“Because they were my brothers and sisters.”Īfter defining “the sound of young America” with the mid-Sixties pop elegance of Mary Wells, the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and the Temptations, and the girl-group glory of the Supremes, the Marvelettes, and Martha and the Vandellas, the label’s two most visionary artists, Gaye and Stevie Wonder, pushed against Gordy’s dictatorial rule to create adventurous, socially conscious landmark Seventies albums like What’s Going On and Innervisions, which expanded Motown’s scope while staying true to its core hitmaking values. “I was so happy whenever I got a hit record on one of the artists,” said Smokey Robinson, the label’s greatest songwriting genius. Within a year, Motown had its first million-selling record, with the Miracles’ “Shop Around.” By 1969, the label would place dozens of records in the Billboard Top 10 as it reshaped the sound of pop music for a generation, thanks to its somewhat contradictory mix of assembly-line consistency and individual artistic brilliance, integrationist upward mobility and black self-assertion, fierce competition and familial camaraderie. borrowed $800 to start his own record label in Detroit. In 1959, an aspiring songwriter and record producer named Berry Gordy Jr.
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