Motown: Music and More
A review of a book by Gerald Posner
Until it was sold to Boston Ventures in 1988, Motown Records produced a music that helped transform American popular tastes. Founded and directed by Berry Gordy, a Detroit-born child of middle-class parents who migrated from violently segregationist Georgia in the 1920’s, Motown brought together the talents of an amazing, largely Detroit-based, group of songwriters, singers, producers and musicians, who succeeded in creating hit after hit for nearly 30 years.
From Jackie Wilson and Smokey Robinson in the early 1960’s through the Supremes and the Jackson Five (to say nothing of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and the solo careers of Diana Ross and Michael Jackson), Motown was a veritable music factory. Gordy strove for a sound that would cross over, appealing to whites along with a core black constituency. White singers had previously captured this audience with their versions of black artists’ work, and Gordy would change that by making black music more accessible to whites, intentionally softening gospel shouts and rhythm and blues tones. He sought financial success and public acclaim, but in the process he and the artists he worked with influenced the listening habits of young Americans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.
It is this complex story that Gerald Posner explores in Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power. Posner is an accomplished author of numerous books, including wellreceived studies of the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and is a highly regarded investigative reporter as well. These skills, however, are less evident in his current effort. Gordy and the “major Motown stars” boycotted him. Other people insisted on anonymity. The result is a book that depends in large part on previously published newspaper stories and autobiographies, which lend it an air of familiarity.
Posner, who exhibits something of a tin ear, discusses neither the lyrics nor the music itself, does not examine its origins in earlier black musical expression and never mentions soul music, a contemporaneous popular music that was deeply grounded in gospel and also appealed to white audiences. However, the issue of crossing over from black to white audiences is central to the music and the economics of Motown, as Posner himself acknowledges. Even today, crossing over is a contentious issue, producing a variety of interpretations. Disagreements about the meaning of crossing over reveal core beliefs about race identity and racial politics, and the lack of any analysis here is painfully glaring.
Motown began its existence in the late 1950’s, at the very end of the postwar expansion of independent record companies, like Chess and Sun, recording the early work of everyone from Elvis Presley to James Brown. The bottom line for all these companies was simple survival, and the weapon was a cutthroat business ethic.
As a former Detroit record store owner, Gordy was no stranger to this environment; so it should not be surprising that from the company’s inception numerous Motown artists complained about royalty payments and other business arrangements tilted to Gordy’s advantage. Motown under Gordy never cheated its artists outright, but it did take advantage of them time and again. Posner fails to fully grasp Gordy’s drive for economic success and public prominence, instead describing an almost idyllic scene in which a version of standard family values, under a paternalistic Gordy, reigned supreme.
Gordy was always a businessman. He built a company to create, make and then sell its product as widely as possible. His commitment to promoting black cultural expression never interfered with his eagerness to maximize profits. Still, Gordy had an ear for the music. And he had a sensitivity to consumer trends that helped establish a style that continues to influence American popular culture.
Nick Salvatore, The New York Times Book Review