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 Gwen). Berry was the seventh sibling and Robert the youngest. All of them played a role in building the Motown business and several played an important role in expanding the business.
Fuller Gordy was appointed Vice-President of Corporate Affairs at Motown. During the company’s middle years, he co-wrote one song “Keep Off, No Trespassing” with Johnny Bristol, which was recorded by the Marvelettes for their eponymous 1967 album and used as the B-side of their 1968 single “Here I Am Baby”.
George Gordy was prolific by comparison, co-writing three songs for Motown artists in 1962, including “Stubborn Kind of Fellow” with Marvin Gaye and Mickey Stevenson, and “Soldier’s Plea” with Andre Williams and Mickey Stevenson. A third credit for George came on the Marvelettes’ single “Beechwood 4-5789”, which he again co-wrote with Marvin Gaye and Mickey Stevenson in 1962. Five years later, he co-wrote the B-side of the Temptations’ “I Wish It Would Rain”. “I Truly, Truly Believe” was the work of Allen Story, George Gordy and Margaret Johnson Gordy.
Robert Gordy tried his luck as a solo artist before working at Motown, briefly as a sound engineer and then at Jobete Publishing, where he became general manager and Vice-President in 1965, holding the roles for twenty years.
He was also a songwriter, co-writing with his brother Berry songs for Carolyn Crawford and the Lewis Sisters. Later, he co-wrote and produced “Take Some Time Out For Love” for the Isley Brothers.
Anna Gordy also made a significant contribution to Motown. She was the first member of the family to get involved in the record business, when she took a job distributing Checker Records in 1956. Two years later, Anna and her sister Gwen set up Anna Records with Billy Davis, almost a year before Tamla Records was founded by brother Berry. She switched to songwriting in 1961, when Anna Records was absorbed by Motown.
Meanwhile, she had met a young session drummer at Anna Records called Marvin Gaye, who married her in 1963 and wrote several songs inspired by her (“Stubborn Kind Of Fellow” and “Pride and Joy”). He was twenty-four, she was forty-one. Their relationship was turbulent, but in 1966 they adopted a child, who was named Marvin Pentz Gaye lll. Motown’s press release said that Anna and Marvin were the parents, but it was later revealed that the boy was the child of Denise Gordy, Anna’s teenage niece, and had been adopted by the Gayes.
Anna’s songwriting began in 1960 at Anna Records. She then co-wrote two songs that were recorded by Barrett Strong (“You Knows What To Do” with Brian Holland and the B-side of his 1960 single “Yes, No, Maybe So” with Smokey Robinson), released on the Tamla label and both produced by Berry Gordy. In 1962 Anna co-wrote three songs with Mickey Stevenson, all recorded by Marvin Gaye and used as the B-sides for “Sandman”, “Hitch Hike”, and “Soldier’s Plea”. The three songs, “I’m Yours, You’re Mine”, “Hello There Angel” and “Taking My Time” are all included on Marvin Gaye’s 1963 album “That Stubborn Kinda Fellow” and 1964’s “Greatest Hits” album.
Loucye Gordy joined Motown around 1960, after working as Assistant Property Officer for the Michigan and Indiana Army Reserves. She was in charge of military vehicles, food, clothing and supplies, the first female civilian to take on this role. She was clearly a good organiser and was given the task of managing Jobete Publishing (named after Berry Gordy’s three eldest children Joy, Berry and Terry). Later Berry Gordy also put her in charge of logistics. She led a small team that at one point included Ann Dozier (Lamont Dozier’s first wife), working to ensure the smooth operation of the manufacturing and distribution of Motown records.
Loucye also found time to co-write a few songs, starting with Debbie Dean’s “Don’t Let Him Shop Around” in 1961, which she co-wrote with Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson. She is credited as L. Wakefield, having married saxophonist Ron Wakefield in 1959. (Ron played on the original “Shop Around” single!). She co-wrote “Congo Parts I and ll” for the Twistin’ Kings with Berry Gordy and Barney Ales, and “The Stretch” for the Contours. She also designed the cover of the Marvelettes “Playboy” album with Barni Wright.
Suddenly, in 1965, Loucye fell ill at work and, just two weeks later, died from cancer. In her memory, Berry Gordy set up a charity, the Loucye Wakefield Scholarship Fund, to provide education grants to disadvantaged High School graduates from Detroit’s poorer neighbourhoods that enabled them to go on to college and university. An annual fundraising ball was held at Berry Gordy’s mansion to raise funds for the charity.
Work also started on an album, “In Loving Memory”, which gave many of the Motown singers a chance to pay tribute to Loucye. Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol began by recording around a dozen Gospel songs with various acts, including one by Fuqua himself. Then, in 1966, fourteen Gospel tracks were laid down in Los Angeles with a full orchestra and vocals by the Lewis sisters. Lead vocals were later overdubbed by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, Martha & the Vandellas, Gladys Knight & the Pips, the Temptations and the Four Tops. The project was completed in 1967 by George Fowler, who had headed Motown’s Gospel label Divinity during its brief existence from 1962 to 1963. He added tracks by the Voices of the Tabernacle and the Miracles. The album was released in the Autumn of 1968, with all profits going to the Loucye Wakefield Scholarship Fund. The album was re-issued in 1981 and a CD was issued in 1995. Finally, in December 2018, an extended version was compiled by Harry Weinger (Universal Music) and Keith Hughes (Don’t Forget The Motor City) and made available digitally. This includes the twelve original tracks from the album, plus the Detroit Gospel tracks and three additional tracks from George Fowler’s recordings.
Gwen Gordy was the most productive of Berry Gordy’s siblings in terms of songwriting, with her first credit coming in 1958 and her songs still being included on compilation albums in 2022. She started out writing songs with Berry Gordy and Billy Davis, achieving success with Jackie Wilson. Gwen also teamed up with sister Anna and boyfriend Davis to found Anna Records in 1958. Soon after, two of her songs were recorded by Barrett Strong and Mable John on her brother’s new labels, Tamla and Motown. One the best songs written by the Gordy, Davis, Gordy partnership was “All I Could Do Was Cry”, which was offered to Erma Franklin but was picked up by Etta James and recorded for Chess Records in Chicago in 1960.
Through Anna Records’ links with Chess Records (Chess distributed Anna’s output), Gwen met Harvey Fuqua, whom she married in 1961. Together they set up Harvey Records and Tri-Phi Records, where she co-wrote “That’s What Girls Are Made For” with Fuqua for the Spinners. When these labels were absorbed into Motown in 1963, she co-wrote a few songs for Motown artists, including “Distant Lover” with Marvin Gaye and Sandra Greene.
Gwen also shared the organization of Motown’s Artist Development Programme with her sister Anna, as well as taking on other management roles within Motown, including managing the Spinners, Shorty Long, Junior Walker & the All Stars from the old Fuqua labels plus Tammi Terrell. It was Gwen who suggested to her brother that Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye might sing well together.
Gwen’s marriage to Fuqua ended in divorce in 1968, as did her second marriage to George Cameron of the Spinners.
Esther Gordy has often been called the pillar of Motown for a number of reasons. She was only two years old when her parents joined the movement of Black families to the northern industrial areas in search of a better life. She studied at Cass Technical High School and then at Howard and Wayne State Universities. When she graduated, she set up a printing company with her brothers Fuller and George, and then married first Robert Bullock and later local politician George Edwards, with whom she set up the Ber-Berry Co-op. This was a fund that provided loans to members of the family and it was the source of the $800 loan that Berry Gordy was granted in the late fifties, which he used to fund his first release on Tamla Records.
Esther was not keen on lending Berry Gordy such a large sum, as he had not shown much business sense up to that point. He had tried his hand at boxing and had written a few songs, but could he really make a success of a record production company? Esther reluctantly agreed to the loan, however, given that everyone else was in favour. Without that change of heart, Motown may never have happened!
Esther co-wrote just one song during Motown’s first nine years, a Gospel song entitled “May What He Lived For Live”, recorded on the Gordy label in 1963 by Liz Lands. She shared the writing credit with Berry Gordy and Whelock Bisson, using her married name E. Edwards. Two more songs followed in 1973 and 1975. Songwriting, however, was not to be her main contribution to Motown.
Berry put Esther in charge of the company’s business dealings, as soon as it was clear that Tamla had made a good start. She was Chief Executive up to 1972, when the company transferred to Los Angeles, with her husband (a qualified accountant) as Comptroller, and was Vice-President before Smokey Robinson was given the role. She also took charge of International Talent Management, a company that Berry Gordy set up to look after the careers of the Motown artists.
In 1962, it was Esther Gordy who worked with Thomas “Beans” Bowles to set up the Motortown Revue, and it was also Esther who looked after all the under-age artists, becoming like a second mother to Stevie Wonder and the others.
She remained in Detroit when the company moved away, and later set up the Motown Museum in the original Hitsville building. Esther died in 2011, aged ninety-one.
She was indeed a pillar of Motown and of Detroit too. Esther Gordy became the first woman elected to the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce, and the first African American to be appointed to Detroit’s Court Jury Commission. She later became Chair of the latter.
Berry owes his elder sister an enormous debt of gratitude. She was a talented business-woman who certainly saw the bigger picture in terms of Motown becoming a powerful recording force, taking on the big labels of the time. In addition, her contribution to the setting up of the Motown Museum is historically significant!
