Music Industry Professionals

Several members of the Gordy family followed Berry Gordy’s example, taking up songwriting. Berry had three brothers (Fuller, George, and Robert) and four sisters (Esther, Anna, Loucye, and...

As we saw in Race Records Part 1, the earliest recordings of Black performing artists were made to satisfy a White audience. They included comedy songs, minstrel songs,...

Lew Chudd was born Louis Cudnofsky in 1911 in Toronto, Canada. He was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. The family moved to the USA when he...

When Berry Gordy started out in the music business as a songwriter, he may have been dreaming of setting up his own recording label, his own music publishing...

Philo Records was founded by two brothers, Eddie and Leo Mesner, in 1945 on America’s West Coast in the city of Los Angeles. The label’s first release was...

Arthur Goldberg was born on September 5th 1917 in Greensburg, in the state of Pennsylvania. He became aware of the power of Black music from listening to the...

By the start of 1963, Berry Gordy was conscious of the need to improve Motown’s presence in the two biggest centres of music production in the USA, Los...

George Wellington Broome was born in New York probably in 1868. As an adult, he relocated with his family to Medford, a small town in Massachusetts, where he...

In 1973 Allen Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn established the Sea-Saint recording studio in the Gentilly area of eastern New Orleans. Toussaint had originally joined forces with Sehorn after the completion of his...

First Published 11 July 2020 The genesis of Motown Records dates from January 12, 1959, when Berry Gordy Jr. set up a company called Tamla Records. Gordy’s interest in...