Berry Gordy founded Motown Records in Detroit Michigan, the first for an African-American, at a time when racial integration was just beginning. 79 hit singles on white Top 40 Radio over a decade speaks for itself. Opening in the back of the house in 1959, by 1966 they occupied 7 nearby buildings and grossed $20 million that year.
Artists such as Diana Ross and the Supremes (‘Stop In The Name of Love’), Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye (‘What’s Goin’ On?’), The Jackson Five, The Marvelletes (Please, Mr. Postman), Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Rare Earth who did ‘Get Ready’, the only white band on the all-black soul lineups.
When I ready my list of songwriters I love a lot, I admire how Holland-Dozier-Holland kicked out hundreds of tunes and became the ‘Voice of Young America’ on the Top Forty radio. Keep in mind, there was no FM stations! ‘Heat Wave’ (Martha and the Vandellas), ‘Can I Get A Witness?’ (Marvin Gaye), ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ (The Supremes), ‘Bernadette’ (Four Tops), and too many more to mention. My personal favorite is ‘Standing In The Shadows of Love’, if I had to pick just one.
Gordy snagged musicians from the Detroit jazz clubs at night and made them the Motown house band. James Jamerson is easily THE most influential bass player, bar none. They called him ‘Dr. Funk’ and he provided the backbone to tons of tunes for Motown’s stable of artists. In the beginning, Diana Ross , Smokey Robinson, and Michael Jackson were neighbors on the same block! Berry Gordy taught them how to dress, how to annunciate their words, every move, dance, and look was choreographed perfectly to project an image of elegance and cool.
The other side of the coin was Stax Records. This was a white-owned company in the South. (Memphis, Tennesse) It came into being when Jim STewart and his sister Estelle AXton (hence STAX). Their lineup included black keyboard player Booker T. Jones and white guitarist, Steve Cropper, who later became ‘Booker T and the MG’s and Stax Records ‘house band’. This company was racially integrated from the beginning in a society that had not yet got the picture. Otis Redding (‘Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay’), Isaac Hayes (‘Theme from Shaft’), Rufus Thomas, Sam & Dave (‘Soul Man’ and ‘Hold On, I’m Comin’), Wilson Pickett (‘Midnite Hour’), Bill Withers (‘Lean on Me’ and ‘Use Me’) and bluesman, Albert King.
The Stax crew and artists had that ‘dirty, down-home sound’ which I am very much influenced by. What I call my, ‘dirty white boy rockin’ soul’ comes straight from that place. Motown’s Temptations were soulful, slick and stylistic. Otis Redding and Sam & Dave had the rough soul sound we all recognize as Stax Records.
Stax had nothing but hard luck with major record labels and business deals, while Gordy’s Motown seemed to have it all his own way over and over again. Together, from two different directions they created a Soulful Sound that changed as America changed their cultural mores and morays.
