‘Hitsville: The Making of Motown’ is a fine documentary telling the story of the legendary pop-soul record label, from its birth in Detroit in 1958 to its relocation to Los Angeles in the early 1970s.

Motown took the raw sound of gospel, rhythm and blues and polished it to a dazzling shine. Motown was big tuneful bass-lines and foot-tapping drum patterns. It was simple song structures and sophisticated melodies. It was call-and-response singing, jangling tambourines and exuberant hand-claps; handsome orchestration, swinging horns and swooning strings. 

Motown was an intoxicating cocktail of talent, charisma and style. It was the Four Tops, the Temptations, the Supremes and the Jackson 5. It was Diana, Smokey, Marvin and Stevie. It was the youthful yearning of ‘My Guy’ and ‘My Girl’; the human drama of ‘Grapevine’ and ‘Superstition’. It was the earnest exhortation of ‘I’ll Be There’ and ‘I Want You Back.’ It was ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ blaring from the car radio.

Motown was the sound of Detroit, the thriving Motor City; ‘the sound of young America.’  It was the soundtrack to our lives.

‘Hitsville’ tells the Motown story from the particular perspective of its founder, Berry Gordy. Gordy’s Motown adventure is compelling. And it provides an education for anyone working in a business that has talent at its core. 

Born into a middle-class Detroit family in 1929, Gordy was the seventh of eight children. As a youngster he sold the Michican Chronicle on the street. Thinking laterally, he took this black newspaper to a white neighbourhood and sold more than ever. The next week he invited his brother to join him at his downtown paper stand. They sold nothing. Gordy had learnt his first lesson:

‘One black kid is cute. Two were a threat to the neighbourhood.’

Gordy was charming and smart, a natural entrepreneur and a persuasive communicator. And he had a will of iron.

‘I was always a hustler trying to make money, trying to better myself.’

Gordy dropped out of high school, became a professional boxer and served in the Korean War. He wrote songs and opened a jazz record store. Though 3-D Record Mart failed, the experience set him on the road to success.

1. Don’t Sell Jazz When Your Customers Want Blues

It’s natural that people working in music should want to pursue their own personal passions. But Gordy learned that you have to respect popular taste; to understand what working people really want from their music; to appreciate the value of simplicity.

‘I had this record store. I didn’t realise the customer was always right. They’d come in and say ‘You got something by Muddy Waters or BB King?’ and I was trying to sell them jazz… It’s only 12 bar blues, and they all say the same thing: ‘I love my baby, but my baby don’t love me.’ I mean, how many times can you say that in how many different ways? But the people in Detroit that worked in the factories, they wanted the blues. And so I realised that it was that simplicity in the music that people understood and people felt good about.’

2. Build an Assembly Line for Your Talent 

After the demise of 3-D Record Mart, Gordy found work at Ford’s Lincoln-Mercury plant. It was here that he had his breakthrough idea.

‘The factory had this assembly line and I would see the cars start out a bare metal frame and go round a circle. And different stations would put things on there, and they would go out another door a brand new car. I said, my goodness, I could do this with people.’

Gordy conceived of a record company that worked like an assembly line – a factory of talent that housed under one roof writers, producers, musicians, quality control, artist development, sales and marketing.

In 1959 he bought a two-storey property at 2648 West Grand Boulevard and set about hiring. 

3. Recruit the Best People Regardless of Where They Come From

From the churches, clubs and street-corners of Detroit Gordy drafted raw young singers and performers. From the field of classical music he hired Paul Riser to arrange the songs. From the local city jazz bars he pulled together the legendary house band, The Funk Brothers, who would provide the bedrock of the Motown sound. 

Gordy recruited the best talent regardless of musical background, ethnicity or gender. He appointed women to executive positions at a time when this was not the norm. 

‘He had black, white and Jews working at Motown…The colour of business is green.’
Otis Williams

Gordy hired Italian American businessman Barney Ales to head up Motown’s sales and promotion department after an incident at a new Detroit chop-house. When Gordy, Ales and their partners arrived at the restaurant, the maitre d’ challenged Ales.

‘I’m sorry. We don’t serve black people here.’
‘Well, that’s fantastic, because I don’t eat ‘em.’

4. Always Apply Positive Pressure

‘Sometimes you have it perfect. And you want to just get better.’

Gordy was never satisfied. He was driven by a relentless desire to improve. And he kept applying positive pressure on his artists.

In 1960 the Miracles’ ‘Shop Around’ was selling pretty well, but Gordy was frustrated. He summoned lead singer Smokey Robinson back to the studio in the middle of the night to change the beat, the sound and the feeling. The adjusted record was immediately released and became Motown’s first million seller.

‘The sky is not the limit. The sky is the first stop.’

5. Unlock Your People’s Potential

Gordy was himself a gifted songwriter. (He wrote 'Lonely Teardrops', 'Shop Around' and 'Reet Petite.') But he had a very particular skill in recognising and encouraging the talent of others.

‘Berry Gordy’s great ability was to be able to sense the talent that one had… Berry could sense what needed to happen to make it pop…to make it have that thing.’
Stevie Wonder

Marvin Gaye thought of himself as a jazz singer and initially struggled to find success. In 1962 Gordy stripped ‘Stubborn Kind of Fellow’ of its jazz inflections, added some big chords, some ‘Yeah, yeah, yeahs’ and ‘Do, do, do, pow!’ And Gaye had his first smash.

When Gordy didn’t have musical roles for talented musicians, he hired them for office positions. Martha Reeves was working as a secretary in the A&R Department when she was first invited to record a voice track. Norman Whitfield was employed in the quality control department before he was given the chance to join the in-house song-writing staff.

6. Create a Unique Culture

Once Motown had had its initial success, inevitably competitors flew into Detroit to determine what the secret was. They returned home empty-handed as the label’s unique difference lay in its culture: its special combination of talent, camaraderie, location, and values.

‘No one could duplicate our sound… They couldn’t get our sound because the echo chamber was the bathroom upstairs.’

There were great musicians just hanging out at Motown at all hours of the day or night. When Smokey Robinson wanted a ‘live party’ sound on 1963’s  ‘Micky’s Monkey’, he popped outside the recording studio and came back with the Marvelettes, the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas, Mary Wilson and two Temptations.

7. Competition Breeds Champions

Having pulled together such a rich array of talent, Gordy encouraged a competitive spirit throughout the business. 

‘As the company grew, so did the challenges of managing a team… So I created competition: beat me if you can - have a better record than I have… Competition breeds champions.’

Smokey was competing with Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield to write the next Temptations song. The Supremes were contending with Martha and the Vandellas to record the next Holland, Dozier and Holland song. Everyone was vying to create the next hit. And as solo artists developed and grew in confidence, they sought to demonstrate to Gordy that their own ideas could sell too.

‘The challenge obviously is him proving himself right or us proving him wrong. But at the end of the day we all win.’
Stevie Wonder

8. Maintain Rigorous Quality Control

With so much talent competing for limited release slots and marketing support, Gordy was determined that objective quality standards be maintained. 

‘Quality control was something that I picked up from the Ford Motor Company. After the assembly line was done, they still had to go to quality control to make sure the quality was there.’

Gordy convened a regular meeting of senior executives to vote on different records’ hit potential.

‘If you don’t get them in the first 4-8 bars, you gotta go back to the drawing board.’

Such sessions could of course be the source of arguments and resentment. So it was critical that a spirit of openness and honesty was observed.

‘You’re free in here. Whatever you say, it will never be held against you.’

9. Deliver Style as Well as Substance

Gordy didn’t just produce a polished sound. He also calculated that, for his performers to achieve a broad popular appeal, they needed a polished look. Two days a week they had to visit the artist development department. At the Motown ‘charm school’ Cholly Atkins taught them choreography, and Maxine Powell instructed them on etiquette, how to walk and talk gracefully.

‘It isn’t where you come from, it’s where you’re going… We start with body language. Body language tells so much about you. You do not protrude the buttocks!’
Maxine Powell

10. Manage a Cycle of Success

‘I always had the feeling that if you don’t keep up with the times - if you don’t innovate - you stagnate.’

Gordy knew that he had to keep moving Motown forward. And this led to hard choices.

‘It’s very hard to go through the cycle of success. People treat you differently. You treat people differently. My problem as their manager was I had to tell them the truth. And that was not always easy.’

And so in 1967 the Supremes became Diana Ross and the Supremes to give the glamorous lead singer more of the spotlight. In 1968 the Temptations evolved a psychedelic soul sound in tune with changing musical tastes. In 1969 Motown launched the Jackson 5 to bring in a new more youthful audience and to extend the company’s activities in TV. And in the early ‘70s Stevie Wonder was given more creative freedom so that he could deliver a phenomenal series of solo albums: ‘Music of My Mind’, ‘Talking Book’ and ‘Innervisions.’

However, Gordy was not as comfortable with the shifting culture of the 1970s. The golden age of Motown had been built on a spirit of optimism and bringing people together. But the US was increasingly fragmented by inequality and the Vietnam War. When in 1971 Marvin Gaye presented Gordy with the ‘What’s Going On?’ album, he balked at the overt political themes.

Although Gordy did go on to release ‘What’s Going On?’, ultimately his instincts let him down. In 1972 he moved all of Motown’s operations to LA with a view to developing its movie interests. Many of the original songwriters and musicians drifted away, and, though the label continued to be successful, something of its soul was lost. 

‘You have the greatest assembly line in the world. But people are not cars, and eventually they are going to express themselves outside the system.’

As an authorised documentary ‘Hitsville’ naturally glosses over some of Gordy’s shortcomings. But there’s still a huge amount we can learn from Motown’s founding genius - his was a phenomenal cultural achievement. And maybe that gloss is just in keeping with what was after all a fundamentally positive, life-enhancing enterprise.

‘Motown is different. Born at a time of so much struggle, so much strife, it taught us that what unites us will always be stronger than what divides us.’
President Barack Obama

'Remember the day I set you free,
I told you you could always count on me, darling.
From that day on, I made a vow
I'll be there when you want me.
Some way, some how.
'Cause baby there ain't no mountain high enough,
Ain't no valley low enough,
Ain't no river wide enough,
To keep me from getting to you.’

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough’ (Simpson / Ashford)

No. 277