Analysis: Can T Forget The Motor City: Why Leaving Detroit Ruining Motown
“Can’t Forget the Motor City”:
Why Leaving Detroit Ruined Motown
Dylan Morris
TASP 2005
Mark Clague and Derek Vaillant
5 August 2005
Morris 1
In 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr., a 30-year-old songwriter and entrepreneur, started a record company in Detroit. He called it Tamla Records. The company had an auspicious debut. Within the year, it had released a major hit: Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s
What I Want)” climbed to number two on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues charts. In
1960, it had its first number one R&B hit—the Miracles’ “Shop Around,” which also hit number two on the Pop charts. In 1961, Gordy renamed his prosperous enterprise. He called it the Motown Record Company, after Detroit—“Motor Town.” Motown also had its first number one Pop …show more content…
hit that year: the Marvalettes’ “Please Mr. Postman.” It would go on to have 110 Top 10 hits in the 1960s.1
This seemingly instant success story is even more impressive in light of the fact that Berry Gordy, Jr. and his top artists were all African American. African-American music had long been popular in America: ragtime, jazz, and blues had all been popular.
But this “black” music had, as a general rule, only become commercially successful with the mass white audiences when white artists had begun to play and perform it. This had been true even with Rhythm and Blues, which by the beginning of the 1960s had become a phenomenon among white teenagers. These white teens called the music they heard
“Rock ’n’ Roll,” a new moniker for Rhythm and Blues coined by Cleveland disk jockey
Alan Freed. White Rock ’n’ Roll fans listened to white artists who “sang black,” most famously “the King of Rock ’n’ Roll,” Elvis Presley. Black Rhythm and Blues artists, meanwhile, were consigned to the “Chitlin Circuit” a tour of black clubs and bookings, and could only watch as white artists performing their material rose to stardom. White-
1
“Motown,” Wikipedia, 29 July 2005. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motown> (27 July
2005).
Morris 2 owned record companies generally would not give these black artists the opportunity for stardom—instead consigning them to their “Race Records” divisions.
That Motown was black-owned and run was radical enough in the whitewashed world of 1950s and ’60s record companies. What was even more radical was the success that black Motown artists had with white audiences. They produced some of the first
“crossover” hits, songs that caught on with both black and white audiences. Soon
Motown groups like the Supremes were getting classy bookings to play for white audiences in venues like the Copacabana.
The city of Detroit, meanwhile, fell in love with the music of its namesake record company. Motown did not suffer from the woes of the proverbial artist who is hailed everywhere but his hometown. Rather, the Motor City ate up the Motown sound.
Former Motown press agent and public relations consultant Al Abrams put it simply when he wrote that “Detroit loved Motown.”2 He explains: “[In Detroit, Motown] was a phenonmenon. I don’t even think Eminem and 8-Mile even comes close to it. It was just far more wide-ranging than that.”3
What made Motown so popular? As a startup company, it did what did no company had done before—sold the work of black artists to white audiences. It became the toast of its home city, dominating the Detroit music scene throughout the 1960s and up to the 1972 departure of Motown Records for Los Angeles. The company was labeled a “Hit Machine” for its ability to turn out chart topping singles seemingly on demand.
2
3
Alan E. Abrams Papers, Bentley Historical Library.
Al Abrams, personal interview with Dylan Morris, 22 July 2005.
Morris 3
How did the company manage this? How did it pull off what Abrams has called the
“Motown Miracle”?4
The answer is threefold. First, Motown assembled a prodigious collection of talent in all sectors of its production line. From the songwriting of Brian Holland,
Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland (a team known simply as Holland-Dozier-Holland or
H-D-H) and the distinctive sound of the Funk Brothers, Motown’s in-house back up band, to the vocal talents of Marvin Gaye, Motown’s music sounded good because it was created by a group of people of significant musical talent.
Second, Motown was active
in promoting this music, and designed its public relations and promotional techniques in such a way as to create the dual, crossover appeal it sought. The “charm school” that
Berry Gordy established for his stars, is famous, but subtler efforts, such as the lengths to which Motown went to get favorable press from the white media, were just as crucial.
Third, Motown established a symbiotic relationship with the city of Detroit that led the city to love and care for its hometown company, and then to feel shocked and betrayed when Motown packed up for Los Angeles. But Motown had lost something too. The relationship with Detroit was truly symbiotic in that Detroit directly contributed to
Motown’s success. Without Detroit, the stage was set for Motown’s eventual decline.
Motown’s famous family atmosphere suffered blow after blow as artists defected to other labels. While the 1970s were hardly a disaster for Motown, the losses of groups like the
Jackson 5 and Gladys Knight and the Pips set the stage for Motown’s unsuccessful years in the 1980s, and sale of the company to MCA and Boston Ventures in 1988. Even in the
1970s, the Motown’s Hit Machine slowed down. In the 1960s, the company had
4
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Morris 4 averaged eleven Top Ten hits per year. From 1972 on, the numbers were significantly lower: four Top Ten hits in 1972, five in 1973, four in 1974, a shocking one in 1975, six in 1976, and five in 1977.5 These figures hardly depict a floundering company, but they do represent a decline, a decline that would only continue in the 1980s.
The concept that Motown’s leaving Detroit was painful for the city is well established.6 What is less so is that, though Berry Gordy, Jr. and other Motown executives may not have realized it, is that Motown leaving Detroit hurt the company as much as the city and its populace. I argue that the failure on the part of Gordy to recognize the centrality of Detroit to Motown directly led to Motown’s decline and fall—its inability to maintain a grip on the two markets that it dominated in the 1960s: crossover pop plus rhythm and blues.
To understand the relationship between Detroit and Motown that led first to mutual benefit and then mutual loss, it is necessary to look at the story from the company’s beginnings, and to consider the Motown phenomenon in the context of its local history. Motown established and then broke its relationship with Detroit, always remaining the proactive party. By analyzing this relationship and how Motown maintained it or failed to maintain it I aim to demonstrate Detroit’s central role in
Motown’s success, and to demonstrate how, by betraying of Detroit, Motown sowed the seeds of its own decline.
When Berry Gordy founded Motown, he surrounded himself with local talent.
Gordy tapped the local music community to sign his artists, from established Detroit
5
David Edwards and Mike Callahan, “The Motown Story,” 11 June 1999.
<http://www.bsnpubs.com/gordystory.html> (2 August 2005).
6
See Nelson George, Where Did Our Love Go?: The Rise and Fall of the Motown sound
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 191.
Morris 5 groups like the Primes, who became the Temptations, to undiscovered talent like Mary
Wells and Diana Ross. Motown was famous for being like a “family.” But this arose out of the fact that the Motown employees shared a background—Detroit. Some Motown employees had lived in Detroit all their lives, others, such as the members of the Primes, had moved there, but the shared backgrounds of its employees were nonetheless key to
Motown’s familial feel.
Hiring centered on Detroit was necessary because Motown was a startup on a tight budget. Gordy could hardly have gone on a national talent search or signed a bigname star. But he did not need to. Within the Detroit music scene, Berry Gordy discovered talent more than capable of succeeding on a national, and international, musical stage. This use of local talent alone makes any attempt to separate Motown from the context of its original home city impossible. Detroit talent drove Motown to the top of the charts.
At the same time, Detroit fell in love with Motown. It began with the press. The
Michigan Chronicle, the state’s African-American newspaper was the first to spread the word about Motown. Yet the first major media relations success for Motown would be with the Detroit Free Press. Former press agent Abrams explains:
We had Mort Persky at the Free Press who would do any story—I would have 5, 6, 7 Motown stories a week in the Free Press. We were the hometown heroes, the hometown team.… We were adopted by the Free
Press.7
The Detroit News proved a harder nut for Abrams to crack, but eventually the News also became a reliable vehicle of Motown stories. While the national media gave Motown attention, it was the local press that popularized Motown in its home city. The press
7
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Morris 6 began to dub the city itself “Motown,” a trend that continues in articles by local papers to this day.
Beyond print coverage, Motown also reached Detroit’s ear through the media of radio and television. Motown got airplay nationwide, and its artists made appearances on national television, but the Detroit-area broadcast media contributed further coverage on top of this base. Motown stars would make appearances on local television stations like
CKLW-TV. These local broadcast appearances not only added to the saturation of
Motown content across the Detroit airwaves, but also further cemented Motown’s local aesthetic. Here was a nationally successful company whose stars would appear on local television. It seemed to suggest that Motown was staying true to its roots, staying
“authentic.”
What exactly was it about the media coverage that helped Motown sell its records? The press built up hometown pride in Motown, making the company into
“hometown team” in Abrams’ words.8 The newspapers used adoptive language about
Motown and its stars: the Supremes became “Our Supremes.”9 Detroit was proud of
Motown, and this pride led to a greater love. Specifically, says Abrams: “The Free Press made Detroit readers a part of the Motown family.”10 Fans felt they were part of the
Motown phenomenon rather than just observers. This made the position of Motown fan an attractive one, and helped create a Detroit-area fan base for Motown.
These Detroit-area fans contributed more to Motown than their record-buying dollars. They helped to legitimize Motown as an authentic sound—“The Sound of Young
8
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Alan E. Abrams Papers.
10
Al Abrams, personal interview.
9
Morris 7
America,” as the company slogan—coined by Abrams—touted it, and also the sound of black America and urban America. The masses of young, urban, and black Motown fans seemed to be living proof any claim that Motown represented such a constituency. That, in turn, implied that Motown was “authentic” music; music that was created rather than manufactured, art rather than product. Authenticity is of massive importance in
American popular music. At the time, the notion of authenticity served to separate the
“authentic” rock and rhythm and blues communities from their “inauthentic” Pop counterpart. As music professor Nicholas Cook explains: “This goes back to the origins of rock in the blues…the blues were seen as the authentic expression of an oppressed race, music that came from the heart (or ‘soul,’ as in the later music of that name).”11
Cook explains that Pop musicians fall squarely in the “inauthentic” camp. They are seen as “the puppets of the music business, cynically or naïvely pandering to popular tastes, and performing music composed and arranged by others; they lack authenticity, and as such they come in at the bottom of the hierarchy of musicianship.”12 “Authentic” music is appealing to a potential buyer—who would want to buy a “fake” record, a record by someone at the bottom of the musical hierarchy? Motown seemed to be authentic.
The irony is that the Motown sound was a carefully constructed commercial product, one that fit the “inauthentic” qualities of pop described by Cook to the tee.
Motown was reluctant to let its artists write and arrange their own songs—a songwriting and producing team like Holland-Dozier-Holland was much more likely to get the job.
Furthermore, Motown songs were engineered: they were mixed for the radio, with an
11
Nicholas Cook, Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000), 10.
12
Cook, 11.
Morris 8 emphasis on treble to ensure a good sound even when played on car radios,13 and set in keys designed to make the artists use their voices in a certain way.14 In addition, Motown carefully constructed the images of its stars, teaching them signature dance moves and sending them to “charm school.” What music could be more of a product, and less
“authentic”?
But with the question of authenticity, reality is not the issue. Perception is.
Motown might have been commercial, but it felt familial, a sort of Mom and Pop record company. It might have engineered its songs, but the skill of the songwriters and producers was such that it sounded natural. Indeed, as journalist Susan Whitall points out: “Hearing Marvin Gaye sing ‘You 're a Wonderful One,’ it may not seem possible that such music didn 't just spin effortlessly out of his mouth.”15 Motown came across as authentic. That meant it effectively was.
Indeed, Motown was in some ways true to its roots. While charges of civic apathy made against Motown are not wholly unwarranted, Motown did make certain efforts to give back to its community. How could it not? A local company staffed by locals and featuring artists with local roots that casts itself as a family operation is …show more content…
nearly obligated to give back, particularly if it wants or needs to appear true to its roots and hence “authentic.” Motown artists gave free appearances at civic events. Gordy recorded Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at the 1963 “Great March to Freedom,” a civil rights demonstration in Detroit, and released it on Motown’s spoken word label, Black
Forum. Motown did make, at the very least, meaningful gestures toward its home city.
13
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Susan Whitall, “Motown songwriters are back in the groove,” The Detroit News
Online, 2 August 2005. <http://www.detnews.com/2005/events/0508/02/E01266342.htm> (2 August 2005).
15
Whitall.
14
Morris 9
But Motown was not only marketing to black Detroit. Rather, as Abrams points out, the company was “trying to open those doors to get the classier bookings. Get them off the Chitlin ' Circuit—the black entertainment circuit…any record company wants to do that.”16 It was trying to sell itself to white audiences. It was trying to create crossover music. This was ambitious. As explained above, white buyers tended only to buy black music if it was performed by white artists. Motown’s solution to this was to “whiten” its artists. The artists’ hair was straightened. The artists attended charm school where they learned how to present themselves to upper class white society. The artists were booked at white venues, the classier the better. From the Motown outlook, the Supremes at the
Copacabana was a triumph.17 Abrams explains the attempt to appeal to whites:
Just classing up the acts and going for a classier image—making them more palatable to whites—not losing the blacks, but just knowing that
[the white audience was] where the money was, that’s where the big bucks are.
It’s not only smart business, it’s very smart business.18
That image—a whitened black, a Motown Mocha, proved very appealing. But cultivating it was not without its risks. Could Motown hold on to its black audience while going after the money that the white audience offered? Indiana University music professor Charles Sykes offers an explanation: “Holland-Dozier-Holland were able to package gospel in such a way that it was really camouflaged. There was a packaging of those black elements in such a way that they were very pop-oriented, from the tambourine on.”19 Sykes argues that the fact that the gospel remained in the music meant
16
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Al Abrams, personal interview.
18
Al Abrams, personal interview.
19
Charles Sykes in Whitall.
17
Morris 10 that black listeners continued to listen to Motown.20 The camouflage, meanwhile, ensured that the music became “palatable to whites,” as Abrams puts it.21
There was an striking duality to it all: Motown as pop label and Motown as the sound of gritty, urban, black Detroit; the Supremes as divas and the Supremes as girls from the Detroit projects; the Motown sound for whites and the Motown sound for blacks. Maintaining this duality meant walking a fine line. There was a critical balance that Motown had to strike between covering up its roots in black Detroit and flaunting them. And it managed it well. Abrams explains: “I remember some of the reluctance about putting the map of Detroit on the Motown label—there was some real worry that it might backfire.”22 But it did not. The album sold.
It is important to note here that not all of Motown’s crossover was achieved through whitening. At the same time, some white listeners came for the same reason the blacks stayed: authenticity. Humphrey Morris, a white professional in his fifties who was a student during the 1960s, and who spent his college summer in 1968 writing for the Civil
Rights newspaper the Southern Courier, explained why he and his white friends took to
Motown:
I think the formative social movement for my high school generation was
Civil Rights, and Motown fell on receptive ears in that we were eager to embrace black culture and bridge the gap. Plus my girlfriend made it clear that black men were sexier and danced better and I suppose I hoped some of that would rub off if I listened to Motown, even though there really was no hope.23
20
Sykes in Whitall.
Al Abrams, personal interview.
22
Al Abrams, personal interview.
23
Humphrey Morris, personal interview with Dylan Morris, 4 August 2005.
21
Morris 11
It was Motown’s ability to attract listeners like Morris—whites who wanted to connect with authentic black culture—that made its crossover so powerful. It maintained the right balance of “white” and “black” in its sound to hook both those whites who could not stomach a sound that was too “black” and those whites who wanted to listen to such a sound. Ironically, Morris connects Motown directly with the Civil Rights movement, despite the fact that the music was generally pitched as apolitical.24 Berry Gordy consciously tried to avoid letting politics enter into Motown music, fearing that it would hurt sales.25 For Morris and his friends, though, that did not matter. What did matter was authenticity. Motown might not have been activist music, but for white listeners like
Morris, it was a chance to tie together their political activism with their musical taste—by listening to the music of the people whose civil rights they supported, Morris and his friends could make a political statement. Their ability to do so, though, hinged upon
Motown’s ability to stay true to its roots and produce “authentic” black music, music that was still culturally black enough to appeal to blacks themselves.
With its departure for Los Angeles, Motown upset the delicate balance of
“whiteness” and “blackness” in the product it sold. Ironically, the move itself resulted in part from goals of winning further success for black entertainers. Berry Gordy had his eye on the film business, and wanted to expand Motown into other media. Indeed, looking at the films Motown produced—notable Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany, and
The Wiz, one gets the sense that Gordy wanted to do for the film industry what he had done for the music industry—create an outlet for films featuring black casts and black
24
See Suzanne E. Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of
Detroit (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1999), introduction for a discussion of this apolitical stance.
25
Smith, 11.
Morris 12 music. In some sense, this was a lofty goal. But Gordy chose to go about it in a way that was unwise. He abandoned Detroit. The reaction was far from positive. Abrams explains: It saddened everybody, a lot of people felt betrayed. Felt that they were sold out. That they’d put a lot into Motown, that Motown became a part of their lives, and then Motown turned their back on them. It was like losing a lover26
Motown had brought Detroit into its “family,” made the city feel that it was part of the
Motown phenomenon, made the city fall in love. Now it had abandoned Detroit. For this, Motown would suffer. The backlash in Detroit hurt Motown. The Detroit press turned against Motown, the honeymoon period of media adoration ended. In its place, the abandoned Detroit media was not kind. Abrams says that “the media really to
Motown to task”27 for the move.
Ultimately, though, Motown could have—and did—weather the media backlash.
What it could not weather was the decline of the Motown sound itself. Berry Gordy had said that the Motown sound was a combination of “rats, roaches, soul, guts, and love”28
Historian Suzanne E. Smith points out that “Gordy’s definition, however fanciful, anchored the music to its urban origins.”29 The Motown sound was built on Detroit. This kept it authentic, no matter how much the artists—urban black Detroiters themselves—might be “whitened” in appearance. Motown had packaged itself by surrounding black music with the trappings of whiteness. It kept its black audience as it crossed over primarily because it kept up a black sound even as it presented a white
26
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Al Abrams, personal interview.
28
Berry Gordy in Smith, 155.
29
Smith, 155.
27
Morris 13 image. Indeed, that was the point of crossover—black music with a white exterior—and
Motown’s genius was to do it with black artists rather than white ones such as Elvis
Presley. But to produce such music necessitated that the artists be true to their musical roots in rhythm and blues if they were to avoid becoming nothing more than Pop artists.
Motown had tied its sound to rhythm and blues roots through its ties to the Motor City.
Motown had an urban sound, a sound produced within the inner-city by inner-city artists.
As Smith explains, in Detroit “the performers and musicians developed their musical skills from resources unique to their urban environment.”30 This was no longer true in
Los Angeles. The artists had been transplanted, Motown no longer had the local talent pool that had fueled its sound, and it did not have the urban fan base that had made this sound “authentic.” Instead, it had glitz and glamour—hardly the resources with which to produce an authentic urban music. In Los Angeles, Abrams explains: “[Motown moved] away from where the roots were and where the dynamics were. It went too far pop—or to be more blunt, it went too far white. Sort of the whitening of Motown.”31 Motown could not afford this. Its popularity hinged on being black music with a white shell. That was its niche. As it moved away from its musical roots, it lost that which had distinguished it from the rest of rhythm and blues and the rest of pop. In the words of one Detroit citizen, interviewed in the 1980s: “Motown has no sound now. It’s just another record company.”32 Motown had nothing to distinguish it.
Motown had sacrificed its position as an authentic black sound. Motown had always been commercial—it is certainly fitting that Motown’s first hit was “Money
30
Smith, 155.
Al Abrams, personal interview.
32
George, 191.
31
Morris 14
(That’s What I Want)”—but now there was a sense that it had sold out by leaving Detroit for the money and movies of Los Angeles. This went alongside the sense that Motown was no longer an authentic rhythm and blues sound. Rather, as Abrams points out:
Motown lost its soul. There was a decline in its public popularity…
Stax/Volt, the sound of Memphis, supplanted it as the more authentic black sound. You get more pop into the songs—it wasn’t authentic.33
Motown’s hits may have climbed the pop charts before, but as popular rhythm and blues, not as genre “Pop.” Now, there was a sense that Motown was not just popular but “Pop.”
Motown had dominated black music in America. Now it had opened the door for companies like Stax/Volt and Atlantic Records. By 1994, even Berry Gordy was willing to admit this: “We would have been better off with the record thing if we had stayed in
Detroit…So we gained the movie thing, but the record thing didn 't go as well.”34
The move to Los Angeles was not the only reason for this change in the Motown sound. The departure of Holland-Dozier-Holland in 1968 hurt Motown, as did the losses of various artists. But neither of these phenomena can be entirely divorced from the move. Motown’s first collection of talent had gravitated toward the company in large part because of its familial atmosphere. According to Georgia Ward, who worked as a secretary at Motown during both the Detroit and the Los Angeles years, the move to Los
Angeles destroyed this atmosphere:
The family feeling was lost. It became a big conglomerate. We were in a structured office environment. It had an (entirely different) feel. In Los
33
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Berry Gordy in Gary Graff, “Motown move was bad for music; Gordy 'wanted to be in the movie business’” Detroit Free Press Online: Motown at Forty: Story Archive, 5
November 1994. <http://www.freep.com/motownat40/archives/941105.htm> (2 August
2005).
34
Morris 15
Angeles we were just another record company. That was the start of the decline.35 While Holland, Dozier, and Holland left before the Los Angeles move, the decline of the
Motown family did not encourage them to return, nor did it encourage Motown artists to remain with the label. The artist exodus began in the late 1960s when Mary Wells,
Brenda Holloway, and Kim Weston all departed. It escalated in the 1970s after the move, with the departures of Martha Reeves, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Barrett Strong, and the Jackson 5, among others. Even Diana Ross would leave Motown in the 1980s, returning after the sale in 1989. The talent vacuum created by these departures could not truly be filled—not with the same kind of local talent—Detroit talent—that had first brought success to Motown.
Motown’s decline cannot be extricated from its departure from Detroit—that much is clear. What is challenging is to establish a link between the two that is more than simple corellation. Did the move to Los Angeles cause Motown’s decline or did the two simply coincide? I argue the former—the decline was indeed a direct result of the departure. That said, if there is further research to be done on this project, it is to establish this claim independently of the opinions of biased sources—sources who were attached to Detroit Motown and hurt by the loss of it, sources who, as Nelson George writes, describe Motown’s post-Detroit foibles with “a mix of bitterness, sadness, and glee.”36 Further research would establish a link between the two that relies on harder data—perhaps surveys of record buyers.
35
Georgia Ward in Larry Katz, “Can the New Motown Recapture the Old Magic?”
CNN.com, 26 March 1998.
<http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9803/26/motown.anniversary.lat/> (2 August 2005).
36
George, 191.
Morris 16
That said, I believe that Motown’s decision to leave Detroit was misguided.
Detroiters certainly believe this, but they are not alone. Al Abrams has said that “the decision to move Motown to L.A. was not a wise one.”37 Even Berry Gordy has said as much: “I would say [moving to Los Angeles] was the beginning of the end.”38 Motown’s decision to abandon its roots led it away from the black sound it had initially created, away from the city that legitimized that sound’s authenticity, and away from the family feeling that had allowed it to cultivate loyal stars. Motown sold out and was the worse for it. It had been unique; it had had a niche. By moving to Los Angeles, it gave up that niche and, ultimately, the possibility of continued success.
37
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Berry Gordy in Gerald Posner, Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power (New York:
Random House, 2002), 268.
38
Morris 17
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Lansing, MI: Michigan Historical Center, 2002.
Benjaminson, Peter. The Story of Motown. New York: Grove Press, 1979.
Cook, Nicholas. Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000.
Early, Gerald Lyn. One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
Edwards, David and Mike Callahan. “The Motown Story.” 11 June 1999.
<http://www.bsnpubs.com/gordystory.html> (2 August 2005).
George, Nelson. Where Did Our Love Go?: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986.
Graff, Gary. “Motown move was bad for music; Gordy 'wanted to be in the movie business.’” Detroit Free Press Online: Motown at Forty: Story Archive, 5
November 1994. <http://www.freep.com/motownat40/archives/941105.htm>
(2 August 2005).
Katz, Larry. “Can the New Motown Recapture the Old Magic?” CNN.com, 26 March
1998. <http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9803/26/motown.anniversary.lat/>
(2 August 2005).
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29-40. New York and London: Routledge, 1994.
Morris, Humphrey. Personal interview with Dylan Morris. 4 July 2005.
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2005).
Posner, Gerald L. Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power. New York: Random House,
2002.
Morris 18
Smith, Suzanne E. Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
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<http://www.detnews.com/2005/events/0508/02/E01-266342.htm>
(2 August 2005).
Why Leaving Detroit Ruined Motown
Dylan Morris
TASP 2005
Mark Clague and Derek Vaillant
5 August 2005
Morris 1
In 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr., a 30-year-old songwriter and entrepreneur, started a record company in Detroit. He called it Tamla Records. The company had an auspicious debut. Within the year, it had released a major hit: Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s
What I Want)” climbed to number two on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues charts. In
1960, it had its first number one R&B hit—the Miracles’ “Shop Around,” which also hit number two on the Pop charts. In 1961, Gordy renamed his prosperous enterprise. He called it the Motown Record Company, after Detroit—“Motor Town.” Motown also had its first number one Pop …show more content…
hit that year: the Marvalettes’ “Please Mr. Postman.” It would go on to have 110 Top 10 hits in the 1960s.1
This seemingly instant success story is even more impressive in light of the fact that Berry Gordy, Jr. and his top artists were all African American. African-American music had long been popular in America: ragtime, jazz, and blues had all been popular.
But this “black” music had, as a general rule, only become commercially successful with the mass white audiences when white artists had begun to play and perform it. This had been true even with Rhythm and Blues, which by the beginning of the 1960s had become a phenomenon among white teenagers. These white teens called the music they heard
“Rock ’n’ Roll,” a new moniker for Rhythm and Blues coined by Cleveland disk jockey
Alan Freed. White Rock ’n’ Roll fans listened to white artists who “sang black,” most famously “the King of Rock ’n’ Roll,” Elvis Presley. Black Rhythm and Blues artists, meanwhile, were consigned to the “Chitlin Circuit” a tour of black clubs and bookings, and could only watch as white artists performing their material rose to stardom. White-
1
“Motown,” Wikipedia, 29 July 2005. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motown> (27 July
2005).
Morris 2 owned record companies generally would not give these black artists the opportunity for stardom—instead consigning them to their “Race Records” divisions.
That Motown was black-owned and run was radical enough in the whitewashed world of 1950s and ’60s record companies. What was even more radical was the success that black Motown artists had with white audiences. They produced some of the first
“crossover” hits, songs that caught on with both black and white audiences. Soon
Motown groups like the Supremes were getting classy bookings to play for white audiences in venues like the Copacabana.
The city of Detroit, meanwhile, fell in love with the music of its namesake record company. Motown did not suffer from the woes of the proverbial artist who is hailed everywhere but his hometown. Rather, the Motor City ate up the Motown sound.
Former Motown press agent and public relations consultant Al Abrams put it simply when he wrote that “Detroit loved Motown.”2 He explains: “[In Detroit, Motown] was a phenonmenon. I don’t even think Eminem and 8-Mile even comes close to it. It was just far more wide-ranging than that.”3
What made Motown so popular? As a startup company, it did what did no company had done before—sold the work of black artists to white audiences. It became the toast of its home city, dominating the Detroit music scene throughout the 1960s and up to the 1972 departure of Motown Records for Los Angeles. The company was labeled a “Hit Machine” for its ability to turn out chart topping singles seemingly on demand.
2
3
Alan E. Abrams Papers, Bentley Historical Library.
Al Abrams, personal interview with Dylan Morris, 22 July 2005.
Morris 3
How did the company manage this? How did it pull off what Abrams has called the
“Motown Miracle”?4
The answer is threefold. First, Motown assembled a prodigious collection of talent in all sectors of its production line. From the songwriting of Brian Holland,
Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland (a team known simply as Holland-Dozier-Holland or
H-D-H) and the distinctive sound of the Funk Brothers, Motown’s in-house back up band, to the vocal talents of Marvin Gaye, Motown’s music sounded good because it was created by a group of people of significant musical talent.
Second, Motown was active
in promoting this music, and designed its public relations and promotional techniques in such a way as to create the dual, crossover appeal it sought. The “charm school” that
Berry Gordy established for his stars, is famous, but subtler efforts, such as the lengths to which Motown went to get favorable press from the white media, were just as crucial.
Third, Motown established a symbiotic relationship with the city of Detroit that led the city to love and care for its hometown company, and then to feel shocked and betrayed when Motown packed up for Los Angeles. But Motown had lost something too. The relationship with Detroit was truly symbiotic in that Detroit directly contributed to
Motown’s success. Without Detroit, the stage was set for Motown’s eventual decline.
Motown’s famous family atmosphere suffered blow after blow as artists defected to other labels. While the 1970s were hardly a disaster for Motown, the losses of groups like the
Jackson 5 and Gladys Knight and the Pips set the stage for Motown’s unsuccessful years in the 1980s, and sale of the company to MCA and Boston Ventures in 1988. Even in the
1970s, the Motown’s Hit Machine slowed down. In the 1960s, the company had
4
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Morris 4 averaged eleven Top Ten hits per year. From 1972 on, the numbers were significantly lower: four Top Ten hits in 1972, five in 1973, four in 1974, a shocking one in 1975, six in 1976, and five in 1977.5 These figures hardly depict a floundering company, but they do represent a decline, a decline that would only continue in the 1980s.
The concept that Motown’s leaving Detroit was painful for the city is well established.6 What is less so is that, though Berry Gordy, Jr. and other Motown executives may not have realized it, is that Motown leaving Detroit hurt the company as much as the city and its populace. I argue that the failure on the part of Gordy to recognize the centrality of Detroit to Motown directly led to Motown’s decline and fall—its inability to maintain a grip on the two markets that it dominated in the 1960s: crossover pop plus rhythm and blues.
To understand the relationship between Detroit and Motown that led first to mutual benefit and then mutual loss, it is necessary to look at the story from the company’s beginnings, and to consider the Motown phenomenon in the context of its local history. Motown established and then broke its relationship with Detroit, always remaining the proactive party. By analyzing this relationship and how Motown maintained it or failed to maintain it I aim to demonstrate Detroit’s central role in
Motown’s success, and to demonstrate how, by betraying of Detroit, Motown sowed the seeds of its own decline.
When Berry Gordy founded Motown, he surrounded himself with local talent.
Gordy tapped the local music community to sign his artists, from established Detroit
5
David Edwards and Mike Callahan, “The Motown Story,” 11 June 1999.
<http://www.bsnpubs.com/gordystory.html> (2 August 2005).
6
See Nelson George, Where Did Our Love Go?: The Rise and Fall of the Motown sound
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 191.
Morris 5 groups like the Primes, who became the Temptations, to undiscovered talent like Mary
Wells and Diana Ross. Motown was famous for being like a “family.” But this arose out of the fact that the Motown employees shared a background—Detroit. Some Motown employees had lived in Detroit all their lives, others, such as the members of the Primes, had moved there, but the shared backgrounds of its employees were nonetheless key to
Motown’s familial feel.
Hiring centered on Detroit was necessary because Motown was a startup on a tight budget. Gordy could hardly have gone on a national talent search or signed a bigname star. But he did not need to. Within the Detroit music scene, Berry Gordy discovered talent more than capable of succeeding on a national, and international, musical stage. This use of local talent alone makes any attempt to separate Motown from the context of its original home city impossible. Detroit talent drove Motown to the top of the charts.
At the same time, Detroit fell in love with Motown. It began with the press. The
Michigan Chronicle, the state’s African-American newspaper was the first to spread the word about Motown. Yet the first major media relations success for Motown would be with the Detroit Free Press. Former press agent Abrams explains:
We had Mort Persky at the Free Press who would do any story—I would have 5, 6, 7 Motown stories a week in the Free Press. We were the hometown heroes, the hometown team.… We were adopted by the Free
Press.7
The Detroit News proved a harder nut for Abrams to crack, but eventually the News also became a reliable vehicle of Motown stories. While the national media gave Motown attention, it was the local press that popularized Motown in its home city. The press
7
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Morris 6 began to dub the city itself “Motown,” a trend that continues in articles by local papers to this day.
Beyond print coverage, Motown also reached Detroit’s ear through the media of radio and television. Motown got airplay nationwide, and its artists made appearances on national television, but the Detroit-area broadcast media contributed further coverage on top of this base. Motown stars would make appearances on local television stations like
CKLW-TV. These local broadcast appearances not only added to the saturation of
Motown content across the Detroit airwaves, but also further cemented Motown’s local aesthetic. Here was a nationally successful company whose stars would appear on local television. It seemed to suggest that Motown was staying true to its roots, staying
“authentic.”
What exactly was it about the media coverage that helped Motown sell its records? The press built up hometown pride in Motown, making the company into
“hometown team” in Abrams’ words.8 The newspapers used adoptive language about
Motown and its stars: the Supremes became “Our Supremes.”9 Detroit was proud of
Motown, and this pride led to a greater love. Specifically, says Abrams: “The Free Press made Detroit readers a part of the Motown family.”10 Fans felt they were part of the
Motown phenomenon rather than just observers. This made the position of Motown fan an attractive one, and helped create a Detroit-area fan base for Motown.
These Detroit-area fans contributed more to Motown than their record-buying dollars. They helped to legitimize Motown as an authentic sound—“The Sound of Young
8
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Alan E. Abrams Papers.
10
Al Abrams, personal interview.
9
Morris 7
America,” as the company slogan—coined by Abrams—touted it, and also the sound of black America and urban America. The masses of young, urban, and black Motown fans seemed to be living proof any claim that Motown represented such a constituency. That, in turn, implied that Motown was “authentic” music; music that was created rather than manufactured, art rather than product. Authenticity is of massive importance in
American popular music. At the time, the notion of authenticity served to separate the
“authentic” rock and rhythm and blues communities from their “inauthentic” Pop counterpart. As music professor Nicholas Cook explains: “This goes back to the origins of rock in the blues…the blues were seen as the authentic expression of an oppressed race, music that came from the heart (or ‘soul,’ as in the later music of that name).”11
Cook explains that Pop musicians fall squarely in the “inauthentic” camp. They are seen as “the puppets of the music business, cynically or naïvely pandering to popular tastes, and performing music composed and arranged by others; they lack authenticity, and as such they come in at the bottom of the hierarchy of musicianship.”12 “Authentic” music is appealing to a potential buyer—who would want to buy a “fake” record, a record by someone at the bottom of the musical hierarchy? Motown seemed to be authentic.
The irony is that the Motown sound was a carefully constructed commercial product, one that fit the “inauthentic” qualities of pop described by Cook to the tee.
Motown was reluctant to let its artists write and arrange their own songs—a songwriting and producing team like Holland-Dozier-Holland was much more likely to get the job.
Furthermore, Motown songs were engineered: they were mixed for the radio, with an
11
Nicholas Cook, Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000), 10.
12
Cook, 11.
Morris 8 emphasis on treble to ensure a good sound even when played on car radios,13 and set in keys designed to make the artists use their voices in a certain way.14 In addition, Motown carefully constructed the images of its stars, teaching them signature dance moves and sending them to “charm school.” What music could be more of a product, and less
“authentic”?
But with the question of authenticity, reality is not the issue. Perception is.
Motown might have been commercial, but it felt familial, a sort of Mom and Pop record company. It might have engineered its songs, but the skill of the songwriters and producers was such that it sounded natural. Indeed, as journalist Susan Whitall points out: “Hearing Marvin Gaye sing ‘You 're a Wonderful One,’ it may not seem possible that such music didn 't just spin effortlessly out of his mouth.”15 Motown came across as authentic. That meant it effectively was.
Indeed, Motown was in some ways true to its roots. While charges of civic apathy made against Motown are not wholly unwarranted, Motown did make certain efforts to give back to its community. How could it not? A local company staffed by locals and featuring artists with local roots that casts itself as a family operation is …show more content…
nearly obligated to give back, particularly if it wants or needs to appear true to its roots and hence “authentic.” Motown artists gave free appearances at civic events. Gordy recorded Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at the 1963 “Great March to Freedom,” a civil rights demonstration in Detroit, and released it on Motown’s spoken word label, Black
Forum. Motown did make, at the very least, meaningful gestures toward its home city.
13
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Susan Whitall, “Motown songwriters are back in the groove,” The Detroit News
Online, 2 August 2005. <http://www.detnews.com/2005/events/0508/02/E01266342.htm> (2 August 2005).
15
Whitall.
14
Morris 9
But Motown was not only marketing to black Detroit. Rather, as Abrams points out, the company was “trying to open those doors to get the classier bookings. Get them off the Chitlin ' Circuit—the black entertainment circuit…any record company wants to do that.”16 It was trying to sell itself to white audiences. It was trying to create crossover music. This was ambitious. As explained above, white buyers tended only to buy black music if it was performed by white artists. Motown’s solution to this was to “whiten” its artists. The artists’ hair was straightened. The artists attended charm school where they learned how to present themselves to upper class white society. The artists were booked at white venues, the classier the better. From the Motown outlook, the Supremes at the
Copacabana was a triumph.17 Abrams explains the attempt to appeal to whites:
Just classing up the acts and going for a classier image—making them more palatable to whites—not losing the blacks, but just knowing that
[the white audience was] where the money was, that’s where the big bucks are.
It’s not only smart business, it’s very smart business.18
That image—a whitened black, a Motown Mocha, proved very appealing. But cultivating it was not without its risks. Could Motown hold on to its black audience while going after the money that the white audience offered? Indiana University music professor Charles Sykes offers an explanation: “Holland-Dozier-Holland were able to package gospel in such a way that it was really camouflaged. There was a packaging of those black elements in such a way that they were very pop-oriented, from the tambourine on.”19 Sykes argues that the fact that the gospel remained in the music meant
16
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Al Abrams, personal interview.
18
Al Abrams, personal interview.
19
Charles Sykes in Whitall.
17
Morris 10 that black listeners continued to listen to Motown.20 The camouflage, meanwhile, ensured that the music became “palatable to whites,” as Abrams puts it.21
There was an striking duality to it all: Motown as pop label and Motown as the sound of gritty, urban, black Detroit; the Supremes as divas and the Supremes as girls from the Detroit projects; the Motown sound for whites and the Motown sound for blacks. Maintaining this duality meant walking a fine line. There was a critical balance that Motown had to strike between covering up its roots in black Detroit and flaunting them. And it managed it well. Abrams explains: “I remember some of the reluctance about putting the map of Detroit on the Motown label—there was some real worry that it might backfire.”22 But it did not. The album sold.
It is important to note here that not all of Motown’s crossover was achieved through whitening. At the same time, some white listeners came for the same reason the blacks stayed: authenticity. Humphrey Morris, a white professional in his fifties who was a student during the 1960s, and who spent his college summer in 1968 writing for the Civil
Rights newspaper the Southern Courier, explained why he and his white friends took to
Motown:
I think the formative social movement for my high school generation was
Civil Rights, and Motown fell on receptive ears in that we were eager to embrace black culture and bridge the gap. Plus my girlfriend made it clear that black men were sexier and danced better and I suppose I hoped some of that would rub off if I listened to Motown, even though there really was no hope.23
20
Sykes in Whitall.
Al Abrams, personal interview.
22
Al Abrams, personal interview.
23
Humphrey Morris, personal interview with Dylan Morris, 4 August 2005.
21
Morris 11
It was Motown’s ability to attract listeners like Morris—whites who wanted to connect with authentic black culture—that made its crossover so powerful. It maintained the right balance of “white” and “black” in its sound to hook both those whites who could not stomach a sound that was too “black” and those whites who wanted to listen to such a sound. Ironically, Morris connects Motown directly with the Civil Rights movement, despite the fact that the music was generally pitched as apolitical.24 Berry Gordy consciously tried to avoid letting politics enter into Motown music, fearing that it would hurt sales.25 For Morris and his friends, though, that did not matter. What did matter was authenticity. Motown might not have been activist music, but for white listeners like
Morris, it was a chance to tie together their political activism with their musical taste—by listening to the music of the people whose civil rights they supported, Morris and his friends could make a political statement. Their ability to do so, though, hinged upon
Motown’s ability to stay true to its roots and produce “authentic” black music, music that was still culturally black enough to appeal to blacks themselves.
With its departure for Los Angeles, Motown upset the delicate balance of
“whiteness” and “blackness” in the product it sold. Ironically, the move itself resulted in part from goals of winning further success for black entertainers. Berry Gordy had his eye on the film business, and wanted to expand Motown into other media. Indeed, looking at the films Motown produced—notable Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany, and
The Wiz, one gets the sense that Gordy wanted to do for the film industry what he had done for the music industry—create an outlet for films featuring black casts and black
24
See Suzanne E. Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of
Detroit (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1999), introduction for a discussion of this apolitical stance.
25
Smith, 11.
Morris 12 music. In some sense, this was a lofty goal. But Gordy chose to go about it in a way that was unwise. He abandoned Detroit. The reaction was far from positive. Abrams explains: It saddened everybody, a lot of people felt betrayed. Felt that they were sold out. That they’d put a lot into Motown, that Motown became a part of their lives, and then Motown turned their back on them. It was like losing a lover26
Motown had brought Detroit into its “family,” made the city feel that it was part of the
Motown phenomenon, made the city fall in love. Now it had abandoned Detroit. For this, Motown would suffer. The backlash in Detroit hurt Motown. The Detroit press turned against Motown, the honeymoon period of media adoration ended. In its place, the abandoned Detroit media was not kind. Abrams says that “the media really to
Motown to task”27 for the move.
Ultimately, though, Motown could have—and did—weather the media backlash.
What it could not weather was the decline of the Motown sound itself. Berry Gordy had said that the Motown sound was a combination of “rats, roaches, soul, guts, and love”28
Historian Suzanne E. Smith points out that “Gordy’s definition, however fanciful, anchored the music to its urban origins.”29 The Motown sound was built on Detroit. This kept it authentic, no matter how much the artists—urban black Detroiters themselves—might be “whitened” in appearance. Motown had packaged itself by surrounding black music with the trappings of whiteness. It kept its black audience as it crossed over primarily because it kept up a black sound even as it presented a white
26
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Al Abrams, personal interview.
28
Berry Gordy in Smith, 155.
29
Smith, 155.
27
Morris 13 image. Indeed, that was the point of crossover—black music with a white exterior—and
Motown’s genius was to do it with black artists rather than white ones such as Elvis
Presley. But to produce such music necessitated that the artists be true to their musical roots in rhythm and blues if they were to avoid becoming nothing more than Pop artists.
Motown had tied its sound to rhythm and blues roots through its ties to the Motor City.
Motown had an urban sound, a sound produced within the inner-city by inner-city artists.
As Smith explains, in Detroit “the performers and musicians developed their musical skills from resources unique to their urban environment.”30 This was no longer true in
Los Angeles. The artists had been transplanted, Motown no longer had the local talent pool that had fueled its sound, and it did not have the urban fan base that had made this sound “authentic.” Instead, it had glitz and glamour—hardly the resources with which to produce an authentic urban music. In Los Angeles, Abrams explains: “[Motown moved] away from where the roots were and where the dynamics were. It went too far pop—or to be more blunt, it went too far white. Sort of the whitening of Motown.”31 Motown could not afford this. Its popularity hinged on being black music with a white shell. That was its niche. As it moved away from its musical roots, it lost that which had distinguished it from the rest of rhythm and blues and the rest of pop. In the words of one Detroit citizen, interviewed in the 1980s: “Motown has no sound now. It’s just another record company.”32 Motown had nothing to distinguish it.
Motown had sacrificed its position as an authentic black sound. Motown had always been commercial—it is certainly fitting that Motown’s first hit was “Money
30
Smith, 155.
Al Abrams, personal interview.
32
George, 191.
31
Morris 14
(That’s What I Want)”—but now there was a sense that it had sold out by leaving Detroit for the money and movies of Los Angeles. This went alongside the sense that Motown was no longer an authentic rhythm and blues sound. Rather, as Abrams points out:
Motown lost its soul. There was a decline in its public popularity…
Stax/Volt, the sound of Memphis, supplanted it as the more authentic black sound. You get more pop into the songs—it wasn’t authentic.33
Motown’s hits may have climbed the pop charts before, but as popular rhythm and blues, not as genre “Pop.” Now, there was a sense that Motown was not just popular but “Pop.”
Motown had dominated black music in America. Now it had opened the door for companies like Stax/Volt and Atlantic Records. By 1994, even Berry Gordy was willing to admit this: “We would have been better off with the record thing if we had stayed in
Detroit…So we gained the movie thing, but the record thing didn 't go as well.”34
The move to Los Angeles was not the only reason for this change in the Motown sound. The departure of Holland-Dozier-Holland in 1968 hurt Motown, as did the losses of various artists. But neither of these phenomena can be entirely divorced from the move. Motown’s first collection of talent had gravitated toward the company in large part because of its familial atmosphere. According to Georgia Ward, who worked as a secretary at Motown during both the Detroit and the Los Angeles years, the move to Los
Angeles destroyed this atmosphere:
The family feeling was lost. It became a big conglomerate. We were in a structured office environment. It had an (entirely different) feel. In Los
33
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Berry Gordy in Gary Graff, “Motown move was bad for music; Gordy 'wanted to be in the movie business’” Detroit Free Press Online: Motown at Forty: Story Archive, 5
November 1994. <http://www.freep.com/motownat40/archives/941105.htm> (2 August
2005).
34
Morris 15
Angeles we were just another record company. That was the start of the decline.35 While Holland, Dozier, and Holland left before the Los Angeles move, the decline of the
Motown family did not encourage them to return, nor did it encourage Motown artists to remain with the label. The artist exodus began in the late 1960s when Mary Wells,
Brenda Holloway, and Kim Weston all departed. It escalated in the 1970s after the move, with the departures of Martha Reeves, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Barrett Strong, and the Jackson 5, among others. Even Diana Ross would leave Motown in the 1980s, returning after the sale in 1989. The talent vacuum created by these departures could not truly be filled—not with the same kind of local talent—Detroit talent—that had first brought success to Motown.
Motown’s decline cannot be extricated from its departure from Detroit—that much is clear. What is challenging is to establish a link between the two that is more than simple corellation. Did the move to Los Angeles cause Motown’s decline or did the two simply coincide? I argue the former—the decline was indeed a direct result of the departure. That said, if there is further research to be done on this project, it is to establish this claim independently of the opinions of biased sources—sources who were attached to Detroit Motown and hurt by the loss of it, sources who, as Nelson George writes, describe Motown’s post-Detroit foibles with “a mix of bitterness, sadness, and glee.”36 Further research would establish a link between the two that relies on harder data—perhaps surveys of record buyers.
35
Georgia Ward in Larry Katz, “Can the New Motown Recapture the Old Magic?”
CNN.com, 26 March 1998.
<http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9803/26/motown.anniversary.lat/> (2 August 2005).
36
George, 191.
Morris 16
That said, I believe that Motown’s decision to leave Detroit was misguided.
Detroiters certainly believe this, but they are not alone. Al Abrams has said that “the decision to move Motown to L.A. was not a wise one.”37 Even Berry Gordy has said as much: “I would say [moving to Los Angeles] was the beginning of the end.”38 Motown’s decision to abandon its roots led it away from the black sound it had initially created, away from the city that legitimized that sound’s authenticity, and away from the family feeling that had allowed it to cultivate loyal stars. Motown sold out and was the worse for it. It had been unique; it had had a niche. By moving to Los Angeles, it gave up that niche and, ultimately, the possibility of continued success.
37
Al Abrams, personal interview.
Berry Gordy in Gerald Posner, Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power (New York:
Random House, 2002), 268.
38
Morris 17
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Morris 18
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