Berry Gordy and the Rise of Motown - Essay Example

?Running Head: CREATING AN ICON Creating an Icon: Berry Gordy and the Rise of Motown CREATING AN ICON 2 Berry Gordy, Jr., created a recording company that became a legend in the music industry and an icon of American culture. Gordy wielded tight control over the company’s business practices, famously micro-managing both Motown’s finances and the lives and careers of its musical talents. The formula he established, both from a business and creative standpoint, stood the test of time and turned Motown into a mega-million dollar concern. Following intelligent business principles, Gordy diversified into other branches of the entertainment industry, such as film, and moved Motown from Detroit, the city with which it is still identified, to southern California. Today, Gordy’s holds the double legacy as a successful businessman and creative musical impresario. Keywords: Berry Gordy, Jr., music industry, Motown, Detroit. CREATING AN ICON 3 Creating an Icon: Berry Gordy and the Rise of Motown For millions of music fans around the world, Berry Gordy and Motown Records are icons of the music industry and of popular culture in general. The “Motown sound” is still considered the most distinctive “urban” representation of the genre, an influence as seminal and profound in its way as Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Memphis had Stax and Sun Records, and Chess Records is still closely identified with the Chicago blues scene. Yet no music label has ever been more closely identified with a community than Motown with Detroit, a musical marriage the mere mention of which still encompasses its own aesthetic and mystique. All of this was due to the vision of Berry Gordy, the Detroit native whose foresight, business judgment and promotional flair helped grow a small, hometown label into a multi-media entertainment empire. As with any successful entrepreneur, once he was established as a leader in his field Gordy successfully diversified his business interests. Motown’s move into the film industry proved financially successful and by the time Gordy sold the company to MCA, it was worth more than $60 million. A Newsweek article from May 1983 ascribed the basis of Motown’s success to the fundamental desire of young people, both black and white, to dance to music with an infectious beat (Barol, 1983). This, the article contended, was the basis of Gordy’s genius: his faith in a formula that defined Motown like no other label. Its first great hit, “Shop Around” by Smoky Robinson, which sold a million copies in 1960, is a prime example of the timelessness of the music Gordy produced and the durability of his business formula as a music impresario. A true opportunist, Gordy leveraged the racial and cultural tumult of the 1960s, positioning Motown as CREATING AN ICON 4 a kind of unofficial urban musical “voice” of black America, and a symbol of Detroit, the city with which it is still identified, even though Gordy long ago moved his operation to Hollywood to take advantage of opportunities in the film industry. No sentimentalist, Gordy did not allow image to cloud his business judgment or convince him to act counter to his best interests. On June 28, 1988, Gordy sold Motown to MCA for $61 million, a deal that some said decidedly favored Gordy. “Right now, the company has nothing on the charts, it’s internally shot, people are looking to get out. It’s a sad ending to a good piece of American history. Berry Gordy is a great creative guy, but (he’s) not a strong manager” said a rival producer at the time (Ingham and Feldman, p. 195). It is a measure of Motown’s cultural power that Gordy came under such virulent criticism for having sold arguably the nation’s most visible black-owned business to a large corporation (p. 195). Motown may have been folded into a giant national conglomerate, but Gordy’s success was far from over. Motown’s subsidiaries comprised a considerable source of revenue, and Gordy brought them under one roof in 1990 when he formed the Gordy Company. Motown Production, Jobete Music and Hitsville came under this new business “umbrella” which, by 1990, was worth more than $100 million, while the Gordy Company continued to explore new opportunities in the film and television industries (Ingham and Feldman, p. 195-96). The music label that introduced the likes of Diana Ross and the Supremes; Smokey Robinson and the Miracles; Stevie Wonder; Michael Jackson; Lionel Richie and many others to the world had turned the page but still continued to score successes throughout the 1990s with young black performers like Johnny Gill, Queen Latifah and Boyz II Men (Film Reference, 2012). CREATING AN ICON 5 But it was in music that Motown reigned supreme. During the tumultuous 1960s, Gordy’s Motown empire came to own eight record labels, a management service and a publishing company, all of which grossed millions every year (Ingham and Feldman, p. 189). Motown hit its stride between 1964 and 1967, a period that saw it land 114 number one singles on the pop music charts, 20 on the rhythm and blues charts and countless other singles among the top 15; in 1966 alone 75 percent of Motown’s singles made the charts (p. 189). Clearly, Gordy had hit upon a formula that resonated. In addition to a powerful backbeat and rock solid rhythm sections, many of the best Motown singles featured high-pitched female backing vocals in the gospel call-and-response tradition and lush orchestral arrangements when the song called for one (musicians from the Detroit Symphony made very good livings during the 1960s as session players) (Wadhams, Nathan and Lindsay, p. 71). Gordy’s concept, and that of his legendary producers like Lamont Dozier, managed to give the Motown sound a sufficiently broad appeal that it crossed social/cultural lines; there seemed to be something for everyone to enjoy. For people who didn’t appreciate a heavy beat and loud guitars or horns, Motown also incorporated a more elegant aesthetic (Wadhams, Nathan and Harvey, p. 71). The music expressed “a self-confident elegance…The rhythm section, vocals and arrangements were seamlessly and artfully interwoven” (p. 71). The songs themselves, as was so often case in the 1960s, were not simply vehicles for explosions of sound or psychedelic explorations. They were rife with imagery, and a clever turn of phrase (“Stop! In the Name of Love”) or rhyme often helped make them truly memorable. Gordy himself successfully played on the idea that these qualities were part of a well-thought-out approach to CREATING AN ICON 6 music making, though Motown’s producers often countered that the songs were simply part of individual creative processes that took on lives of their own. “We did not know what we were doing. We were just going on pure instinct and feeling. There really were no rule books” (p. 71). It may be said that “instinct and feeling” created what became known as the “Detroit sound,” an urban feel and mood that seemed to coincide remarkably with the unrest then unfolding in many of America’s largest cities. Though Gordy appreciated - and benefited from – the idea of a Detroit sound, he insisted that his famous label was not trying to create a sound based on its environmental surroundings. Indeed, Gordy’s grand idea was that Motown could be a kind of musical clearinghouse for different kinds of songs, both fast and slow, sensitive and raucous, as long as they fit within the basic formula. One example was a now forgotten band called “The Mynah Birds,” a group made up of both black and white musicians, featuring such future, and disparate, luminaries as Rick James and Neil Young. Motown’s producers initially struggled with how to fit the group’s unusual sound and style within the Motown paradigm, but eventually created arrangements that made use of horns and backing vocals in the classic Motown style, producing songs that, though unsuccessful, could be identified as Motown products. This approach produced an unprecedented run of hits and made Berry Gordy a very wealthy man. However, when it came to the business side of Motown, Gordy maintained a very low profile, the motive for which has been thoroughly debated and which brought Gordy into conflict with some of his most successful artists. The Recording Industry Association of CREATING AN ICON 7 America (RIAA), which certifies sales figures among record labels and presents gold and platinum record awards, was refused access to Motown’s business records (Wadhams, Nathan and Lindsay, p. 72). Another function of the RIAA is to figure royalties earned by each release, which determines what artists earn from their creative labors. It is interesting that over the years, artists such as the “Shirelles” sued Motown over unpaid royalties, a situation that helped bring to light inconsistencies in the industry’s artist compensation system (p. 72). For Gordy, running a record company was a matter of control, and financial control remained his major point of emphasis. However, as the label became more successful, Gordy began to pay more attention to maintaining control over his artists, both in their professional and personal lives. This was more than a matter of monitoring misdeeds and social transgressions. “At Gordy’s insistence, every Motown performer attended an in-house finishing school, where they learned how to comport themselves both onstage and in social situations” (Entrepreneur, 2008). Gordy was among the first business owners to implement a programmatic approach to quality, an idea that came from near at hand. “Gordy…instituted an internal program of ‘quality control,’ including weekly product-evaluation meetings, which he modeled after his experiences working for Ford Motor Company,” a revolutionary approach for a record company owner but one he managed to combine with a creative work environment that encouraged artists to take chances in the studio (2008). It is small surprise that Motown’s line-up of artists successfully avoided the negative publicity that seems to appear in the headlines and online chat rooms nearly every day. Image was key to Motown’s success, and it helped “sell” the notion of an efficient, tightly run and CREATING AN ICON 8 family-oriented operation. Thanks to Gordy’s business acumen, Motown was able to maintain its image when Gordy took the company into the film industry. After 1967, the hit singles began to slow and by the early 1970s Gordy had moved Motown’s headquarters to Los Angeles. Gordy, who fancied himself a movie director in the same way he considered himself a songwriter, got off to a good start in his new venture. “The first fruits of Gordy and Motown’s new direction came in 1972 when its first motion picture, Lady Sings the Blues, a biography of singer Billie Holliday starring Diana Ross, was released” (Ingham and Feldman, p. 191). The nascent Motown film company benefited from a first-rate subject in Holliday, and from Diana Ross’s strong performance in the lead role. Lady Sings the Blues was a remarkable critical and box office success, earning more than $8.5 million and five Academy Award nominations (Ingham and Feldman, p. 191). The film also showed that Gordy had an eye for talent in the movie business with his introduction of a young Billy Dee Williams. It was an auspicious beginning for Motown Films, and Gordy’s expectations for future film projects were understandably high. However, success proved elusive as each successive feature film proved worse than the one before it. The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings enjoyed some limited success (perhaps due to expectations following Lady Sings the Blues), however, Mahogany, a Diana Ross vehicle, and The Wiz, starring Michael Jackson, fared poorly. The critics especially lambasted Gordy over Mahogany, a bitter and personal blow for Gordy, who financed, produced and directed the film himself (Ibid). His response was especially rancorous, accusing the media of launching “attacks on an uppity black man” (Ibid). CREATING AN ICON 9 Despite Gordy’s failings on the silver screen, Motown continued as a force in the music industry into the 1980s. Artists who had become strongly identified with Motown left to join new, larger labels with greater resources at their disposal. In the years leading up to its sale to MCA, Motown’s legendary ability to locate and sign new talent had largely subsided, and Gordy found himself increasingly having to lean on past successes and a glorious legacy. Indeed, after the sale was completed, MCA officials made the point that any company worth $61 million was well worth the trouble, not to mention the fact that the company in question was not just any flagging business enterprise, but the recording company that transformed the nature of contemporary popular music. Clearly, Berry Gordy’s vision had proven its worth not just on the trading block but in the hearts and minds of anyone who loved pop music. Ironically, it was in Detroit, the city that gave Gordy his start, where Motown’s legacy probably suffered the most. After the riots in 1967, the city of Detroit began a long, slow decline that stemmed from, among other things, a downturn in the city’s automotive industry. When Gordy moved Motown to southern California in 1972, it was a devastating symbolic blow to the city and its prestige, which was still reeling from the racial violence of the late ‘60s. The city’s political leaders took it hard, but it was in the black community, the one from which Gordy had come, that Motown suffered its harshest criticism. The outrage expressed by Detroit’s black population was “made particularly poignant by the fact that Gordy had for so long, and so clearly, identified Motown as a community institution, as a machine for racial uplift and, of course, as a family” (Ingham and Feldman, p. 190). Gordy had been moved by Martin Luther CREATING AN ICON 10 King, Jr.’s work and sacrifice for civil rights, and he made recordings of readings by leaders of the black power movement, such as Stokely Carmichael. As such, Gordy earned renown in the black community nationally, though it remained a different story locally. Gordy was probably largely to blame for the anger that Motown’s departure occasioned, not solely because the company left but because Gordy had so successfully identified Motown and its fortunes with those of Detroit. It would not be overstating the case to say that Motown was a part of Detroit’s “soul,” its identity and its pride. When the company left, it felt as though Detroit, the once-proud symbol of American industrial power and technical ingenuity had gone into permanent eclipse. The name “Motown” was itself simply an abbreviation of “Motor Town,” Detroit’s nickname and a source of great pride. Today, Berry Gordy and Motown are mutually identifiable; it is impossible to imagine one without the other. As a businessman, Gordy was single-minded, and sometimes ruthless, in achieving his goals but the record label he made famous was very much a household word by the end of the 1960s. His is, in a sense, the classic “rags-to-riches” story, a blueprint of sorts for achieving entrepreneurial success in the United States, and an inspirational example of what can happen when a good idea is backed by persistence and ability. It may also be said that Gordy’s spectacular success in growing a grass-roots business venture into a company worth many millions of dollars helped instill confidence in the black community at a time when divisiveness and disaffection were the order of the day. Gordy is today revered as a true pioneer of the entertainment industry, and a man who left a lasting imprint on American culture. CREATING AN ICON 11 References Barol, Bill. “Motown’s Twenty-Five Years of Soul.” Newsweek. 25 May 1983. “Berry Gordy, Jr., Biography (1929 - ).” Film Reference. 2012. Web. http://www.filmreference.com. “Berry Gordy: Sweet Soul Music.” Entrepreneur. 10 October 2008. Web. http://www.entrepreneur.com. Dahl, B. (2001). Motown: The Golden Years. Iola, WI: Krause Publications. Ingham, J.N. and Feldman, L.B. (1994). African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing. Wadhams, W., Nathan, D, and Lindsay, S.G. (2001). Inside the Hits. Boston, MA: Berklee Press. 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