Outrunning the Obstacles

A REMINDER OF THAT ‘COMPETENT, COCKY KID’

On this date in 1994, the latest issue of music industry “bible” Billboard contained a 30-page salute to Berry Gordy, his accomplishments, and those of the extraordinary enterprise that he had founded 35 years earlier. The company’s latest activities at home and abroad were chronicled, too, while artists, friends and business associates bought pages (and pages) of advertising to celebrate his past and his present.

“Forever! I love you,” declared Diana. “A Great Man Who Created Great Things At A Great Time,” hailed Stevie. “I love you,” proclaimed Smokey. “With love,” signed Michael.

All this coincided with the publication, five days earlier, of Gordy’s autobiography, To Be Loved. To publicise the book, he made himself available to the media – itself something of a rarity – and gamely got into promotion mode. Naturally, this included an interview for Billboard, with yours truly.

Four years ago, I recalled that occasion: the anticipation, the circumstances and the scenery, the trivia, and the people (Edna Anderson, Ewart Abner) who attended the chairman at his Bel Air home. Here and now, three weeks before his 92nd birthday, are selected highlights of what Berry Gordy said on that singular (for me, at least) and sunny day in California.

“I was just a competent, cocky kid who felt I knew a lot more than I did. But I had struggled to get people to hear my stuff and to listen to me. When I saw these young people coming up, I knew that they were just like me. Smokey was like me. All they needed was a chance to express their ideas; I would listen.”
“We were in a city away from the music business and needed fresh, new ideas to bring out the potential in people. We developed from the ground up. In fact, when people came to me, they were not writers, they were not producers, they were not anything. They were just smart kids off the street.”
“People had the freedom to discuss and say whatever they wanted [in the Motown quality control meetings], and fight as long as they wanted to. And if they had a better argument than mine, they would win. Logic was always the boss. I made that plain to everybody. It was not me, not them, it was not some other power, but logic. But they had to prove it or show it.”

“Jamerson and Benny would have this little competition as to who could do more and get away with it. The other musicians were more conservative, but they were just as great in their own way: Earl Van Dyke, Beans Bowles, Robert White, Joe Messina, Uriel Jones and all those guys. They were all talented and they all had their own thing.”
“Every record, we felt, had to go Top 10. We’d always say, ‘No album cuts.’ People [in the quality control meeting] would say, ‘That’s an album cut, let it go.’ I said, ‘No, no, every cut has to be something meaningful.' A side and B side. So when a record didn’t make it on the A side, like Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Don’t Know Why,’ they turned it over and ‘My Cherie Amour’ became one of the standards of all time.”
“When you work with an artist, you know that they’re going to be independent. When the day comes that they decide they want to leave you – even though you expect it – that’s devastating. But you do it, because a teacher has to teach. I was driven to teach, to bring out every bit of talent and potential that a person had. You can’t bring out 90 percent of it and say, ‘Well, let me hold this ten percent back.’ You can’t even think like that.”
“When the Supremes played the Copa – and everybody’s dream was to play the Copa – we all got caught up in the thing that you had to be different, that our music wasn’t good enough for places like that. We hadn’t realised how important our music was; none of us had ever been to the Copa. When the Supremes went in there, they did their hits, but then I added these great Broadway tunes that they did so well – and they were a smash.”

“I was always trying to branch out into new kinds of music. That’s why it was easy for Marvin to come out with his ballads. Even though I would want to push the Motown sound, I always liked Broadway, always liked movies, and I tried at different times to do different things. I brought in Sammy Davis at one time. I was always trying to expand, but when I would expand and start losing my base, I’d have to get back.”
“When I was building the company, I had a vision to move forward, and I was smart enough not to let those little obstacles stop me. When a football player’s running down the field with the ball tucked under his arm and he stops to fight an obstacle, then someone else is going to get him. So he’s got to outrun his obstacles. That’s what I tried to do.”
“There’s no one record that can capture the spirit and the meaning of what Motown was all about. Because it was a body of work. It was the legacy of what it meant in terms of what we did, how we did it and why we did.”

Closing notes: this is the last West Grand Blog for a while. After 225 posts in almost five years, taking a break seems sensible. In addition, there’s a new Motown project with which I’m involved – and a limit to the number of hours in a day. Of course, with music as influential and enduring as this, there’s seldom a shortage of subject matter, such as the new albums by Diana Ross (Thank You) and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (A Symphony Of Soul), or Frances (Fran Heard) Maclin’s second book, Motown From The Other Side, or Mary Wilson’s imminent The Motown Anthology. But others can, and will, write about these and more. And should you be unaware of (ahem) my book with Barney Ales, Motown: The Sound Of Young America, there’s a reprint of the paperback edition on its way. (It still offers some angles on Hitsville U.S.A. which have not appeared elsewhere, plus one or two photographs of note.) So thank you for reading WGB, and for all your comments and support. But remember, as always, it’s what’s in the grooves that count…