by Berry Gordy
The realization of what I had accomplished first brought pride, then sadness. Sadness because now I understood the real reason I was in trouble. It wasn’t the conglomerates. It wasn’t the technology and the changing world. The world had been changing since the day I was born. The real reason was, I was just tired. I didn’t want to do it anymore. It had long stopped being fun for me.
When I started out I was doing about 90 percent Creative and 10 percent Business. As the years went on the percentages more than switched; and now, doing about 98 percent Business and 2 percent Creative, I was stuck and I hated it.
The explosion of so many things at the same time, the industry, the artists, the music, together with the normal internal and external problems that growth presents, had finally caught up with me. On top of all that were over two decades of rumors, gossip and misinformation that I had never taken time to deal with. “Let others say and write what they want. Well take the high road—stay on course,” I used to say.
Though I tried to be strong and take it all in stride, the rumors about my cheating the artists always bothered me the most. I knew someday I would definitely have to clear that one up.
Thoughts of the past were bombarding me, but they couldn’t overcome the problems of the present. “What do they mean I can’t sell my own company?” I had yelled at my secretary, Edna Anderson, a few days before. Edna knew everything there was to know about the street. Her black militancy had not mellowed much in the sixteen years she had been my right arm.
“They say Motown is too important. It means too much to too many people to sell,” she said. “It’s an institution. How can you sell a way of life?”
“They say! Who in the fuck is they? Do they know I’m losing millions?” My voice had jumped into high C. She knew when that happened it was time to back off. She said nothing. “How in the hell can anybody tell me I can’t sell something I created, nurtured and built from nothing?”
Edna watched me for a moment, then came over and put her hand on my shoulder and said in her all too familiar sarcastic, Southern drawl, “Success is a MF, ain’t it?” If she had said “motherfucker” I would have probably laughed out loud.
But as it was I smiled, knowing she knew I knew very well who they were. They were the people who had grown up with Motown and loved it the same as I did. They were the people who believed in me and Motown no matter what they had heard or read in the newspapers. They were the people who believed—and rightly so—that Motown was a dream that happened to have come true. They were the fans who collected every record we made from day one. They were employees, the dedicated people who I knew would go down on any ship I was commanding. They were the white people around the world whose main connection to black culture had been through our music. They were the black people around the world who felt their heritage was being sold down the drain. Yes, I knew who they were.
My anger just as quickly turned to gratitude for all those who were letting me know that after almost thirty years the legend of my company and the music we made was now even bigger than ever. I knew I had to protect that legacy.
Still banging on the piano I started reflecting back to the early sixties, to a house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. A place we called “Hitsville U.S.A.” There was no way our purpose was vague.
The “Hitsville” sign over the door let it be known that if you set foot inside you were expected to sing, dance, write, produce, sell or manage. That name kept our mission in focus. I knew something very dynamic was taking place. This thing was becoming a force to be reckoned with and I was its leader. The successes, the challenges and our determination were meshing together into something tangible. It was turning me into a real boss. I said and others did. I complained and they strained to do better. I was pushing and driving people beyond their sense of what was possible. I expected more—they gave more. Our work was producing results that gave me confidence, even more confidence than I already had.
The mixing of our respective talents inside those walls gave me my first taste of something that I would grow quite used to—power. The irony was that it would slowly transfer from me to the artists, the people I used it for. I had never realized there was such a thin line between their having to laugh at my jokes and my having to laugh at theirs. One day you wake up and the stars you polished so hard to shine are not only shining but in orbit—out of control of themselves and in control of you.
Power—its uses and misuses—is something that has fascinated me over the years. My first encounter with it came when I was very young.
2
WHERE I CAME FROM
DETROIT 1938
POWER
That night the house erupted with joy. The whole family exploded out the front door, down the steps, into the streets, jumping and hollering like a bunch of crazy folks! Echoes of the announcer’s voice were still ringing in my ears: “Left to the body, right to the head, left, right, left—a smashing right to the chin. He’s down. He’s down. Schmeling is down! Three… Four… Five… Six… Seven… Eight… Nine… He’s out… Max Schmeling is knocked out! … The winner and still heavyweight champion of the world, the brown bomber, Joe Louis!” Euphoria everywhere. Horns honking, streets filled with madness! Everybody was reacting the same as we were: Joy—Pride—Ecstasy!!!
“How could I ever do anything in my life that could make this many people happy,” I thought to myself.
This was not just a fight, this was tradition. Whenever Joe Louis fought it was a holiday for black folks. Before, as a toddler, I had always been swept up in the euphoria of the moment, feeling what everyone else was feeling—yet not knowing exactly why. But this time it was different. A lot different. This fight had been perceived by everyone as a superpower contest between America, the land of the free, and Nazi Germany.
I was only eight at the time, but I knew Joe Louis was a hero, a hero of all the people, but he was black like me. I knew what that meant. Even at eight years old I had gotten a taste of the world—the real world—the white world.
That same night I watched my brothers and sisters running off to roam the neighborhood with their friends while I sat down on the street curb remembering back to when I was almost five and thought the world was all black except for Santa Claus. I thought the few white people who came to our neighborhood were accidents of nature. But then around the time I started kindergarten, I was jolted into reality, not once but twice.
Christmas had always been the most magical day of the year for me. The night before was never one when Mother had to make me go to bed on time. As quick as it seemed my eyes had closed, they were open again. Rushing downstairs into wonderland, I always found things I wanted.
If I didn’t get exactly what I asked for, I knew it was because I hadn’t been good enough. Santa was the one person I could never fool. And one Christmas I found out why.
Pushing down the sidewalk on my brand-new bright red scooter I shouted to a kid from the neighborhood, “Look what Santa brought me!”
“Junior. You know it ain’t no Santa Claus, don’t you?” he yelled.
“Oh yes there is!” I replied. “And he knows when you are bad, too.”
He laughed, motioning to some other kids, “Junior still believes in Santa Claus.”
“Then where do all these presents come from?”
“Your father put ’em there, stupid.”
I rushed home and told my sister Gwen what had just happened. When she said he was right I was devastated, but acted like it was no big deal. I told her I really knew it all the time. I was dying inside, realizing the wonderment I had known on that special morning would never be again. A fraud. I had been betrayed. Betrayed by—of all people—my own parents. Why?
I didn’t understand how my parents could carry on such a lie and hurt me like that. I must have been real smart at that young age because after a week or so it became clear: because they loved me, and wanted to see me thrilled and happy. That was the good news. The bad news was, I would no
w automatically question everything anybody told me—including my own parents.
Only in retrospect would I fully recognize the irony of my having felt betrayed by Mother and Pop. After all, this was during the Great Depression and to be able to create that vision of wonderland for us, to be able to give each of the children something special on Christmas Day, Mother and Pop had to sacrifice and save all year long, with Pop sometimes working four jobs at a time. Not only that, they didn’t even take the credit for it. They gave it to Santa Claus.
I thought there could be nothing worse than no Santa Claus. I was wrong.
A short time later, I discovered the world was not all black. Worse, it was all white except for a few “other” people. And we were considered the lowest class of those “other” people—“Niggers.” I didn’t know exactly what that word meant but I knew it was real bad.
I remember rushing home from school one day telling my mother a white boy had called me one.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,” is all she said.
Though her words were strong and gave me comfort at the time, I still felt bad.
At school most of the kids were black—we called ourselves colored then—but all the teachers were white. They were the bosses and had all the right answers. They had us read stories. There was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Prince Charming. And then there was Little Black Sambo.
At the movies I also found the heroes were all white: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Tarzan, the Cowboys, the President! And then there was Stepin Fetchit. Negroes were caricatures who made up the comedy relief: bulging eyes and bobbing heads—that they were always scratching. They had a “buck and shuffle” walk, and were scared of everything.
Though my parents tried to protect us from the outside world of racism by giving us lots of love and strengthening us through philosophy and religion, I could see how they sometimes covered their own pain with laughter. Some of the older kids in the neighborhood even made fun of themselves with chants like: “If you’re white, you’re all right; if you’re yellow, you’re mellow; if you’re brown, you can stick around; but if you’re black—get back.” Even in jest, nobody wanted to be black.
But now in 1938, three years later, all of a sudden it wasn’t so bad to be black. A black man, Joe Louis, was the greatest hero in the universe—at least for the moment. But in that moment a fire started deep inside me; a burning desire to be special, to win, to be somebody.
I stood up from the curb and headed back into the house, a new certainty to my eight-year-old stride.
When I settled into bed that night and began to drift into sleep, it was with a haunting mix of glorious, inspired, yet confused feelings.
I didn’t know it then, but that fire inside me started a conflict between me and the family work ethic, built into my system by the man I most admired, most loved and most wanted to be like, my father. He was a hero, too. But not like Joe Louis. Joe Louis didn’t have to labor from sunup to sundown to be great, to be respected, to be loved. Pop did.
Pop had made us all believe that a hard, honest day’s labor was the only way. That was not just his personal credo, it was our family history.
THE ROCK
I don’t know much about the South at all but over the years I’ve heard many stories about our family history, not only from Pop but from my grandmother and my aunts and uncles. There’s one story they all seemed to tell, each in their own way.
A nine-year-old mulatto boy watched outside a small wooden slave cabin on a Georgia plantation in 1862. He saw a gray-haired old man pleading intensely with his grown son, who lay writhing in pain on the dirt.
“Goddamn it, boy you gon’ get yo self killed talkin’ back to dat boss man while you gettin’ whipped,” cautioned the old man, holding back tears. “It never would’da happened if you had done did what you was told.”
“Ah wish ah could kill ’em all,” his son cried out, clenching his arms tightly around his body. “And you too! You care mo’ ’bout dat white man than you do me.”
“Shut yo mouth boy. You don’ know what you sayin’. If dey tells you to do som’n you does it and you don’ say nothin’. You hear?”
The nine-year-old could see that the father was trying to protect his son. He watched as the old man knelt down, softly whispering, “Jes hold on son, I know dere gon’ be a better day. I jes know it is.”
The very next year, the old man’s prayers were answered. Slavery was abolished and they were freed.
The son of Esther Johnson, a slave woman, and her white plantation owner, that little mulatto boy was Pop’s father, my grandfather—the first Berry Gordy.
Once freed, Esther Johnson left the plantation taking her young son, Berry, with her. Though he was no longer a slave, he continued to work like one for many years. He acquired 168 acres of his own land, married Lucy Hellum and together they had twenty-three children. Only nine lived. One of them was my father, Pop—the second Berry Gordy.
Pop loved to tell us his own stories about our origins. He said that he and Mother were as different as you could get. He was a country boy who had learned practically everything on the farm. She was a scholar whose life was dedicated to gaining more knowledge through education. He was simple, carefree and popular with the girls; she was complex, serious and more interested in her work than boys.
Light-skinned, Pop had a slender frame about five foot nine and muscles of steel. A normal handshake to him was slightly less than bone-crushing to anybody else. He was funny, too. He had wit and great timing. When his punch line came—you laughed.
One day in 1916, at twenty-eight, Pop walked into a small school-house in Sandersville, Georgia, took one look at Mother, the sixteen-year-old girl in charge of the third-grade class, and said, “There is my wife.”
Of direct African descent on her father’s side, African and Indian blood on her mother’s, Bertha Ida Fuller had coffee brown skin, a round face, deep reflective eyes and a full figure. She looked just like the girl Pop had always imagined he would marry—cute, intelligent, a Christian woman who loved children and would raise them just like his mother did.
But during the courtship she told Pop that while she wanted to be a good wife and mother, she was a scholar and an educator and would not give that up.
Pop, who had never been challenged like that by a woman, didn’t know what to think. But he liked her spunk, and soon realized that while they were of different backgrounds, their basic values were the same. He was in love. She agreed to marry him only after he reluctantly accepted the fact that she wanted a partner in life, not a boss.
Two years later, when he returned from service in World War I, they married. They planned to have six children, and by 1922, three had arrived.
That year, Pop sold some timber stumps for $2,600. It was more money than he had ever seen. Worried that some white people wanted to beat him out of it, he went all the way to Detroit, where his brother was, to cash the check. Once there he stayed and sent for his wife and family.
Like so many other black people who migrated from the South in the twenties, Pop was filled with hope and dreams. He was thrilled to bring his family to this new world, leaving bigotry and hatred behind. There was a real competitive spirit among the people in Detroit, a determination that came from the need just to survive. Even getting to work during those hot, hot sticky summers, or those brutally cold winters could be a full-time job. The automobile plants attracted people from everywhere, particularly Negroes from the South. But Pop didn’t want to make cars. He wanted his own business.
Though he had been real smart as a country boy, when it came to city living he had a lot to learn. The first thing he learned was that it was not a new world at all, but the same old one with a different accent. Prejudice existed in Detroit just as it did in the South, and in some cases more insidiously. There were many areas where he was not allowed to live.
After a few years
of living in different parts of town, with his family continuing to grow, he decided the Westside was the best place for colored people to raise a family. He found exactly what he was looking for—a nice residential neighborhood with decent, churchgoing folks.
“Why rent when you can buy?” A white real estate salesman told him about a house at 5419 Roosevelt Street. Compared to the two-room house Pop had built down South, this looked like a palace. Pop loved what he saw but knew he couldn’t afford it. The man told him he would loan him some of the money and work out a special payment plan for the rest. Pop liked the idea, making the worst deal of his life.
The house was sinking into the ground, walls rotting under the wallpaper and the plumbing soon to be condemned. He was left with no choice except to fix it up himself.
By now it was 1929. Pop had a big house note to pay, seven mouths to feed: a wife, six kids and another on the way—ME!
As the Depression hit, the thought of my arrival was less than thrilling.
Nevertheless, on Thanksgiving Day, November 28 of that same year, at Harper Hospital in Detroit, I was born. I didn’t know what time it was, how much I weighed or how bad times were. I was just happy to be here.
A year and a half later my brother Robert came along. The Depression deepened and so did our troubles. Although Mother had been a schoolteacher down South she couldn’t get a job because her Southern teaching credentials were not accepted up North. It was all on Pop. He had to hustle every odd job he could find, for instance, renting an empty lot across the street from where we lived selling ice, coal, wood, Christmas trees, watermelons, old car parts. He would do anything.