by Berry Gordy
Saying nothing, I glanced over at Smokey, who was always reassuring me that he understood what I was doing, but this time he didn’t say anything.
Finally, Smokey, still nervous from what had happened, glanced back. “Yeah man, you guys are right. It’s not worth it.”
That hurt. I knew they were right, but still it hurt. Probably more because Smokey said it. Maybe I wasn’t qualified to be a manager, maybe it wasn’t worth it for me, either. I had to rethink this whole thing. Before I knew it, we were at the corner of Farnsworth and St. Antoine. Smokey had decided to drop me off first.
Caught somewhere between self-doubt and self-pity, I walked up the long stairs to Gwen’s flat, went into my little room in the back and pondered my disappointment.
A short time later Gwen popped her head in my door. “Smokey’s here,” she said.
I was surprised but happy.
“I had to come back and talk to you,” Smokey said as I came into the living room.
“About what?”
“About what happened in the car.” He then told me the minute he had agreed with the others he felt bad. He had come back to talk about it. “I understand where they’re coming from,” he said. “They’re like my family and I just felt I had to say somethin’ to let them know I thought they were right. But taking them home we discussed it and they felt as bad as I did. We all know what you’re trying to do for us. I’m sorry, man. We all are.”
“I’m so happy you came back,” I said as I sat down on the floor, leaning my back against a couch.
“So am I,” he agreed, and joined me on the floor.
We stayed on that floor till around five o’clock in the morning talking about everything under the sun. I told him about my failed marriage and feeling like a bum and people telling me I would never be nothin’ writing those songs. He told me about the time he told his father he wanted to drop out of college and be a singer, and how his father had surprised him by telling him that he had his whole life ahead of him and if that’s what would make him happy, he should do it.
“And I did,” Smokey said. “He had faith in me and I never wanted to let him down. And just as I was feeling that I had, I met you. I will always be grateful that you noticed something in us no one else did.” Smokey was serious. Sentimental.
“You’re right about that,” I said, “but I got a confession to make. I did believe in you and I was happy with the singing and all, but that was not the first thing that caught my eye.”
Smokey gave me a puzzled look.
“Claudette,” I said. “It was Claudette, man, in that army uniform. She really looked good. But once I got into your music I forgot all about her—until three days later when I called her up and asked her for a date.” Smokey was silent. I kept going. “But sweet and nice as she could be, she told me in no uncertain terms that she was your girl. All I could think was, out of all the cats in the whole world, why did she have to be Smokey’s girl! I apologized to her and told her how lucky she was to have a great guy like you.”
He looked at me with a little smile and said, “Yeah, I know. She told me all about it.”
We both laughed.
“I was so happy you said what you did about me,” Smokey said.
I went on to tell him about how bad I felt one time as a kid when my brother George’s girl knew I liked her and hit on me to make him jealous. I fell for it.
“Though nothing really happened, I saw how a girl could come between not only friends, but brothers. I made up my mind back then to never get caught in that trap again. So when Claudette told me it was you, man, I had to pull back. What a drag!”
“Yeah,” he smiled.
In those early-morning hours Smokey and I made a little pact to never let anything ever come between us. But what really developed that night was something more, much more—the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Songwriting was my love, and protecting that love, in many ways, was the motivation for everything I did in the early years of my career. Producing the artists who sang my songs was the next logical step to making sure my songs were done the way I wanted. Protecting my songs was also the reason I got into publishing and eventually the record business.
Publishing came about when I couldn’t get my songwriter’s royalties from a New York publisher. I wanted to sue.
But a lawyer advised me, “Forget it. It’s not worth it.”
“What do you mean, it’s not worth it? We’re talkin’ ’bout at least a thousand dollars.”
He told me I would get perhaps two hundred to three hundred dollars in a settlement, but by that time the legal fees would be about six hundred.
That made no sense to me.
“How could a company stay in business that way and not pay writers?”
“Some companies don’t intend to.” He explained that the owners pay themselves big salaries and expenses, go out of business, collapse the corporation and start the whole game all over again. There were always new writers eager to write for their new corporation.
The more I understood this the madder I got. It was wrong, unfair. And on top of that—bad business. I knew there must be thousands of other writers out there just like me, and all they wanted to do was write songs—and get paid. If I set up a company that did that, I was sure all the writers would come to me.
So that’s what I did. I called my company Jobete, a contraction of my children’s names—JOy, BErry and TErry.
Smokey was my first writer.
I hadn’t been in the publishing business long when I made the other critical move. Frantically waiting for my producer’s royalty check for “Got A Job,” it finally arrived. Smokey happened to be with me that day. I couldn’t wait to tear open the envelope.
When I did, we saw a check for $3.19!
We stood speechless.
“You might as well start your own record label,” Smokey said. “I don’t think you could do any worse than this.”
I agreed.
The only problem was coming up with enough money to put out one record. That wouldn’t take a lot of money, just enough to pay the recording, pressing and label costs.
I already knew what song I wanted to release—“Come To Me,” which I had written with Marv Johnson, a young singer I’d recently discovered in a record store. Now all I needed was about a thousand dollars.
But hustling around town I soon discovered it was hard to find anyone to invest in my project. They either wanted too much for too little or had their own financial problems.
I turned to Fuller. Probably dating back to childhood, I had a hunch he might have that kind of money stashed somewhere.
“Hmmm,” he began in his laid-back style and then asked me the same old question I’d been getting from everyone: “How are you planning to pay it back?”
My answer was always the same old answer: “No plan, just my word.”
“Oh, I see. But do you have anything of value?”
I laughed, because I knew he was trying to make a joke, but he could see I was desperate.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“You don’t have time to think about it!” I instinctively shouted. “I’m letting you in on something great! I have no time.”
“Junior,” he said. He hadn’t called me that for fifteen years. I figured that meant he felt sorry for me. “Y’know, I think Ber-Berry might be a possibility. Why don’t you try that?”
He was referring to our family savings fund owned by my parents, siblings and me. Started about two years before, it operated much like a credit union and had been named after Mother and Pop—BERtha and BERRY. We all contributed ten dollars a month. It was easy to put money in, but impossible to get it out.
“Thanks anyway,” I told Fuller as I headed downstairs into the freezing night air. Pulling my coat tighter around me, I thought about the even colder reception I might get if I tried to borrow the money from Ber-Berry. If you wanted to borrow from it you had to have a “good” reason. So far,
no one had had one good enough. Everybody had to vote for you, not just a majority—everybody!
For a couple days I’d tried to think of other options. I had none.
D day. A week later, I found myself shivering on the corner of Farnsworth and St. Antoine, looking up at my family’s building. It had been harder than I thought, just to arrange a special Ber-Berry meeting. Nearing the moment of truth, I spotted a familiar face rounding the corner. It was Bud Johnson, my childhood friend. “Bud,” I called.
“Junior,” he said, “what you doing standing here in the cold?”
He brought back memories of the days when we frequently found ourselves in fistfights for leadership of our little neighborhood gang. At one time I was the undisputed leader because I was the best fighter. Then Bud began to grow bigger and bigger and bigger.
He was the oversized mauler while I was the undersized boxer. Though I was scientific in my approach, quick with my hands and feet, there came a time when the growing weight difference made me realize I’d better make a deal. With bluffing and negotiating, I’d brought about an agreement for a friendly dual leadership. But those days were gone forever because now there was no question of superiority—he had money and I didn’t.
Hope. He was my very last hope before facing the dragon of a Ber-Berry meeting. I told him about the great ideas I had and how he couldn’t lose. All he had to do was invest a thousand dollars in my project and just sit back and reap the benefits.
“Benefits of what?” he laughed. “Junior, come on now, you still messin’ with them songs an’ stuff. Look man, I could probably letcha have a few dollars or so but I don’t wanna invest no thousand dollars and stuff like that.”
(A few years ago, about thirty years later, I ran into him on a trip back to Detroit and was amazed to see that he still carried in his pocket the actual bills he had three decades before. He said it was a reminder to himself of an investment that got away. Bud and I laugh about this each time I see him.)
That night of the meeting I was more apprehensive than ever. Sure, Gwen and Anna would vote for me, no matter what. Robert and George would probably go along, too, thinking they would be able to borrow later if I got my loan. The fact was, George had already tried to borrow money and failed. Fuller, always frugal, I could expect to start off noncommittal. But since it was on his advice that I came, I was pretty sure he would go with me in the end.
It was clear from the beginning that Esther was going to be my big problem. She had power and influence. Organizing the savings fund had been her idea in the first place. Like Loucye, she was a strong businesswoman, and very careful with money. The family depended on Esther to keep these kinds of things together. And I was uncomfortably aware that she knew if I got money easily, George would be next, then Robert, and so on.
We all sat around the dining room table as questions started flowing. By this time I was a little smarter in answering their “What is your plan?” question. I let them know I had no real plan as such, but then carefully wove into the most brilliant sales pitch imaginable—my real last shot.
I was in rare form that day, reminding them of the importance of independence and control, and just how badly I wanted to start my own record label. “And remember,” I pointed out, “my songs have been big hits on Jackie Wilson, and this new artist, Marv Johnson, has the makings of a star. Who’s to say he won’t do twice as good as Jackie?” Naturally, I topped everything off by promising to repay the loan with full interest.
By the time I finished, I was so confident with my presentation I almost blew it.
“Yeah,” I joked, “when I get really big and famous, I might just let y’all be in my good graces.”
The family did not think that was funny.
“Just joking,” I said. “It was just a joke.”
Still, no one laughed. It looked as if I had lost them.
Though Gwen and Anna both thought the ending of my performance somewhat ill-timed, they continued their support. I will always remember them getting up, walking around the table saying things like, “Give him the money. Give him a chance.” They had some influence, too.
Loucye appeared to have softened slightly, and I could see she was leaning my way, but from Esther’s face and rigid posture I could tell that she hadn’t bought my pitch. Her favorite line to me since I was a kid was “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” But, of course, at such a serious meeting in which she needed to be proper and reserved, she would never ask such a question. As she began to raise her various objections, her tone somewhat heated, it all of a sudden slipped out—“Well, if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?”
The family looked at me for a response. There was none.
Esther continued. “You’re twenty-nine years old and what have you done so far with your life?”
I was stunned for a moment because I hadn’t realized how old I was. And she was right, I was twenty-nine years old and hadn’t made any money yet. But I knew I was on the right track. Age was something I was never conscious of before. I had to regroup fast. I attacked. “So what if I’m twenty-nine. I could be thirty-nine, forty-nine or fifty-nine. So what! What’s age got to do with it? So I haven’t been a real success in my life. Big deal. Tomorrow could be a total turnaround. That’s what’s wrong with people; they give up their dreams too soon. I’m never going to give up mine.” I was really serious when I said that, but at the same time I knew it would have an effect on them.
Esther stuck to her guns. “That’s very nice, but how are you going to pay it back?”
I hated it when she said that! So I ignored it and looked at Mother and Pop. While they had been neutral before, their body language told me they were proud of my performance. Mother, in her resolved, quiet way, gave a tiny nod to Gwen and Anna letting them know she was on their side. Pop and my brothers followed next. Then Loucye and finally Esther gave in.
A loan of eight hundred dollars was voted for unanimously—but not before they made me sign an additional note pledging my future royalties as security. Esther had been tougher than I’d anticipated.
But I knew right then—if I ever made money, she would be the one I’d get to watch it for me.
6
MOTOWN
1959–1960
HITSVILLE USA
“Damn,” I heard Smokey mumble as my white, ’57 Pontiac convertible spun out of control, skidding into a ditch. This was the second time it had happened but once again we were lucky enough to get a tow truck to pull us out. Smokey and I were on our way to get the newly pressed records of “Come To Me” from the plant in Owosso, Michigan, fifty miles away. It was the excitement of getting our hands on copies of that first Tamla release that had us creeping along through a blizzard in the dead of winter, sliding slowly over icy roads.
We had recorded the song just two days before at United Sound Studios. The air had been filled with energy, love, talent and panic. I supplied the panic. The musicians improvised off my little handwritten chord sheets. And there was Ray, slapping a tambourine on her hip and leading the Rayber Voices with the “Yeah, Yeahs” and “Bop Shee Bops.”
It was a wonder Marv Johnson—who was singing his heart out on every rehearsal run-down—still had any voice left for the actual recording. Once I had the feeling I wanted down in the studio, I rushed up into the control room while they were still playing so I could hear what it sounded like. There I found the sound was totally different.
Joe Syracuse, the engineer, had balanced everything smoothly—too smoothly.
“Where is the bass?” I screamed. “My drum? What happened to that sound I had out there?”
He didn’t know what I was talking about since he hadn’t been out there.
“Pull up the bass. Pull up the drums. Pull up the group,” I said.
He did.
“Where’s Marv? You’ve lost the lead singer,” I shouted over the blaring music.
“Pulling everything else up, you buried him,” he shouted back.
&n
bsp; “Well, pull him up higher.”
“I can’t. Distortion. See those needles?” he said, pointing to the meters on the console, “they’re all in the red.”
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“Take something down,” he said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay,” I said, “take everything down. We’ll start from the beginning.”
He looked at me in frustration. “You have no idea what you’re doing. Why am I listening to you?”
He was at his wits’ end. I could see that.
“The customer is always right?” I smiled.
He stared at me for a moment, then he smiled back, pulling the faders all the way down, cutting off all the sound. We started again, first rebalancing the rhythm section—heavy on the bass and drums.
“Okay, that’s good. Now bring in the background voices,” I said. “Beautiful.” The balance was coming along great.
I told Joe to put a separate mike on the tambourine. He did. I kept going. I had him move Robert Bateman, a member of the Rayber Voices who I thought was the best bass singer in the world at the time, to his own mike and turn it way up—over the drums, tambourine and the Voices. Then I reached for the fader that carried Marv’s vocal and pulled it up over everything else. Yes! There it was. It took about ten takes but finally I got an even better sound than I had heard down in the studio.
With Marv’s inspired performance and the great flute solo by Beans Bowles, one of Detroit’s best Jazz musicians, I felt I had what I needed for a big hit.
Once Smokey and I made it through the storm and returned safely from Owosso, we quickly carried a carton with little boxes of the newly pressed records inside. We had controlled our excitement and not ripped open any boxes at the plant, or in the car. Pulling out the first box of twenty-five records, I told Smokey of the times I had opened up the same kind of boxes from other record companies for my record store. Now this was my box of twenty-five. Those shiny 45s with the Tamla name printed across the top looked so beautiful. The name for my label, Tamla, came by chance. One day looking through an old Cash Box magazine I noticed that “Tammy” by Debbie Reynolds had been the #1 Pop record in the country. I knew millions of people were already familiar with that name. I decided to use it.