Al Abrams was one of the very first employees that Berry Gordy hired in 1959 and the first White staff member. Abrams was just eighteen years old, a Jewish boy from Detroit, with a clean driving licence. He had seen an advert for a job that required a driver who would take singers to local venues for their bookings and performances.
Abrams knew very little about the music industry, but he had grown up listening to Black music on radio stations such as WLAC in Nashville and had a collection of R&B records that he had bought in Detroit. At the age of fourteen, he was inspired by the idea of becoming a reporter. He went to the local offices of the Detroit Tribune newspaper, a publication that was aimed at the Black community, to offer to write for them. Miraculously, he persuaded them to give him a press card, and he started to write articles about school life and local music gossip.
In 1957 Abrams saw Sweet Smell of Success, a film starring Tony Curtis as a press officer, and that inspired him to visit a local record company called Fortune Records, to suggest that they hire him as a promotions man. He managed to persuade the owners to let him promote one of their recordings.
Thus, at eighteen, when he saw the advert placed by Berry Gordy, he jumped at the chance. He was young and keen and sold himself well. He knew about the music and he could drive. He got the job.
Tamla Records was formed and then Motown. Berry Gordy needed a promotions and publicity specialist to bring his roster of artists to the attention of the public and to get their records played on radio stations. He looked around to find someone who was young, keen, and sold things well. He saw Abrams and thought he might be able to do the job. Abrams thought so too! He became Motown’s first publicity manager. He was inventive, funny and he didn’t take “no” for an answer. Abrams was made National Sales Manager and Promotion Director in 1961.
The first part of the job, getting the artists in the news, proved difficult. White publications were still reluctant to put Black artists on the front cover, but Abrams succeeded in getting articles about Black artists in Time, Newsweek and Life magazines. He set up TV performances and live appearances, he took Motown artists to radio stations to talk with the DJs, and slowly he won the magazines and newspapers round. Thanks to Abrams’ endeavours, the Supremes were the first Black artists to appear on the front cover of a TV schedules magazine. In an article in the Detroit Free Press in 1911, Abrams described the impact of the Supremes image on a national publication:
“It really opened the doors (with editors) everywhere else — ‘Hey, we can put black people on a cover that will sit in people’s living rooms for a week, and they won’t cancel their subscriptions. So we saw every magazine cover, every front-page article, not just as a breakthrough for the Supremes or the Temptations or whoever, but as a breakthrough in the civil rights struggle.”
The second part of the job was getting the music played on radio stations. The key to Abraham’s success was a simple philosophy: “It’s what’s in the grooves that counts”. He sold the DJs the idea of playing the music, regardless of the colour of the artist’s skin. He has written about his pride at seeing the segregation of music into White and Black records come to an end, an outcome to which Abrams contributed a great deal. Martha Reeves spoke for many of the Motown artists when she acknowledged his skills at breaking down doors that were closed to Black artists.
Abrams left Motown in 1967 to set up his own public relations company, working with Invictus Records, Stax Records and artists including James Brown. At the end of his career, he wrote and starred in a musical “Memories of Motown” with Mickey Stevenson that was premiered in Berlin in 2009. Finally, he wrote a book, telling the story of Motown from his perspective, entitled “Hype & Soul”, published in 2011. It gives some fascinating insights into life at Motown and contains a wealth of cuttings and photos.
Abrams died in 2015, aged seventy-four. Perhaps his best-known contribution to Motown was his description of the music as “The Sound of Young America”.
