our time together. She was someone who genuinely took the time and interest in helping me become a better person in so many areas. Working (at the museum) has been labor of love because she was so important to me. She constantly encouraged us to always think about how much or in how many different ways we can improve what we do here. I think she would be very proud of where we are right now, and I think she would be extremely excited about our future plans for the museum and be satisfied that she left it in good hands.
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