To Be Loved

by Berry Gordy

  At night Hastings lit up like a Christmas tree. You could always hear shouting Blues songs blasting out of the bars, and exciting women standing out front with nothing to do. I liked it.

  Coming to the Eastside was like moving from the country to the city—there was action all the time. There were so many different kinds of people—all hustlers in their own way. There was the street kind: pimps, gamblers and numbers men. Most of them were smart, hip people who wanted to be somebody the only way they knew how.

  Then there was the Pop kind: religious, hardworking, buying and selling everything. And there was the Mother kind: homemakers, educators, pushing to learn and teach. Yes, all hustlers.

  Besides being an additional source of income, as well as a cheaper method of feeding our large family, Mother and Pop used the corner grocery store to teach us daily lessons about business.

  We were the only colored people in the neighborhood who owned a commercial building, and for the first time people looked up to us. But Pop was smart. He remained humble. He loved serving people. He sold for the lowest prices he could and was forever telling us “The customer is always right.” That made no sense to me. How could all those people be so much smarter than we were?

  “We in business to satisfy them,” Pop would say. “They’re spendin’ their money. That makes them right.”

  I didn’t get it.

  Frequently, he’d take me with him to the Eastern Market, a place where farmers came and sold their produce for lower than wholesale. We would get there even before the farmers had set up their stands. I loved the 5:30-in-the-morning smell of the fresh fruits and vegetables. No one seemed to mind me testing a juicy apple every now and then as we walked along. It was great. I could easily see what Pop meant when he said, “The early bird gets the worm.” They sold everything. And it seemed Pop tried to buy everything at the cheapest prices he could. He loved to negotiate.

  I remember one day we came home with a truckload of vegetables. Mother was so exasperated. “We can never sell all this stuff before it spoils.”

  “But I got a great bargain!” he said.

  Even the kids at school had their own way of hustling. On my first day at Balch Elementary, I was standing out on the playground with four or five other kids, excited just to be a part of the group.

  One asked me if I knew what time the milkman came to my house every day. I said I didn’t.

  “Ask yo’ mama,” he said, “she knows.”

  I had no idea what he meant, but everybody laughed. I tried to laugh along with them, but I only made it about halfway.

  I later found out I was right not to laugh. In fact, I should’ve beat him up. He was putting my mother down. He was playing “the Dozens.”

  “How’s yo’ mama?” Another kid half my size asked me a few days later amid the protection of larger boys who seemed to think he was real funny.

  “Look man,” I said adamantly, “I don’t play the Dozens!”

  “Oh? Well, just pat cho’ foot while I play ’em then,” he said, reaching his nose up almost touching my bottom lip.

  During their outburst of laughter, I knew I had two choices: Fight or cry. I did neither. A wimpy smile appeared on my face. Something told me it wasn’t too wise to be beating up on people—especially a group.

  I decided I’d better learn to play the Dozens. But no matter how hard I tried to be funny, there was always somebody who would out-Dozen me. My mother took a real beating. The Eastside kids were just hipper, sharper and funnier. They probably knew about Santa at two.

  Then, in class, there were these little whiz kids with the thick glasses who sat right up front and always had the correct answers. Most of the time I couldn’t even understand the question, let alone the answer. I was always so far behind the rest of the class, I just knew I had to be dumb.

  Mother, more than anything else, tried to make us good students. Before I even started school I’d heard her say, “Speak up in class. Whatever you say, say it loud, strong. It’ll give you confidence.”

  My answers were always loud—too loud. At first, I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. But, soon, my shouting out the wrong answers became funnier and funnier. That’s when I decided to take class disruption to an art form. My rule of thumb became: No gag too big, no laugh too small. Sometimes I was so funny I actually made the teacher laugh.

  Every now and then in her desperate attempt to keep order, the teacher would make me sergeant-at-arms. I had to sit in front of the class and identify troublemakers. I didn’t learn very much but I must have been great at my job because whenever I was up there the class always ran smoother.

  A year behind me in school, my brother Bobby always got As and Bs. I got Ds and Es. (In those days E did not mean “excellent.”) When he came home with a C, he was a bum. If I got a C, I was a hero. The better he was the worse I got. I figured if I acted like I wasn’t trying so hard I wouldn’t look so dumb. I knew that C meant average and I resented that I was getting applauded for it. Still I couldn’t seem to do any better.

  I wanted to impress people somehow, especially Mother and Pop. So I learned my ABCs backwards. They didn’t think too much of it, but Mr. and Mrs. Delaney did.

  On the ground floor of our building in addition to the grocery store on the corner, there was a beauty shop, which would one day become the 3D Record Mart, my first venture into the music business. There was a barbershop, whose space would later be filled by the Gordy Print Shop owned by Fuller, Esther and George. To the right of the front door as you came out of the building was a big plate glass window on which was clearly painted the name “Delaney’s Cleaners.” It was always a thrill whenever I’d be passing by to hear Mr. Delaney bragging to his friends how smart I was and motioning for me to come inside.

  “Junior,” he’d say, “do the alphabet backward.”

  “Oh, sure,” I’d respond and quickly rattle off “zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba.”

  “Hey, hey, slow down, slow down,” he’d tell me. “I’m not sure you’re doing it right.”

  That was sort of our little routine. I would start off real speedy to show my dexterity, he’d stop me and then I’d redo them very slowly… and very accurately. I loved the proud, smug look he’d give to his awed friends.

  They thought I was the smartest kid around. I could rattle off my ABCs backwards perfectly! But what they didn’t know was I had trouble saying them frontwards.

  The minute you’d step outside our building, the mouth-watering aroma of smoldering ribs would hit you in the face. Directly across the street from our front door was CT’s, a busy little storefront barbecue joint where all day long a steady stream of people were coming and going, including the police. I quickly learned that more than just ribs were cooking. CT’s was headquarters for the numbers, the illegal lottery, a way of life in our neighborhood. Everybody played them. Everybody’s biggest dream was to hit the number. It was the best way to get quick cash without risking jail. The only people who ever got busted were the pickup men or women; and most of them were protected by the police.

  A number was any three digits. You could play it straight, say, 2-4-7, or box it, which would be any combination: 742, 427, etc.

  Some people were known to play the same number day in, day out and whenever that number came up everybody in town knew that person was rich. At least for a few days.

  Pickup runners would go all over the Eastside, to poolrooms, barber shops, private houses—anywhere. Each pickup person would have their established route and would come by every afternoon around one o’clock to take the numbers you wanted to bet that day. You could play for as little as a nickel, or as much as you wanted.

  Some of those pickup people were mathematical geniuses who could tell everybody what numbers they had played and when—from memory. I remember one day while getting my hair cut, my barber had an argument with a numbers guy.

  “Yesterday,” my barber argued, “the number was 748 and I had 487 in the box for five dollars. Where�
�s my money?”

  The numbers guy was incensed. Never looking at a piece of paper he stuttered as he replied, “W-W-What the f-fuck you talkin’ ’bout man, you b-boxed 481 and 369 and played 822 straight. And Harold, over th-there, b-boxed 213. W-What the f-f-f-fuck you tryin’ to p-pull? D-do you want something f-for today or not?”

  My barber, after checking his piece of paper, said, “Uh, yeah, you’re right.”

  When the numbers guy left, my barber laughed. “He cain’t talk a bit but the mothafucker sho’ knows his shit, don’t he?”

  The fact that most of those guys were not even educated fascinated me. It did not teach me education was worth nothing. What it taught me was that just because I wasn’t doing well in school didn’t mean I had to be dumb. I began to realize that intelligence and education were two different things. If you had them both you had it made. But if you could only have one—and wanted to survive in my neighborhood—it’d better be intelligence.

  Compared to the cats where I lived, I was just average. But that really wasn’t so bad because many of those “geniuses” were too smart for their own good and ended up dead or in jail.

  “Junior!” The sound of Pop’s Southern voice was soft and shattering. It was Saturday morning and I’d overslept again.

  This was some six months or so after the historic Joe Louis victory. Since then, I’d spent most of my waking and sleeping hours fantasizing about becoming a boxing champion. Just this past night I was having exciting dreams of me and Joe doing all sorts of things like climbing trees, skipping school and him even turning into a squirrel.

  Pop’s voice put an abrupt halt to that. I could hear the cold, bristling wind outside my window while the rising steam from the inside radiators made me feel warm and cozy.

  Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I realized I wasn’t warm at all; I was wet, real wet. My nightmare, once again, had reared its ugly head. I had to think fast. To Pop everything was controllable, especially bed-wetting. If you had the desire to stop, you could. If you didn’t, it was only because you didn’t want to, or you were just too lazy to get up. I would forever disagree with this inflexible stance, but then was no time to debate.

  “I’m up,” I mumbled, pulling myself up into a crouch, my head in my hands, posing as though I were about to pray. In fact, I did pray; I prayed that Pop, a God-fearing man, would respect my privacy with the Lord. He did and left the room.

  I quickly jumped out of bed, ripped off my wet underwear, slipped into another pair, some trousers, a shirt, socks, shoes, and cap, all in less than two minutes. I then walked calmly out to the small pickup truck that bore the name “Gordy Contractors” and joined my brothers. Fuller and George took their seats in the cab with Pop, while me and Bobby braced ourselves for the cold wind in the back. We were off to another plastering job.

  By this time I had grown to really hate everything about plastering, especially the back of the truck. That Saturday, not only did I resent the bitter wind ripping my body, but my close call reminded me of the last time I got punished for wetting the bed. I resented that, too. The fear of getting found out by my friends also haunted me. I knew how kids in the neighborhood felt about bed-wetters and after all I was almost nine.

  I tried everything I could to get myself to stop. Still, I would wake up wet more often than not. Just two nights before I had forced myself to stay awake all night to avoid the problem. I was so proud when around three o’clock in the morning I pulled myself up out of bed and rushed to the bathroom, stood over the toilet and let it go. What a relief! Then I woke up. Soaked again!

  Just one block north of us on Frederick Street was our family’s place of worship, Bethel AME, a Methodist church. Unlike the storefront churches on the Westside, it was a regular church building like the ones I had seen in books. But what was special about this church was the man in charge, Reverend William H. Peck.

  He was a little guy, thin, with an angelic face. Soft-spoken and big-hearted, he never seemed in a hurry. He had time for everyone, including me. I would go visit him at his house next door to the church. It was obvious to me that how he acted away from church was what he preached in church. All the family loved and respected him the same as I did.

  Then came awful news: Reverend Peck had gotten some sort of promotion and was leaving. Seeing me so depressed about it, everyone assured me that there would be a new pastor coming in and everything would be all right. Not so.

  The new pastor never caught on with me. Totally different in his approach, he always gave me a threatened feeling. If I wasn’t good I would burn in hell forever. His teachings weren’t about being good for the sake of righteousness as Reverend Peck’s were, but being good only so you wouldn’t burn in hell for eternity. I found myself feeling bad when I’d leave church, not knowing why.

  So I would avoid his services whenever I could. Since Mother and Pop were busy with official duties in the church I got away with it—for a while.

  “Son, have you been to church lately?” Pop asked one day as I was tinkering around on the piano.

  Trying to appear nonchalant, I stopped playing, thought about it for a moment and answered as truthfully as I could, “Yes, but not every Sunday. I don’t always feel good when I go.” I braced myself, expecting his wrath.

  Instead, he calmly spoke. “Son,” he said, “you don’t have to go to church to find God. I know what kind of person you are and I know God is inside you. Whatever you do is between you and God and nobody else.”

  After that, going to church was not a problem for me. I could enjoy listening to anybody, including the new pastor, realizing their views were just their views—and I could either agree with them or not.

  Pop telling me this at an early age gave me a good feeling about myself and would set a foundation for everything that was yet to come.

  3

  MUSIC VERSUS BOXING

  1938–1951

  HOW I GOT MY NAME

  I don’t care what anybody says, what a child is named helps shape his or her personality. A name is something we wear throughout our lives. It has its own power. The sound, the personality and the meaning all affect both our perception of ourselves and others’ perception of us. I was lucky. I was named after Pop.

  By thirteen I had become somewhat cocky. Even though I was considered the black sheep of the family—mischievous, terrible in school, always in trouble—I still had the notion that somehow I was the chosen one.

  “I may be the black sheep but I’m the one they waited for to name after Pop,” I bragged one day at the dinner table.

  This was one of those days when Esther (who we called Sua, short for sister) was in charge of getting us to eat dinner together. Mother and Pop were away and a lady from church had helped with the cooking.

  “Waited for?!” Sua shouted from her seat at the table right across from mine. “No one waited for you. You weren’t even supposed to be here!” Catching herself, she stopped quickly and started eating again.

  Everybody looked at her like she had spoken the unspeakable. That is, everyone except Bobby and me. We looked at each other in confusion. I didn’t know what she was talking about but it sure made me feel strange. Not supposed to be here? What did she mean by that?

  Sua wasn’t happy with me to start with because earlier, when she was trying to get me to come to the dinner table, I was jammin’ in the living room to our new Grundig radio, locked in a trance. Sua’s calling me sounded like a far-off dream. I was listening to a song by the Mills Brothers called “Paper Doll.” “I’m going to buy a paper doll that I can call my own, a doll that other fellows cannot steal.” I was feeling sorry for the guy who was singing it, but I felt more sorry for myself because guys were stealing my girls even before I got them.

  I loved songs that meant something to me, songs that I could relate to, mostly about sadness connected with girls. Another group I liked was the Ink Spots. Their lead singer, Bill Kenny, had the cleanest, purest falsetto voice I’d ever heard. I loved the way their
hit song “We Three” expressed loneliness: “We Three, we’re all alone living in a memory, my echo, my shadow and me.”

  Over time those clear, simple, lyrical concepts would form the basis for my own approach to songwriting.

  When I heard Sua’s footsteps coming toward me, I jumped up and raced to my seat at the table. If I had known what I was in for from the family, I might have stayed in the living room with the Mills Brothers. I don’t think anything could have prepared me for “You weren’t even supposed to be here.”

  The moment Sua said it, I could see she was sorry. I looked to see if anybody else knew anything. Their faces said they did.

  “Well it’s sorta true,” Gwen said. “See, Mother and Pop had planned to have only six kids.” She paused and looked to the others for a little help.

  Fuller said when he was born Pop would have named him Junior but Mother and Pop had made an agreement that each would have picks in naming us. When he was born, he said, it was Mother’s pick. So she named him Fuller, her maiden name.

  All of a sudden, everybody in the family was chiming in to tell me this horrible story. The next child, they told me, was a girl and Pop gave her the name Esther, after his grandmother.

  It so happened that every time it was Pop’s turn to name a child, it was a girl. Mother named the third child Anna Ruby after her mother, Anna, and her Aunt Ruby. Two girls in a row! Pop just knew the next child had to be a boy, but it wasn’t. He named her Lucy after his mother, Mama Lucy. (Loucye changed the spelling when she got older.) George was named after Mother’s brother and even though Pop didn’t get to name him, he was so happy to have another boy that he put seven hundred dollars on his new son’s chest at birth. (Don’t ask me why, all I know is that he put it there.) The sixth and “last” child was a girl. Pop was not happy. He named her Gwendolyn—the first name that popped into his head.