From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Thu Nov 28, 2002  6:15 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Berry Gordy

BERRY GORDY, JR.

Born 28 November 1929, Detroit, Michigan

The story of Berry Gordy is an American legend. He is the founder of
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.
Gordy 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. At the age of 16, Gordy dropped out of high school 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.
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.
For a time Gordy worked 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, among
which "Reet Petite" and "Lonely Teardrops" (both recorded by Jackie Wilson),
and when Gordy compared his royalty checks to what Decca made from the
songs, 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 for the
manufacturing and marketing of 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; Inter-
national 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.
Motown produced over 110 pop Top 10 records (including many number ones),
like "Please Mr. Postman", "Reach Out, I'll Be There", "My Girl", "Where Did
Our Love Go", "Fingertips", "Do You Love Me", "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved
by You", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", "Shotgun", "My Guy," "Dancing
in the Streets", "I Want You Back", and "I'll Be There". Equally impressive is
a list of artists that Gordy brought into the spotlight: Smokey Robinson and
the Miracles, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Jackson Five, Stevie Wonder,
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.
1961-1971 was Motown's golden decade. In 1988 Gordy made a distribution
deal with MCA, giving up some of his independence and in 1993 the Motown
catalogue was sold to Polygram.
Gordy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

More info: http://www.history-of-rock.com/motown_records.htm
Autobiography: Berry Gordy, To Be Loved : The Music, The Magic, The
Memories of Motown. New York : Warner, 1994.