by Berry Gordy
Up on that stage were five stars, each of whom could have been a lead singer. David Ruffin oozed with artistry and talent but it was Melvin Franklin who showered everything and everybody with pure love.
Not too long after the Tempts were signed I was eating breakfast in my office when Mickey Stevenson burst in.
“BG, you got to come hear this little kid now!”
I hurried down to the studio and found a young blind kid that Ronnie White from the Miracles had brought in for us to hear.
He was singing, playing the bongos and blowing on a harmonica. His voice didn’t knock me out, but his harmonica playing did. Something about him was infectious.
Signed as Stephen Hardaway Judkins, he was only eleven years old and people were already saying he could be another Ray Charles.
I don’t really remember it, but Esther told me that one day in the studio, watching Stevie perform, I said, “Boy! That kid’s a wonder,” and the name stuck.
Stevie had a cute, mischievous personality and a great sense of humor. His blindness never seemed to bother him; instead he used it as an advantage. His list of stunts was endless. He’d do things like pretending to be reading something that he had learned by heart or trying to ride a bicycle or sitting behind the wheel of a car pretending he was about to drive off. He was also an amazing mimic. He could do all kinds of accents and voices, including mine.
Once I caught him out on the front lawn holding court, giving advice in my voice, an overexaggerated, drawling, cartoonish version of it. “If you make a mistake, I don’t care, go with it. As far as I’m concerned, there are no mistakes. If the mike falls on the stage, you fall with it and you sing right there on the ground like it was planned like that.”
As I walked up, everybody saw me but Stevie, who went on, “And another thing, that song you wrote is gabbage—na, na, na, na…”
“Yeah Stevie, and so is your imitation of me.”
We all got a good laugh, especially Stevie. But this would not be the last time he would be caught impersonating me.
One of the acts I really wanted but had a hard time getting was the Four Tops. These four—Levi Stubbs, Lawrence Payton, Abdul “Duke” Fakir and Renaldo “Obie” Benson—had been around for almost a decade. Already seasoned performers, they had been on the road with Billy Eckstine, and had played Vegas clubs. Their vocal blend was phenomenal. Their Jazz-type harmony rang out in five parts even though there were only four voices. Smooth, classy and polished, they were big stuff. I wanted them bad. I could see how loyal they were to each other, and I knew they would be the same way to me and Motown.
“We’d like to sign with you,” Levi said, “but we heard you won’t let artists take the contracts away from the office.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because when I do they don’t come back.” They laughed as I went on. “I would rather have your attorney or whoever you want come here to the office, take as much time as you need, and go over them. This way we’ll be right here to answer questions and explain what we do that other companies don’t.” I told them that most people don’t really understand what we’re about or what we’re trying to do. It was not only hit records we were interested in, what we wanted to do was build careers.
They listened intently. Then they told me in essence that they were professionals and did understand the business. They assured me they could see what we were doing and thought it was great, but still wanted to take the contracts to their lawyers. Against my better judgment, I said okay. They took the contracts away.
They didn’t come back.
Meanwhile, the success of “Shop Around” had sent shock waves of enthusiasm through the whole company. Up until now I had been the only hit producer. But just as I’d realized I couldn’t manage all the artists myself, I knew I couldn’t produce all of them, either.
I knew from my days of selling Guardian Service cookware that competition could be a very effective tool in getting results, so I made it clear that it was open season for anyone who felt creatively inclined to compete with me to get the next big hit. Smokey jumped on the challenge immediately, telling me what great ideas he had for Mary Wells. I had planned on continuing to produce her myself, but told him to take his best shot.
Over the next few months everybody started getting into the act. Clarence Paul, Mickey’s A&R assistant, took Stevie Wonder under his wing. Mickey and my brother George were working on some ideas for Marvin Gaye. And I set out to get that first hit on both the Supremes and the Temptations.
In order to ensure top product, I set up Quality Control, a system I had heard about at Lincoln-Mercury. The producers would submit their final mixes into our Quality Control where Billie Jean Brown would listen to them. If they were up to par she would bring them into the Friday morning meetings. This gave her power. And she had the attitude to match.
Billie Jean Brown, a student at Cass Technical High School, had been hired by Loucye to help her out on a part-time basis, writing liner notes and being a general assistant.
During Billie Jean’s first week I got a strong dose of her personality when I stopped by Loucye’s office to read over a past-due payment letter being sent out. As I read it, I overheard the new assistant grumble loudly, “How are we going to get any work done if everybody keeps hanging out up here?”
Having seen me wandering around Hitsville with my young-looking face and processed hair she must have thought I was just another one of the aspiring youngsters trying to act important.
As soon as Billie Jean spoke, Loucye smiled apologetically and said, “Have you ever met Mr. Gordy? He owns the company.”
“He owns what?” Billie Jean looked at me in disgust. She had thought it was Loucye’s company all along.
I shrugged and smiled.
She walked away muttering something like, “They’ll let just anybody own a company nowadays.”
I was not crazy about her attitude, but Billie Jean, I was soon to discover, knew her music.
One day, seeing her listening to records on a small 45 player in her “office”—a little spot in the corner of the shipping room—I walked over.
“So,” I said, “which one of these records do you like best?”
“You mean which one do I hate least, don’t you?”
She proceeded to go over each song, telling me what she didn’t like about them. She was strong, opinionated, honest, witty and had a good ear. That was good enough for me. I put her in charge of Quality Control.
The Friday morning product evaluation meetings were my meetings. They were exciting, the lifeblood of our operation. That was when we picked the records we would release. Careers depended on the choices made those Friday mornings. Everybody wanted to be there. The producers, whether or not they got their product on Billie Jean’s “approved” list, wanted to be there to protect their own interests and to challenge each other and me.
Some of the employees who came to the meetings weren’t creative people, but I felt their reactions to the songs would be like those of the average record buyer. A noncreative person’s vote counted just as much as a creative person’s. My three main rules for these meetings were: 1) No producer could vote on his own record; 2) Only I could overrule a majority vote; and 3) Anyone over five minutes late would be locked out.
There were many people locked out, but the funniest I remember was the day Smokey had no shame. We’d been into the meeting for about five minutes when we heard Smokey. He was crying and pounding on the door, begging to be let in. Being locked out of that meeting was like being locked out of your home. Of course I relented and let him in. After all, it was Smokey.
Another thing I was very serious about was people having the freedom to express their honest opinions openly at these meetings—without fear of reprisal. To me that was critical to the process. Everybody knew if I got a hint of a reprisal for something coming out of these meetings, the “reprisalor” would be in serious trouble.
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sp; This was the one place where everyone was not only free to speak their minds, they were expected to. They tested that freedom. Sometimes they jumped on me just because they could. That always bugged me, but I had to go along with it to make sure that everybody understood that they could say anything in any way. I liked it very much when they honestly criticized my work. When I had a product if people tried to compliment me and tell me it was good, I would always say, “Tell me what’s wrong with it so I can make it better.” Everybody in the room was fair game, even the sales executives who were sometimes attacked for not promoting the product well enough.
These product evaluation meetings became one of the key elements in our overall growth. Each time a record made it through one of these meetings and became a hit, we got a little bit bigger.
The house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard was becoming known as a place where dreams could be turned into realities. Local kids would line the sidewalk and the front lawn, trying to get discovered or just hoping to get a glimpse of one of the stars. They tried everything to get inside. Some succeeded, getting jobs as secretaries, office helpers, even janitors.
Now that “Shop Around” had peaked, I was about to learn another essential lesson in the record business: A big hit could put you out of business.
In those days it was common knowledge that the independent distributors would only pay for your last hit if you had another one coming up. We always had others coming up so they paid us, but only as much as necessary to keep getting our new ones.
My money was spread out all over the place. Not only was I owed for one hit record, I was owed money for many different records from many different distributors. And the bigger the hit, the more they owed me—and the more I owed the pressing plants and other suppliers. That was dangerous. That was how some other independent labels got into trouble. Without leverage of another hit to collect their money they couldn’t pay their suppliers, who might then cut them off, putting them out of business.
That summer of 1961 I was nervous. Over the past year we had released about twenty records, many of which I thought should have been bigger hits than they were and I still hadn’t gotten paid all the money for my big hit, “Shop Around.” Loucye had pushed hard, but there was only so much she could do. We needed a new big hit.
At the next Friday meeting I found one. It was called “Please Mr. Postman,” a cute, catchy little tune by a brand-new group called the Marvelettes—Gladys Horton, Georgeanna Tillman, Wanda Young, Katherine Anderson and Juanita Cowart. The record was produced by a new team, Brian Holland and Robert Bateman, under the name “Brianbert.”
It was a bouncy track with a clever lyric that had Gladys begging the postman to: “Deliver de letter de sooner de better…”
After hearing “Please Mr. Postman” I was proud of my two protégés. I had seen that Brian had brilliant producing instincts, but this was the first tangible proof of what he could do. Both he and Robert had done some of our earlier engineering and now they were ready to take off.
Not too long before, Robert had come to me, asking, “Can Brian and I team up and produce something together?”
“I’m not sure you can,” I had told him, “but you may.” Robert was more used to me answering this kind of request with “You probably can, but you may not.”
Leaving in 1962, Robert would not stay with the company long enough for me to know his full potential, but while he was with us he loved competing with me, especially when editing two-track tapes with razor blades. It may seem that we were using primitive methods back then, but it required exceptional precision and sensitivity. He was good. I was better. (To this day he swears it was the other way around.)
“Please Mr. Postman” became our second million seller and our first #1 Pop hit. All those distributors who hadn’t had the money to pay us suddenly had it.
Within a short time after coming in to head sales, Barney Ales had gotten us our first #1 and proved to be that master salesman I always thought he was.
I learned quickly that when you have a master salesman, you have to deal with him in a masterful way. Barney was an extremely tough negotiator. Especially with me. Whenever he scheduled a personal meeting, I knew something was coming—a request for a raise, loan, bonus, advance—something. One moment of weakness could kill me.
Ours was a cat-and-mouse game that he played very well. But then so did I. Before a meeting with Barney I literally had to go into training: get lots of sleep, jog in the morning.
When I called a meeting with him it was different. I was usually getting on him about something. Like the time I called him in for selling to distributors that Loucye had put on hold for nonpayment of their bills.
Knowing Loucye had complained to me about the problem, Barney came into my office swinging.
“If we don’t ship to those areas,” he said, “that’s gonna kill us. We’ll lose chart positions. We’ll lose momentum. We won’t have hits and we’ll be in more trouble.”
“That’s right,” I said. “But if we don’t get our money where will we be?”
It had become very clear to me that my Create, Make and Sell slogan had to be revised. We had to now focus more on one thing: getting our money—collecting.
Because I felt that Create and Make were pretty close to the same thing, I dropped the Make and changed the slogan to Create, Sell and COLLECT.
I knew that if Barney made his money only by selling, we would always have this same problem.
So I told him about my new focus on collections. “And,” I added, “you’re in charge of it.”
Loucye was happy; Barney was not. Now Barney would have to do more than just sell, he would have to do the harder job of collecting the money.
He started right away calling distributors, letting them know of his dilemma: he couldn’t ship them hot records if they didn’t pay. And because of his relationship with them, things got easier. It was now in his interest not just to sell as many records as he could, but to collect the money for those records as well.
Collections rose dramatically. And, of course Barney asked me for more money—and got it.
THE MOTORTOWN REVUE
On a cold October morning in the fall of ’62, the members of the first Motortown Revue assembled outside to board the waiting bus and its convoy of several cars that were to become their home on wheels for the next two months.
When the Regal Theater in Chicago had booked its show the year before and all the acts were Motown’s except one, we realized that we could put our own show on the road. Barney had mentioned something similar in the past but I hadn’t thought the time was right. Now I thought it was. We had in-house everything: artists, producers, musicians, chaperones and road managers. It was a perfect opportunity not only to expose the artists who already had hits, but to break in lesser-known acts.
Esther had overseen all the planning and arranged the itineraries for the numerous cities. The Revue was to kick off with a one-week engagement at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., then continue with a series of one-nighters down South, ending with a ten-day engagement at the Apollo Theater in New York.
Most of the artists had never been out of the state. And as the clock ticked away, getting closer to departure, it was hard for them to avoid feelings of uncertainty about the unknown. It was also hard for them not to notice that someone was missing—me, their so-called fearless leader.
Unaware of the time, Fearless Leader was locked into a little dark dungeon—at the control board in the mixing room, where I had been for the past fourteen hours, frantically mixing the Supremes’ next single, “Let Me Go The Right Way,” which I had written and produced. I was fighting hard to be the first one to get them that hit they so badly needed. It was set for release in less than two weeks.
Smokey came in. “You’re a madman. What mix is it now, one hundred?” he said, referring to my maddening need for perfection.
“No, one hundred and one,” I responded. Actually that day it probably was.
“They’re loading on the bus,” he said. “Don’t you want to say good-bye?”
Who? What? Of course! Tearing myself away from what I hoped would be the final mix, I rushed out and there they all were: The Miracles, Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, the Supremes, Marv Johnson, the Contours, Marvin Gaye, Martha and the Vandellas, Singin’ Sammy Ward, Bill Murray—the high-energy emcee known professionally as Winehead Willie—our band led by Choker Campbell, and the chaperones.
Beans Bowles—who worked with Esther in management—would be serving double duty on the road: musician and tour manager. At his side was his assistant, Eddie McFarland.
Esther huddled with Beans and the three chaperones—Mrs. Ernestine Ross, Diana’s mother, Bernice Morrison and Ardena Johnston—going over the strict rules and regulations of conduct.
As I was bidding them all my good-byes, Esther reminded the group that they would be out there representing us, the Motown Family, and to mind their manners.
Engines roared. They loaded in and were off. I was proud of them all. I waved as long as seemed appropriate, then rushed back to the mixing board.
So much had happened in the past year. During this time, Smokey and I intensified our ongoing competition in everything.
Aside from his Mary Wells stuff, earlier in the spring we had released the Miracles’ “I’ll Try Something New”—one of my favorite Smokey compositions. Then he wrote “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me,” a big hit right out of the box.
It was no contest—Smokey was killing me. But in June of that year I had a little victory. I wrote and produced “Do You Love Me.”
Getting the concept for this song was easy. I just thought back to the days when I could never get girls I really liked because I couldn’t dance.
You broke my heart, ’cause I couldn’t dance
You didn’t even want me around
And now I’m back to let you know
I can really shake ’em down.