by Berry Gordy
Smokey was now more confident than ever. It looked like he couldn’t lose. Then, after he had kept almost a complete hold on the Tempts for about three years, he did “Get Ready” in early 1966. It went to #1 on the R&B charts but couldn’t get past #29 Pop. A crack in Smokey’s armor. That was all Norman Whitfield needed.
At the Friday meeting Norman sat confidently as we listened to his new production on the Tempts—“Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.” The reactions were mixed, from “I hate it” to “It’s a big hit.”
I was the last one to give my opinion. “I love the feel—it’s street,” I said. “But it doesn’t have enough meat. I gotta hear more story.”
The next week Norman was back with an improved “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.” It got more votes, but was again rejected. Norman looked crushed when the group went along with my “Not quite there.”
But the following week he was back—and taking no prisoners. David Ruffin’s voice came jumping off that record begging like I’d never heard before—
I know you wonna leave me,
but I refuse to let you go.
If I have to beg, plead for your sympathy,
I don’t mind ’cause you mean that much to me.
Ain’t too proud to beg…
Just as HDH had a lock on the Supremes and Tops, so began Norman’s on the Temptations. He had snatched them right out of Smokey’s pocket.
Norman had such passion. He was relentless. When a song wasn’t a hit on one artist he’d produce it over and over again on other artists. After “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg,” he continued with hits like “Beauty Is Only Skin Deep,” “(I Know) I’m Losing You,” “You’re My Everything” and “I Wish It Would Rain.” Each song was different, but there was always something undeniably Whitfield about Norman’s productions. He was versatile, unique and getting stronger and cockier with every hit.
I told him he had fire deep in his soul and a little would come out each time he produced a record.
Though I was finding less and less time to get into the studio, early in ’65 I, too, jumped into the mix, co-producing a record with engineer Lawrence Horn. It was a tune called “Shotgun,” written by Jr. Walker for himself and his group the All Stars.
Junior was incredible. His saxophone sound was like nobody else’s. The down-home feeling he and his band got when he sang and played his horn made it easy to produce him. All we had to do was get a good sound balance in the studio and just wait. He could put together some of the damnedest lyrics you’d ever heard—and come out with a smash:
Shotgun, shoot ’em fore he run now
Do the jerk baby, do the jerk now
Put on your high heel shoes
We’re goin down here now and listen to ’em play the Blues
We’re gonna dig potatoes
We’re gonna pick tomatoes…
He broke every rule in the book, but I still loved it.
New people were coming all the time and from everywhere. When I think of the two young songwriters who came to us from New York around this time one word comes to mind—TALENTED! Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson had joined our growing writing staff at Jobete after an earlier hit they’d written for Ray Charles, “Let’s Go Get Stoned.” When I first saw them they both seemed warm and quiet. While that held true, I later found out Valerie was a pint-sized ball of dynamite, especially when working in the studio.
One day Harvey Fuqua, in his quest for material for a new duo he had put together—Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell—listened to a demo of their songs. Liking what he heard, he and Johnny Bristol produced “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Your Precious Love.” Both songs became big hits.
Sooner or later just about every songwriter, and some performers, want to produce their own records. But talent in one area doesn’t always mean you have it in another. With Nick and Val it did. The success of their songs earned them a chance to produce some of their own material.
Their production of Nick’s lyrics with Valerie’s melodies and arrangements added a new sophisticated and dramatic element to our overall sound. When their first production on Marvin and Tammi was brought into the Friday meeting, there was no debate. “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing” was voted a smash and it was. When their next record on the same duo, “You’re All I Need To Get By,” was played, it sounded so great to me I didn’t bother to take a vote. No one complained. It is still one of my all-time favorites.
I was excited that hits were coming fast on a lot of our artists, but I was worried about Stevie Wonder. He hadn’t had a hit since “Fingertips” almost three years before.
We had opened doors with his #1 single and album and hadn’t taken advantage of it. That was a no-no for our company. As far as I was concerned that was a sin. As hard as it is to establish an act, once you do, once you open that door, you just have to march right in. With Stevie we hadn’t and now it seemed we couldn’t.
He was an adolescent and his voice was beginning to change. We were trying to get a hit on him before that happened. Too late!
But, as it turned out, his voice changed for the better. That young, undeveloped, high-pitched sound that I hadn’t loved when I first met him turned into a controlled, powerful, versatile instrument. Stevie’s confidence soared, which led to the emergence of another of his great talents—songwriting. In late ’65 he was back on the charts with “Uptight (Everything’s Alright),” which he wrote with Hank Cosby and Sylvia Moy.
Writing “Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day” he scored again with the same team, and on “I Was Made To Love Her,” his mother, Lula Hardaway, joined them as a co-writer.
“Uptight,” produced by Hank and Mickey, had come as a major breakthrough for Stevie, containing many of the elements I was always looking for in hit records—simplicity, cleverness, a different kind of feel, and one that was irresistible.
Another guy I found different but clever was Ron Miller.
“Mr. Gordy, I don’t want to write that Blues shit,” he said when he first came to Motown. Ron was a white songwriter from Chicago Mickey Stevenson came across when Ron delivered a pizza to Mickey’s hotel room.
When I heard the kind of show tunes he was writing, I could see he was talented. But very opinionated. He made it clear he felt his musical taste was above ours and wanted a written guarantee that we wouldn’t try to force him to write Rock ’n’ Roll or Blues.
I told him that wouldn’t be necessary. Nobody was gonna make him do anything he didn’t want to do. We released some of his songs on Marvin Gaye and they weren’t hits. Ron argued that was because of the poor taste of the public.
“You can bullshit yourself if you want to, and worship your own stuff in your basement for the rest of your life,” I told him, “or you can try to write something a million people can relate to.”
The broker he got, the more he got the point. He started writing songs that sounded like a combination of show tunes and Blues. They felt like old standards and I wanted people to think they were. Now I had a problem. If I put them in my publishing company, Jobete, people would know they were new songs, since Jobete had only been around for a few years and was known for publishing the Motown hits. I had to come up with a new company and name that would make the songs seem like they had been around for ages.
I went through the telephone book, looking for names. Two separate names caught my eye. “Stein” and “Van Stock.” I put them together. Stein and Van Stock. It sounded old line, classy—and Jewish.
Now I had two publishing companies. Jobete for my Motown-type songs, and Stein and Van Stock for my standard-type songs.
My favorite of Ron’s songs, “For Once In My Life,” was one he wrote with Orlando Murden. Ron hustled it all over Detroit, getting every singer in local bars and clubs to include it in their acts. Within a year most everybody in town knew it.
Finally he got Tony Bennett to record the song for Columbia Records. When it was released and I read a review in Billboard calling it a great revival of an old
classic from Stein and Van Stock Publishing, I was thrilled. An old classic! An old classic.
After Tony’s record was a hit, we recorded a hipper, faster version on Stevie Wonder that went straight to the top of the charts.
Everyone started recording and performing it, from Jackie Wilson to Jim Nabors to Frank Sinatra. “For Once In My Life” became a genuine standard.
Ron was primarily a lyricist. As hard as he worked to find singers to sing his songs he seemed to work just as hard to find writers to collaborate with. They were as numerous as the hits he would eventually have. He wrote UA Place In The Sun” and “Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday” with Bryan Wells for Stevie and “Touch Me In The Morning” with Michael Masser for Diana.
Shelly Berger, the new head of our West Coast office, was amused when he received the latest memo I had issued.
“We will release nothing less than Top Ten product on any artist. And because the Supremes’ world-wide acceptance is greater than the other artists, on them we will release only #1 records.”
“Is he kidding?” Shelly laughed to others. “What does he think this is? The Ford Motor Company? ‘We will only manufacture red cars!’”
I first met Shelly on the Fourth of July 1966, when I was coming out of the Harlan House Motel, near Hitsville, where I’d just finished a meeting. My ex-wife, Thelma, pulled up in her car with Hazel, Berry and Terry in the back seat. As I leaned in the window, hearing “Hi, Daddy!” in unison, it was hard to miss the grinning white man in the front seat with Thelma. “Berry,” she said, “this is Shelly Berger. He runs your California office.”
“Oh, Mr. Gordy, this is great! I was beginning to think you didn’t exist,” he said, extending his hand. “Why don’t you come with us to the company picnic? We could play some ball. Y’know, L.A. versus Detroit.”
His hand still extended, I shook it reluctantly. “Nice to meet you.” All I could see was some fast-talking Hollywood white guy who had come to Detroit, hit on the first woman he saw, who just happened to be my ex-wife, sitting in a car with my kids, and inviting me to my own picnic.
Since our L.A. office was getting busier all the time, Shelly had been hired by Ralph Seltzer to find TV and movie tie-ins for our artists and music. After hearing what a great job he was doing, I thought it would be a good idea to meet him in person, and had arranged for him to fly in to Detroit.
And now, here he was.
Word must have traveled fast about my less than jubilant meeting with Shelly, because at the picnic people treated Shelly like the plague. Even Rebecca, who had made the arrangements for his trip here and had picked him up at the airport, all of a sudden was acting like she had never seen him before.
A creative, witty ex-actor, Shelly had a clear vision of where our artists could be and great ideas on how to get them there. He had helped set up a Dick Clark show called Where the Action Is, to be taped the following week in Detroit at a local club, the Roostertail, using all Motown acts. By the time Shelly and I had our next meeting, I recognized he was definitely the right person for the job.
At that meeting, I did, however, work my way around to asking him how he knew my ex-wife.
“I don’t really,” he said. “I was just a new guy in town and Rebecca asked Mrs. Gordy if she would give me a ride back to my hotel. Royal treatment, I thought. Who knew that by riding with that nice lady and those three little kids, my whole future would be hanging by a thread.”
Many times we’d laugh about our strange beginning—and about how wrong first impressions can be.
When Shelly first came to the company, it was at a time when we were having a slowdown on the charts. The Supremes’ last two releases had broken their string of #1 hits.
I had been on the warpath when I circulated that memo about only releasing #1 records on the Supremes. I was shooting for the top, realizing that if we missed it we’d still be up there somewhere. I had no idea we’d actually do it.
“You Can’t Hurry Love,” “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” “Love Is Here And Now You’re Gone” and “The Happening”—they all made it!
“We dangerous,” I remember saying to Brian Holland one day.
We were dangerous. Sometimes even to ourselves. These were the days of the killer poker parties. When our royalty checks came we—Mickey Stevenson, Harvey Fuqua, Johnny Bristol, Eddie and Brian Holland, Ron Miller, myself and a few others—might get together for a game at one of our homes, which for most of us were new purchases. What a sight! The table was piled high with thousands, and everyone concentrating, holding their cards close to their chests.
We hard-core players could have written a book on the art of bluffing. Me, I played it very deadpan, strategic, subtly trying to give the wrong clues. Eddie and Brian were masters of the poker face, whereas the suave Harvey kept on a gentlemanly smile the whole time. Johnny, Ron and especially Mickey were a lot more dramatic—no matter what their cards were, they took on the attitude of sharks circling.
And then there was Smokey. He always did the wrong thing at the wrong time. He loved poker, but poker didn’t love him. I had to bar him from the game many times.
But sometimes when he’d show up and hang around, begging to get in, it was hard to say no. Smokey was a favorite at these poker parties. Everybody knew how big his royalty checks were.
One night he pulled out a fat roll of hundred dollar bills—the kind Norman Whitfield would flash around when he was trying to hustle somebody into a pool game.
“Have a seat, Smoke,” Mickey said, rubbing his hands together.
“Smokey’s barred.” I smiled. “You know he’s a patsy.”
I meant that to be funny. Smokey didn’t think so.
Mickey laughed. “BG called you a patsy, Smoke. I know you ain’t gon’ let him get away with that.”
A serious Smokey said, “That’s ridiculous, man. It’s my own money! If I wanna play, I can play.”
The others chimed in their support for Smokey.
“You’re the one that’s ridiculous,” I said, “but you’re right, it’s your money.”
Smokey happily pulled up a chair, as Harvey called five card stud—and dealt the first card face down.
During that very first hand Smokey decided to show us all how well he could play. On the fourth card there was a thousand dollars on the table. Smokey was animated.
“I bet the size of the pot,” he said confidently. “One thousand dollars!”
It was clear he was bluffing. Remaining cool, everybody called.
“Deal the last card,” Mickey said.
Harvey dealt the fifth. Everybody checked until it got to Smokey.
“Oh no,” he said, “there won’t be no checkin’ here. Five thousand dollars!”
He sat back in his chair, looking from face to face. Everybody was shocked. We could see he was trying to scare us, but nobody wanted to chance $5,000 to make sure. That is, nobody except Mickey, who looked right back into Smokey’s eyes.
Smokey was smiling, staring Mickey down, as little beads of sweat began forming on his forehead.
“I call,” Mickey said, slowly counting out $5,000 in hundred dollar bills.
Smokey looked at Mickey in disbelief.
“You’re such a fool, man. You’ve lost,” Smokey said, as if Mickey was going to pick his money back up. Smokey waited for a moment, then turned over his hole card. Nothing! He didn’t even have a pair. Mickey won it with only ace high. Smokey was devastated. I looked at him in disgust. He never looked my way. I felt worse than he did.
A few hands later Smokey started looking more dejected than ever. We knew he had something. Sadly shaking his head, “Five hundred,” he said, throwing it in the pot.
Johnny: “I’m out.”
Ron: “I’m out.”
Brian: “I’m out.”
Eddie: “I’m out.”
Harvey: “I’m out.”
Mickey: “I’m out.”
“I’m sorry, Smokey, but I’m out, too,” I said.
&
nbsp; Smokey turned over his hole card. No one was surprised. He had aces back to back. He sat there with his winning hand, the sorriest sight I’d ever seen.
Regardless of his begging I never let him play again after that.
Out of the blue came a familiar voice singing over the telephone: “Hey, man. This is Billy, Billy Davis!”
“Billy! My man, what’s happening?” I screamed.
“You are, baby, you are! I been hearing about you down here in Birmingham and you’ hot man. You’ famous!” he said with wild enthusiasm.
Hearing his voice I realized how much I had really missed the guy. I hadn’t heard from him since my 3D Record Mart days when he decided to spend his military severance pay on clothes rather than going into business with me. Later he’d moved down South to work in a private nightclub.
“I’ve got to get out of this place,” he said. “I wanna come and help you. I know you need help with all the stuff you’re doin’.”
“Your sudden concern for my well-being overwhelms me. All these years I been working my ass off. Where was you then?”
“Then, you was po’,” he laughed.
That made me laugh, too. “But Billy, what makes you think I need help? I’m fine.”
“Come on, man, I know I can help you. Take care of your clothes and shit, keep you clean. You never did know how to dress. You be wearing blue socks, black shoes with a brown suit.”
I looked down at what I was wearing and he wasn’t that far off.
“You wanna come back ’cause you think I got money.”
“I know you got money and I’m happy for you. But you know me. I don’t want to be no millionaire. I just wanna live like one! I tell you what, man, I’ll just come up and visit for a few days. After all, I ain’t seen you for about ten years.”
“When would you wanna come? In a couple of months or so?”
“No, no, man. I’ll be there Friday. All you got to do is put me up someplace. I can take care of myself.”
“Wait a minute, I have to get with Rebecca to work out some arrangements, get a budget and come up with a memo.”