University of Michigan Press Blog

Where Did Motown Come From?

by Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert

This year Motown celebrates its 50th anniversary, which makes it a good time to ponder some basic questions about the company that has come to define music in Detroit. Why did it happen in Detroit? What were the musical and extra-musical sources of the Motown Sound?

Detroit was a city that grew faster than any other large American city in the 20th century so that by mid-century it had almost two million people. This included a sizeable African-American population, which meant that there was a larger pool of talent to draw on than elsewhere for anyone interested in selling black sounds to the American public. One such person was of course Berry Gordy Jr. who had tried out various aspects of the music business, before forming Motown Records in January, 1959. Fortunately for Gordy, Detroit had been seriously underserved by record companies compared to other large cities in the Midwest. Chicago by comparison had many more companies that were able to put out records of relatively high technical quality supported by decent distribution networks.

Berry Gordy's pre-Motown years can also give us an idea of how various musical ideas came together to shape what became known as the Motown Sound. Gordy's favorite hangout in the mid-fifties was the Flame Show Bar where he helped his sisters who had various jobs at the club, including photography. The Flame was the most exclusive place for black music and entertainment in Detroit in the fifties and in his autobiography Gordy talks about the valuable contacts he made there with people in the music business. Since he was an aspiring song-writer this was the place to be. The Flame featured a local houseband led by Maurice King, an experienced saxophonist, arranger and bandleader who backed the visiting singers and instrumentalists from the jazz, blues, and rhythm and blues worlds. At the Flame these local and the national scenes converged. King and many members of his band joined Motown. The creators of the Motown sound, the group of musicians referred to as the Funk Brothers, were all players who had years of experience in Detroit jazz and rhythm and blues. Coupled with Gordy's business acumen this gave birth to the largest African-American owned record company in the world.

Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert are authors of Before Motown: A History of Jazz In Detroit, 1920-1960

Arthur Kempton salutes Motown

On Christmas Day of 1968, the breaking dawn disclosed Motown in its fullest flower. Five of America's ten most popular records had been made and sold by a company seeded a decade earlier in a backwater of culture commerce by a scuffling thirty-year old black songwriter with money borrowed from family who already considered him chronically unsuccessful.

And still, on late Friday afternoons, the proprietor of black America's biggest enterprise prowled the offices of what was, by then, the most effective organization in the history of the music business, admonishing any within whose pace had slackened to keep working. "Haven't you heard?," Berry Gordy Jr. would growl. "Money's not on strike."

That was "the Chairman": relentless in the pursuit of the next dollar among the thirty million or so in record sales amassed by his company that year; as tenacious in the minding of his store as any hard-bitten Seven-Eleven franchisee in a bad neighborhood. But Gordy was much more than that.

Once the physical labor of black Americans began its inexorable slide into economic obsolescence in the middle years of the last century, black America's popular culture became its principal natural resource. It was Gordy who first figured out how to package and sell black music to the white masses. In so doing, he turned it into a commodity.

Within ten years of Motown's mass market breakthrough in 1964, black music was accounting for about two-thirds of the industry's $3.5 billion annual take. Since these days the popular culture of black Americans is among this country's leading global exports, Berry Gordy Jr. deserves to be recognized as a twentieth century American industrialist as consequential as Carnegie or Rockefeller.

While more than three quarters of his competitors' products were failing to recoup what they cost to make, Gordy was building a brand that became nearly as recognizable around the world as Coca Cola and McDonald's. Of the 537 single records Motown released between 1960 and 1970, two thirds of them--357--were hits. Never before, or again, in the annals of culture commerce was quality produced in such quantity.

Is War Glorified Torture?

excerpt from "Abandoning Torture but What About War?" by Dave Swanson

If we can move beyond torture, do we not have a responsibility also to think for a moment about the obvious fact that torture is not the cruelest thing we do? Torture offends us, in part, because the torturer is not at risk, but neither are most pilots dropping bombs. And how exactly does the risk taken by ground troops mitigate the suffering of those they wound, kill, and terrorize?

One book I find helpful in this is "Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty," by Paul Kahn, an exploration of how those who support torture and war tend to think. In Kahn's interpretation, many modern westerners make exceptions to the rule of law for the rule of sovereignty, or nationalism. We place in the flag and the body politic (not to mention the imperial president) a sacred importance once given to royalty, and we treat terrorism as an act of war rather than a crime because it is an affront to our nation. We give ultimate value to the military act of sacrificing one's life in order to take the lives of those who fail to worship at the god of the Stars and Stripes.

America at Risk / Part 1: Wages of Empire

EXCERPTS from America at Risk, a new collection of writings by eminent thinkers and writers asked to address the question that must be addressed by the Obama Presidency: What are some of the greatest dangers facing America today and what might be done to meet them?

The Transatlantic Predicament / p. 15
by Pierre Manent

"The current lull in the transatlantic shouting match is a good time to survey the situation on the Western front, although relief at our renewed comity risks blinding us to the huge continental drift that has already taken place. The dispute about Iraq brought to life a profound divergence about the world, and what we are supposed to do in the world, between Europeans and Americans, which the provisional convergence about Iran has not removed."

America at Risk / Part 2: Creeds and Parties

EXCERPTS from America at Risk, a new collection of writings by eminent thinkers and writers asked to address the question that must be addressed by the Obama Presidency: What are some of the greatest dangers facing America today and what might be done to meet them?

Defending Liberty: Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Public Power / p. 57
by William A Galston

"Life would be simple in the political community of civic republican dreams, where religion is wholly 'civil,' where citizens fly to the assemblies, where parents care only whether their slain warrior sons fight bravely and whether their city prevails over its foes. But this is not the world in which we live. An honest examination of our experiences suggests that our obligations are plural and heterogeneous, that they often conflict, and that our civic obligations should not always prevail over the rest."

America at Risk / Part 3: A Divided People?

EXCERPTS from America at Risk, a new collection of writings by eminent thinkers and writers asked to address the question that must be addressed by the Obama Presidency: What are some of the greatest dangers facing America today and what might be done to meet them?

Political Voice in an Age of Inequality / p. 140
by Kay Lehman Schlozman and Traci Burch

"Political inequality has not followed a parallel path. The evidence is much more complicated and ambiguous when it comes to changing inequalities of political voice. What is clear is not so much that the level playing field of politics has tilted even further in an era of increasing economic inequality, but that the playing field was slanted at the start."

The Real Immigration Crisis / p. 174
by Peter Skerry

"Anxieties about immigration are not easily dismissed as irrational or racist. In a period of dramatic and profound economic change, there is enormous uncertainty. The fact that some relatively narrow segment of the populace is directly harmed by these changes signals to others that they too are vulnerable. So Americans turn to their government to do something to protect them--at their jobs, in their neighborhoods, and at schools, hospitals, and other public institutions. Prudent leaders will avoid nitpicking, listen carefully, and craft responsible policies."

America at Risk / Part 4: Dilemmas of Self-Government

EXCERPTS from America at Risk, a new collection of writings by eminent thinkers and writers asked to address the question that must be addressed by the Obama Presidency: What are some of the greatest dangers facing America today and what might be done to meet them?

The End of Savings / p. 217
by Peter Rodriguez

"Rich as we are, particularly relative to world standards, we have put most of our borrowing toward rather uninspired uses--larger homes, second homes, consumption goods that make life easier, all of which are enjoyable creature comforts. Observing our spending patterns, it is hard to argue that our growing indebtedness has served to enhance our nation's financial stability or its long-term productive capacity. Rich as we are, a brighter future still requires steady investments in our technological capabalities, and we continue to provide that through loans readily financed by foreigners...the real risks we face due to our debt dependence seem to carry with them the uncomfortable reminder that we need not have faced them at all."