Motown changed the landscape of pop, rewrote the rule
book and created the sound of young America - which appealed to whites
as much as to blacks.
Crossover soul was the vision of Motown's founder - Svengali figure
Berry Gordy. "Motown was a little hit factory, and
I got the idea from the assembly line that I worked in at an automobile
plant," he explains.
Reflecting the optimism of the early Sixties and the promise of integration,
Gordy's artists were coached, groomed and targeted at the lucrative
white audience.
Gordy's crack songwriting team Holland/Dozier/Holland
in Detroit pumped out 40 hits for artists such as The Supremes,
Martha Reeves, The Temptations and The Four Tops.
"If we didn't get the goose bumps or the hair standing on the arms,
then something was missing," comments Lamont Dozier.
His master strokes for cracking the uptown, white establishment was
hiring both Maxine Powell, who ran the Artists Development finishing
school, and white marketeer Barney Ales, who ensured that the company
always got paid.
Supreme Mary Wilson recalls: "It was Maxine Powell's
job to refine us. She told us very early on that we were all diamonds
in the raw and that we needed refining."
Over in Chicago, white-owned family business Chess Records
enviously eyed up Motown's success. Although the label already had a
reputation for blues and black rock 鈥榥' roll, they wanted a fresh sound
that echoed the mood of the growing aspirational black population.
By "sweetening" with strings and pop arrangements, the gritty Chicago
sound was transformed into sophisticated soul.
Etta James' Only Time Will Tell brought Chess a taste
of crossover magic and Fontella Bass's hit Rescue Me
emulated the Motown formula.
As the mood of the nation changed, with the rise of the civil rights
movement and protests over the Vietnam War, it was in Chicago - not
Detroit - that music with a social conscience was first heard.
In People Get Ready and Choice Of Colours, Curtis Mayfield
captured the zeitgeist and sang openly about community struggle and
racial harmony.
The Detroit riots were a huge wake-up call for Motown, who now seemed
embarrassingly out of kilter. Cracks appeared in the company when, after
a dispute about money, Holland/Dozier/Holland left, producer Mickey
Stevenson departed and Supreme Flo Ballard was fired.
But Gordy was a survivor and, determined to prove the company could
move with the times, he released Love Child by Diana Ross and
the Supremes. The song, which had a social message, became
one of the biggest selling records in Motown's history.
Gordy moved the business out to LA and it entered a second golden age.
But the age of innocence for Motown was over.
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