by Berry Gordy
By this time, my friends and I were starting to go out to dance at places like the Club Sudan and the Graystone Ballroom and Gardens. Club Sudan had the younger crowd, around my age. We usually went there on the weekends. Graystone Ballroom and Gardens was where we went on Monday nights, the only night colored people could go. That was our big night. Everybody who was anybody would be there, dressed to kill. It was the place to go for all the pretty people, or people who thought they were pretty, or who wanted to be pretty, or who wanted to meet somebody pretty.
Yeah, that was our night—wall-to-wall people inside and out, not letting the hot, sticky summer weather keep them from wearing the finest clothes possible, moving and grooving to the live music of Duke Ellington, Count Basie or one of the other top colored bands.
I was plagued by the fact that girls I liked seldom liked me. I guess I didn’t look good enough or dance well enough or maybe I just wasn’t cool enough. Whenever I was around a girl I liked, I overreacted. My tongue played tricks on me. Nothing I said came out right.
Around the girls I liked I was being someone I thought would impress them, but around the girls I knew liked me I was just being myself.
So I started playing a little game. When I saw a girl I really liked I convinced myself that I didn’t. She was no big deal. This was not easy but in time it started working. I began to come off more like a human being.
That helped some but not enough. The guys who got the girls first were the best dancers and I was not one of them. It was a long torturous walk back to my laughing friends from the middle of the large dance floor after being turned down abruptly or ignored by a pretty girl. But every now and then one would say yes. I then developed a theory I called two out of ten. If I asked ten girls to dance, the percentage was two would say yes. I usually got laughed at eight times and envied twice.
After school and whenever I wasn’t working for Pop, I’d hang around the Brewster Center, a city-run recreation facility for inner-city kids, some five miles from my house and not far from Black Bottom.
The first day I stepped inside I was in another world—the smell, the feel, the action, the excitement. Kids of all ages were bouncing around shadow boxing, punching on the big bag and sparring with each other. I wanted in.
It must have been obvious because one of the trainers told me to go to the locker room, put on some trunks, and get into the ring. Harold Smith, a stocky kid about my size except slightly shorter and slightly wider, was already in the ring and needed a sparring partner. Despite a twinge of reluctance, I said okay. Although I had done my share of street fighting, and had learned about jabs, hooks and right crosses, once I got into the ring I realized how different things were inside that little area. Harold was tough and strong and immediately went for me. I tried to bounce back and forth like I had seen other fighters do but he was coming so fast I never had a chance to make it forth. Punching and chasing me around the ring, he hit me everywhere: the top of my head, my ears, my back. He even punched my butt. I never hit him once. I just kept ducking and running and covering up and hoping for the bell to ring. Three minutes felt like three hours.
I was so relieved when I finally heard the sound of that bell. Embarrassed and out of breath, I wondered whether this fight game was really for me. I stumbled out of the ring with a shit-eatin’ grin, trying not to faint from fatigue.
“Thanks,” I muttered to Harold as he bounced by. I was too tired even to remove those tight gloves.
As I sat down, I noticed one of the trainers coming toward me. He was a handsome brown-skinned man about thirty-five, with a medium build and a kind expression.
“Let me help you,” he said, unlacing my gloves. “Young man, you move very well. Or maybe I should say you run very well,” he joked. I kept smiling but didn’t think it was funny worth a damn. All I wanted to do was take off those gloves and get the hell out of there.
“There’s one thing you should always remember,” he said. “The best defense is a good offense.”
“Yeah, I know. My father told me that one, too,” I mumbled through swollen lips.
“That guy wasn’t really that good. He just had nothing to think about but beating on you. You’ve got to put something on his mind—make him think. And you could start with a jab in his face.”
That made some sense to me, but I didn’t ever want to see Harold again, let alone try to put a jab in his face.
“But first,” he said, “maybe I should show you how to do it.”
He had decided to take me on. He told me he could see that I not only had great speed but heart as well. His name was Eddie Futch. (He would later go on to train many champions. In the heavyweight category alone he would have Joe Frazier, Ken Norton and Riddick Bowe.)
Mr. Futch told me I had to be serious. I was serious. After all, I had decided that this was to become my career. It took me weeks to get in shape—running five miles at 5:30 in the morning, sweating for hours in the hot gym every day, building muscles, no smoking, no drinking, no girls. The girls part really bothered me, but I wanted to be a champion.
After two or three months under Futch I was a star in my weight class, 112 pounds. I had outboxed every kid around my size. Well, not every. There was still Harold Smith, who had now grown ten pounds heavier than me. I had no intention of ever getting back in the ring with that guy.
“Berry,” Futch said one day, “I want you in the ring with Harold Smith.”
Oh shit.
Futch told me he knew I was worried but I needn’t be. I was much better now and he wanted me to prove it to myself. I believed him, but was still scared to death. But this time we went three rounds and Harold hardly touched me. I touched him a lot.
The air inside the bus one autumn evening was thick with tension. It was my first amateur fight and the Brewster team was on its way to a small local arena. While other fighters were talking, roaming the aisle, I sat quietly alone in my seat, filled with emotion.
In the large locker room we shared with the opposing team, I saw the one kid I hoped I would not be fighting. He was the meanest, toughest-looking one there—puffy, defiant eyes, cheekbones like leather, and gashes all over his face. When I heard he was in my same weight class I felt sick.
Then Futch came over and pointed out the kid I would be fighting—a skinny-looking little guy with no scars, no bruises, no muscles, no nothing. I was bathed in relief. Thrilled. My fear turned to ecstasy.
Futch quickly set me straight. “Those the ones you gotta watch out for,” he whispered. “If his face isn’t battered that means he hasn’t been hit much. Why do you think he hasn’t been hit much?”
“He hasn’t fought much?”
“Take it lightly if you want to,” Futch said. “This kid could be good.”
Futch was right again. Once in the ring, the kid was surprisingly quick with his hands and fast on his feet. It was only a three-rounder, but from the beginning I realized I was in big trouble.
I lost my first amateur fight and felt awful. Seeing my dejected state, I expected Futch to try to cheer me up. He didn’t.
“You should feel bad. You underestimated your opponent, you got tired and made a lot of mistakes. You learn a lot more from losing than you do winning.”
I knew there was something to that but I couldn’t help wondering how Sugar Ray Robinson had learned so much. He had never lost—except once against Jake LaMotta.
I was now in the tenth grade and by that time a big fan of Sugar Ray’s. He was king. Like Joe Louis, he was from Detroit. He had everything—finesse, flair, hand speed, style, elegance, showmanship and heart.
He wrote the book on how to hit without being hit. He could turn his head in a split second to avoid a devastating right cross. Beautiful. He was just beautiful. His slicked-back, processed hair rarely got messed up. But if it did, we knew it bugged him and we’d take bets that he’d knock the guy out in the next round.
More than anything else he made me understand that boxing was a science.
&
nbsp; But my inner battle was still raging—in one corner, boxing; in the other, music. Whenever I wasn’t at the Brewster Center training I was somewhere writing songs—which no one wanted to hear. On one hand, I was frantic to be like Sugar Ray; on another, Nat King Cole, whose velvet voice and piano playing could romance a song like no one else.
I really wanted to sing just like him, but had a voice problem. I was sort of a mixture of him, Billy Eckstine and Donald Duck. My sound-alike percentage weighed heavily toward the latter. Yet, strangely enough, there was one part of my lower register that I could make sound a lot like Nat.
I’d also been bitten by the Jazz bug and was becoming an avid fan of many of the greats—Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Erroll Garner and the like.
I shared this passion with my friend, Billy Davis, who had been a part of my family since grammar school. He was a fast mover, hip. And he could dance. Boy, could he dance. A year younger in age and about five years older in experience, Billy was a man about town but he always wanted to hang around with me because, he said, he was sure I was going someplace. He didn’t know where, but someplace.
I knew I needed to get a more solid musical training. So I applied for classes in school.
Unfortunately, the only music class with any openings left was clarinet. I hated clarinet, but grabbed it.
For two weeks I studied my butt off, trying to learn everything I could—theory, technique, everything. I had actually managed to learn to play the damn thing.
It so happened that I had also, over the years, built up a far-reaching reputation for making trouble in classrooms. It was to the point where I was expected to do something bad. About my third week in clarinet class, the teacher announced that she had put up with enough fooling around. She told us clearly that any troublemakers would be put out immediately. I knew she meant me and I wasn’t opening my mouth for nothing.
One of my partners in crime told me something funny. I ignored him completely. Honest. But a couple of people around me snickered.
The teacher pointed directly at me with delighted viciousness. “Gordy, out!”
“But…”
“No buts! Out! And I mean now!”
I never got another chance. I had just gotten kicked out of the only class that really interested me. Walking down the hallway I started thinking and by the time I got outside I had made a major decision. Since my first amateur loss I had won all of my fights. Eddie Futch believed in me. I believed in me. I was going to quit school and turn pro.
From childhood, I had wanted to make my parents proud. I knew I hadn’t done such a good job up to now, and quitting school didn’t help. Of course I didn’t come right out and announce it to them. Instead of going to school, I’d go off to the gym every day and work out. Lucky for me Mother was distracted with her work. But when she finally found out she was devastated. Maybe she felt she had failed in some way. Pop, whose education had come primarily from his own life experiences, was not as upset, though he acted so for Mother’s sake.
But whenever I fought the whole family was there—in my corner—strong, cheering me on. I loved it! I was always a performer in that ring, and the larger the crowd, the better. With my number one fan there, my younger brother, Robert, I was even more of a show-off. Being able to be a star in front of my family gave me an instantaneous edge on my opponent.
Such was the night of November 19, 1948, when I was fighting on the same card with my hero, Joe Louis!, at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. They all came out. Not just the family, but everybody.
My conscience was getting me because I knew I had broken a cardinal rule of boxing—abstinence. We were supposed to stay away from girls for ten days before a fight because sex drains your energy. Normally that wasn’t a problem because I didn’t have that much luck with girls anyway. But the more popular I got, the luckier I got. Not only had I broken the rule, but I’d done it the night before the most important fight of my life.
It was a four-rounder and by the end of the first I was already getting tired. My only chance was to knock my opponent out early. But by the second round, I felt like I was dragging last night’s girlfriend around the ring with me. I had to pull out all stops.
In the third round I got lucky. I connected with a combination of solid punches that sent my opponent reeling. Hearing the roar of the crowd really turned me on. I got crazy trying to finish him off but he just wouldn’t go down. Now my girlfriend had a tight choke hold around my chest and I could barely breathe.
Since I couldn’t knock him out I wanted it to look like I wasn’t really trying, so I pulled back, trying to catch my breath. Bouncing around, cocky and playful. Doing something Futch had always warned against—dropping my arms, slapping punches at him.
Next thing I knew I was down kissing the canvas. I never saw the right cross that floored me. Embarrassed, I jumped up just as the bell rang.
I was so tired I could hardly walk to my corner. But Futch’s words of encouragement, along with a phrase from Kipling’s poem gave me new life: “If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them ‘Hold on!’” And I did. I held on in the last round and won the fight by decision.
Though my family cheered me when I joined them later to watch Joe Louis fight, I knew in my heart I hadn’t done my best.
It was the first time I’d seen my hero in person. Looking at him box with such courage and skill I realized that if I wanted to be a champion I would have to do a lot better than I was doing. That included taking strict control over the one thing I loved most in the world—being with women. That was the night I learned that when a fighter gets real tired in the ring it’s not necessarily because he’s out of shape.
After that I really worked hard, I put on weight and moved up to the featherweight division, but I was disappointed that I wasn’t getting many matches and I didn’t know why. Futch explained it was because I was really good, but didn’t have a high ranking, so name fighters were less willing to fight me, having little to gain and a lot to lose. Even so, I managed to grind out fifteen fights—ten wins, four by knockouts, two draws and three losses, two of which I will always maintain were bad decisions. I trained rigorously, working harder than ever, hoping to one day get my shot at the title.
Then, one hot August day in 1950, a remarkable thing happened. The Woodward Avenue Gym was packed. I was training hard. Pitting myself against the big bag and feeling very much the victor, I decided my tired, profusely sweating body deserved a break. As I sat down on a bench, my eyes fell on two posters on one of the four square pillars that supported the gym’s ceiling. I got up and walked closer.
The top poster announced a Battle of the Bands between Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington for that same night. The one below was advertising a bout between two young fighters, scheduled for the following Friday night. There it was again: Boxing versus Music. This time it was visual.
I stared at both posters for some time, realizing the fighters could fight once and maybe not fight again for three or four weeks, or months, or never. The bands were doing it every night, city after city, and not getting hurt. I then noticed the fighters were about twenty-three and looked fifty; the band leaders about fifty and looked twenty-three.
The war that had been raging inside me—music versus boxing—was finally over. I had my answer.
No more sweating in a hot gym every day, no more running those five miles around Belle Isle at 5:30 A.M. No more abstinence. No more abstinence!!
That day I took off my gloves—for good.
WHAT DO YOU DO, YOUNG MAN?
For the next few months all I could think about was songwriting. I wrote about everything, license plates, the sky, people, love, paper clips, you name it. I was a writing fool. Ideas were coming to me from everywhere. Even in my dreams I would hear songs and think to myself, “I wish I could have written something as beautiful as that.” Then I’d w
ake up and realize I had written it. It was my dream. Amazing! But I could seldom remember the actual songs and arrangements. All I could remember was that I loved it. It was wonderful and the feeling stayed with me.
(Years later I began to keep a tape recorder next to my bed for these late-night inspirations. Saving ideas would become one of my greatest passions.)
I always wanted to try my new song ideas on somebody—anybody. But trying to get people to listen was tough.
Luckily, the Gordy Print Shop, in our building, owned and run by Fuller, Esther and George, was where I knew I could always find a captive audience. Their business was housed in two storefronts attached together. The first was used as an office, and straight through in the back, the second was where the printing presses and equipment were.
“Hey, I gotta great new song idea that you just gotta hear” is usually how I’d start off their day. They liked hearing all my little songs, at first.
But my ideas were coming much too fast. Many times after I’d left, I’d pop right back in before they knew it.
“By the way, I forgot to tell you about this other new idea…”
Pretty soon they, too, were no longer willing listeners. I became aware of that one day when I came in and saw all three of them in the back lounging around.
“Great,” I thought. “They’ll be glad to hear my new song.” But as soon as they spotted me, they became the busiest little shop in town—moving papers, stacking supplies, starting the presses rolling. Well, a house didn’t have to fall on me.
I stood there in the outer office for a moment wanting to sink through the floor.
“Hey,” I said, waving as I backed out, speaking over the noise. “I had something for you to hear, but you’re too busy now so I’ll come back later.”
They all nodded.
I was a little lost, but then I got to thinking how other people must have felt whenever I talked to them about my new song ideas. They were either preoccupied or waiting for an opportunity to jump in and start talking about themselves. Like me, everybody seemed to have a great urge to be heard.