Hail, the Conquering Hero

WITH INSPIRATION FROM AN ARGUMENT AT STUDIO A

Napoleon Bonaparte doesn’t usually make an appearance in West Grand Blog.

But in this, his bicentennial year, when better to recall the provocative portrait of Berry Gordy, garbed in the manner of history’s most famous Frenchman, contemplating his next conquest in business or, perhaps, in pleasure?

We have Gordy’s sister, Anna, to thank for commissioning the work a half-century ago, and a fellow Michigander, DeVon Cunningham, for painting it. He’s an interesting character in himself, whose other portraits include the first black mayor of Detroit, Coleman Young, and the so-called queen of Detroit radio, Martha Jean Steinberg.

Gordy-as-Napoleon made its public debut on the evening of Saturday, October 4, 1969 at the first Sterling Ball, held to raise money for the Loucye Gordy Wakefield scholarship fund. One of Pop and Bertha Gordy’s eight children and a Motown Records linchpin, this vibrant woman had died prematurely four years earlier; the fund was then established to provide college grants for inner-city youngsters.

The ball was held at Berry Gordy’s grand residence on Detroit’s Boston Boulevard, with guest tickets at $100 a couple (the equivalent of $720 today) and a sponsorship contribution starting at $500. Among the first to become a sponsor, reportedly, was Diana Ross. The Gordy family was out in force on the night, of course, with Anna Gordy Gaye glowing in an Oscar de la Renta creation, and her husband, Marvin, singing for guests in the mansion’s marble-columned ballroom.

The evening raised approximately $30,000 for the Wakefield fund. Guests of honour were the 26 students who could attend university because of the Gordys’ philanthropy.

Anna took a special interest in the venue: she had directed the restoration and interior redecoration of the 40-year-old property after its acquisition by Berry in 1967. Built by a lumber magnate, the mansion had walls panelled with imported wood, rooms with Frescoed ceilings, and an imposing central staircase. “Opulent and obvious,” sniffed a local journalist, reporting news of its purchase by the Motown founder.

‘PEALS OF LAUGHTER’

The 1969 Sterling Ball’s big surprise was the unveiling of the Gordy portrait. “Mrs. Gaye kept telling people not to leave,” wrote Mark Beltaire in the Detroit Free Press, “until she had maneuvered her brother into a room where Artist Bob [sic] Cunningham unveiled a painting of Gordy, his eyes imperious in a look of command, as a black Napoleon. Berry took one incredulous look and broke into peals of laughter.”

DeVon Cunningham was present. “Berry said, ‘Damn, I like that,’ ” he subsequently told the Detroit News. But, the painter added, it was the last time he saw his work, because the portrait was moved to Los Angeles when Gordy did, permanently.

Perhaps Cunningham wasn’t invited to (or, if so, could not attend) the 1971 edition of the Sterling Ball. There in the Gordy palace was his painting – imposing in its four- by six-foot dimensions – on the wall of a dining room, gazing down on guests as they ate during the evening’s festivities. Its owner had come home from California for the occasion, which was even more popular than the ’69 ball, with hundreds in attendance and in excess of $50,000 ($325,000 today) generated for the Wakefield scholarship fund.

Guests received a souvenir in the form of a special Sterling Ball album, a 10-tracker featuring the likes of the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Miracles (their “I Care About Detroit,” in rare stereo) and Diana Ross. Two years before, the long-player given away at the fundraiser was In Loving Memory, Motown’s somber tribute in music to Loucye Wakefield.

Anna Gaye’s choice of DeVon Cunningham for the Gordy portrait was timely – and controversial. He was in the news for his mural of a black Jesus Christ, painted on the dome of a Detroit Catholic church, and given nationwide attention when the image was featured on the cover of Ebony magazine. As for the Gordy commission, Cunningham’s first two paintings (the Motown boss in suit and tie) were rejected, with Anna saying he hadn’t captured her brother’s spirit. Later, she took him to the Hitsville HQ, where he witnessed an animated discussion between Gordy, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson, behind the control-room glass of Studio A.

‘A FIERCE WARRIOR’

“I couldn’t hear them,” Cunningham told the Detroit News, “but I could tell from their body language and faces it was a passionate conversation. It was Berry standing his ground, Marvin and Smokey resisting, and finally it looked like they gave way to Berry.” When the meeting broke up, Cunningham heard Gaye call his brother-in-law “a fierce warrior,” which inspired him to paint Gordy as emperor Napoleon, with Anna Gaye’s approval. Thus, the portrait was unveiled at the first Sterling Ball.

Some 40 years later, America’s Smithsonian Institution sought to track down Cunningham’s painting, for inclusion in its catalogue of important national portraits, but was unable to verify its location, or even ownership. Attempts to reach Gordy or his representatives apparently proved fruitless. “Someone put in his head that it’s not a compliment to be shown as someone with a ‘Napoleon complex,’ ” said Cunningham. “I don’t know if that is what he’s thinking or not.” Others suggested that the work was destroyed.

***Martha Jean Steinberg, Detroit’s ‘first lady of r&b radio,’ as painted by DeVon Cunningham***

Today, the Smithsonian includes a photograph of the Gordy painting in its Catalog of American Portraits, attributed to Cunningham but showing the owner as [UNLOCATED]. In that same catalogue are images of many of the Detroit artist’s other paintings, including those of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Coleman Young and Martha Jean (“The Queen”) Steinberg.

His 1976 portrait of Steinberg is almost as provocative as that of Gordy, showing the disc jockey as if in Heaven, majestically surveying a world below. She certainly was an adored figure on the Detroit airwaves at WCHB and then WJLB during the 1960s and ’70s, and is remembered, in particular, for helping to calm the black community during the city’s 1967 riots.

“Although threatened by radical elements, Martha Jean Steinberg of WJLB continued on the air,” noted a laudatory editorial, “Martha’s Example,” in Billboard, “pleading for peace and pleading for her listeners to keep calm.” The trade weekly added that this “first lady of r&b radio,” prevented the Detroit disaster from being far worse, so it was little wonder that Cunningham treated her as an inspirational figure in his painting. (For others, a ’60s photo of Steinberg with Motown musicians such as James Jamerson and Earl Van Dyke commands almost as much reverence.)

Ultimately, DeVon Cunningham’s skills have only enhanced his subjects’ status, strengthening their grip on history. “Berry Gordy was Napoleon to us,” one of the painter’s longtime friends, Detroit speakeasy owner Larry Mongo, explained on a local website a couple of years ago, perceptively. “He conquered the music business. There was power in seeing the Supremes and the Temptations on The Ed Sullivan Show. Those were the black people we saw in the streets. They didn’t need any alteration – which gave us unbelievable pride that we could be black and white America accepted us.”

A different kind of conquest, then, but still Napoleonic in scale.