Detroit at the end of the 1950s was a booming city. It was likely that anyone who bought a car in the US had it likely that it was built in the city. It earned the nickname “motor city” which is effectively what it was. It motored the country to the freeway.
If you lived in Detroit at the time, then it was likely that you worked in one of the many car building assembly lines. This gave one man an idea. The idea to churn out hits almost as quickly as the factories were churning out cars. To have the idea for an artist to see the recording studio on the street and walk in, write and record a song and roll out the other side a star was the brainchild of Berry Gordy. He formed the record label Motown Records and helped tip the record industry on its head. Today the Beat Marches On to 19th November 1964 When The Supremes got Motown to number one in the UK for the first time.
In 1959 Berry Gordy founded the record label that eventually would become Motown. Originally called Tamla Records but changed the name 18 months later. The origins of the name came from the Detroit nickname of Motor City. He used the “Mo” from the motor and changed the city to town from the local neighbourhoods he grew up around.
Gordy had some success in music pre-Motown with a few credits writing for soul singer Jackie Wilson and Wilson Pickett’s early band The Falcons. Under the Tamla Records label the biggest song released was Money (That’s what I Want) which was covered by The Beatles and The Flying Lizards in later years.
One of the first artists that signed to Motown was Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. The partnership of Robinson and Gordy helped make the label the groundbreaker it eventually would become. They set up shop in a little studio in downtown Detroit and called it the Hit Factory.
By 1961 the label produced their first million seller and their first number one on the pop charts in America with another song covered by The Beatles “Please Mr. Postman” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. This was the start of a dominant rise by the label.
The label was starting to break cultural boundaries as Motown’s black artists were starting to appear on American national TV shows like Dick Clark’s American Band Stand and the Ed Sullivan Show. When touring they refused to perform to segregated audiences and backed Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement.
By 1964 the label reached number one in the UK with Diana Ross and the Supremes song Baby Love releasing it on the non-US arm of the label Tamela Motown. Not only being the first for the label but also the first all-girl group to reach that feat in the country. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was one of ten for the group in four years.
The Supremes number one in the UK gave Gordy the idea to tour the country in 1965. He bought the girl group, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and Martha and the Vandellas along as an all-star tour. Unfortunately, the UK hadn’t fallen in love with the Motown sound as much as he thought. They toured up and down the country over three weeks playing in empty venues. Even though British acts covered a lot of Motown records they couldn’t get the people to watch the shows. That was until the end of the tour when a musical friend and one of the biggest British solo acts at the time, Dusty Springfield managed to get the Motown acts to perform on a TV special. This was like the Beatle’s appearance on Ed Sullivan’s show in the US, the country exploded with Motown fever after that performance.
In 1968 they controlled the US charts with half the top 10 being from Motown so consequently they needed to expand due to the rollout of so many hits. It also brings up a question: What did Motown do differently to produce so many hit singles in this period? What was it that clicked for the label to be successful? I believe three main reasons made them a powerful player in the music industry.
The first reason is Berry Gordy’s experience in a car factory. Before venturing into music like most of the population of Detroit he worked in many of the car factories. The experience he gained through this period helped mould the rollout of hits for the label. Using the philosophy of create, make, sell it kept the hit machine rolling to keep producing. Having additional workers add different aspects to the song freed them up to start work on the next one.
The assembly line idea wasn’t the only thing borrowed from the car factory. They also had their quality control. Once a week the producers and songwriters had a meeting to analyse and critique each other’s work. They did this so the best music was produced by the label, where most labels emphasised a spaghetti approach (let’s throw it against the wall and see if anything sticks) this system gave Motown a huge success rate compared to other labels. For a standard record label, a 10% hit rate would be a success but Motown had 75%.
The second reason was the attention to detail Gordy gave the musicians. He made sure that they were, along with being a great act to hear at home, they were a good live performance too. In the early days of the company when the records were not selling as well, they had to rely on the live performance to help spread the word and sell the records.
Gordy dressed his acts in matching clothing. He got them to do dance routines while performing which was never heard of at the time. Hiring legendary choreographer Cholly Atkins who had a prolific dancing career through the 1950s appearing on American TV. This addition gave the artists a uniqueness to the live performance.
The acts were sent to a finishing school which was headed by Maxine Powell. She helped the acts become presentable to the public. Whether it was a little music hall or Buckingham Palace the impression the artists gave had to be the same.
The third reason could also be linked again to the car factory experience. As cars were being built in the 1960s there was a new standard part being added, the radio. The Chief engineer at Motown Records, Mike McClain, built a tiny speaker to replicate the ones that were now being built in cars. This was a ground-breaking piece of research and development for the company as they knew most people listen to music while driving. Before they released anything, they gave the song the speaker test to see how it would sound. This is what gives the high-end bias of the early Motown recordings so they would sound good when their songs come on the radio as you were driving.
It was these three reasons that helped the label become the legend that it is today. Not only is it just a label but it is genre. What started as a soul or rhythm and blues sound now is just called Motown. The unmistakable sound of the backing band, The Funk Brothers, and the talented writing of artists like Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye or the house team of Holland-Doizer-Holland inspired multiple generations of musicians.
What Motown gave us is that it doesn’t matter what your heritage or where you are from, if you want to have a good time then just put on a record by Little Stevie Wonder or the Jackson Five. Or even Lionel Richie, Diana Ross and the Supremes or the Four Tops. The biggest acts always want to withstand the test of time and even now in 2020, the music of Motown has done that.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for three years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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If anyone reading this would like to read more about this story, the sites used for research were:
https://www.popmatters.com/69384-manufacturing-motown-2496071565.html
http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1870975,00.html
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