Berry Gordy started out in the music business during the 1950s as a songwriter. He also briefly set up and ran a record store. Then, in 1957, he met a seventeen-year-old Smokey Robinson, who was the lead singer of a vocal harmony group called the Matadors, and invited the group to record their song “Got a Job” at the United Sound Systems studio in Detroit, with Gordy producing. As an independent producer, Gordy now had to find a record company that would lease the song. He struck a deal with End Records in New York, who released the single in 1958 credited to the Miracles, to which the band had changed their name.
That same year saw the release of Marv Johnson’s “Come to Me” on the United Artists label. Gordy had written the song and leased it to the New York record company for national distribution, in a deal similar to that used for the Miracles’ song. This time, however, Gordy was more ambitious. He borrowed eight hundred dollars from his family’s shared account and put down the three-hundred-dollar deposit on a fairly small two-storey house in a poorer area of Detroit, which was valued at twenty-three thousand dollars. He then set up his own record label and released the Marv Johnson single in Detroit on his new label in January 1959. He wanted to call the label Tammy, but that name had been taken already, so he settled on Tamla.
Note the address under the Tamla name. Hitsville was not yet in operation
In June 1959, Berry Gordy formed a music-publishing company which he named Jobete, taking the next step towards the creation of his music empire. By the end of that year, he had registered the copyright on more than seventy songs. Many of them were recorded by local singers at United Sound Systems or other local studios, produced by Gordy and then leased to record companies such as United Artists and Chess. He also set up a second label, which he called Motown, after Detroit’s nickname Motortown, and later a third label, initially called Miracle but soon renamed Gordy.
By the end of 1959 he was president of Jobete, the music-publishing company, of Tamla and Motown, the record labels, and of Rayber, a music-writing company. Just a few months later on April 14th 1960, the company’s name was changed to Motown Record Corporation. Not a bad start.
He converted the house on West Grand Boulevard into a record company. The recording studio was set up in the garage, next to the old kitchen, which became the control room. The upper floor was living accommodation for Mr. & Mrs. Gordy. The ground floor provided offices and storage areas. The sign over the door read “Hitsville USA”.
It is interesting to track Motown’s development. A good indicator of Motown’s progress is the number of releases made by the Motown imprints across the first four years.
1959 14 singles in the USA 1 single in the UK
1960 11 singles in the USA 1 single in the UK
1961 50 singles in the USA 3 singles in the UK
1962 53 singles in the USA 7 singles in the UK
In 2020, a UK company Trapeze Music and Entertainment released a triple CD of early Motown songs, covering the first four years. “Motown – The Early Years 1959-62” is on the company’s Acrobat imprint and contains all the well-known songs from this period, plus a good number of the lesser known recordings. Offering eighty tracks, it gives an excellent insight into the early development of Motown.
The first album was issued by Tamla Records in June, 1961. It was the Miracles’ “Hi…We’re The Miracles”. It appeared in the UK on the Oriole label in 1963.
The first album on the Motown label was Mary Wells’ “Bye Bye Baby I Don’t Want to Take a Chance”, released in November 1961. The album was released in the UK two years later on the Oriole label.
The first Gordy album was issued in October 1962. It was the Contours’ only album, “Do You Love Me (Now That I Can Dance)”. Once again, it was released in the UK on the Oriole label in 1963.
At the start of 1963, the grand-sounding Motown Record Corporation was still a tiny family business, but the seeds sown in 1959 were beginning to grow. The Marvelettes had achieved the company’s first Pop number one with “Please Mr. Postman” in 1961 and then a number seven hit with “Playboy” in 1962. Smokey Robinson & the Miracles had taken “Shop Around” to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart in 1961, followed by two top ten hits for Mary Wells, “The One Who Really Loves You” (number eight) and “You Beat Me To The Punch” (number nine), both in 1962. The Contours’ “Do You Love Me” reached number three in 1962.
Motown had just six top-ten Pop singles hits during the first four years of trading. Albums were beginning to become more popular, but not one Motown album made it into the top ten of the Billboard 200 Albums Chart during this time.
Over the same period, only twelve singles were licensed for release in the UK. The Beatles were able to take one of those early USA hits into the UK chart, as “Please Mr. Postman” (and Barrett Strong’s “Money”) featured on their first album “With The Beatles”. Brian Poole & the Tremeloes picked up the Contours’ song “Do You Love Me” and took it to number one on the Official UP Pop Singles Chart in 1963.
Just twelve months later, things were to look much more promising!
