Content area
By now, you've probably heard the big buzz about Gordy's book. Yes, he does publicly admit for the first time his love affair with [Diana Ross] that resulted in the birth of their daughter, Rhonda. But gossipy tidbits aside, this is the story of a dream come true. And it is finally Gordy's opportunity to speak out about the hurtful accusations that he unfairly exploited the artists who became stars under his tutelage. And it is also Gordy's public thank you to the people of Motown, a geographic entity that includes southwestern Ontario and southeastern Michigan, for Motown has always been as much a state of mind in Windsor as it has in Detroit.
Few know that the first white Motown recording artist was a 28-year-old Windsor singer named Mike Powers. When Gordy heard his name again, possibly for the first time in the 35 years since Powers' record of Teen-age Sweetheart was released and quickly disappeared from sight, he broke out with a big grin. Before there was even a Motown, there was a Zelman record label. And that's another story you won't find in Gordy's book.
Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; EXPRESS PHOTOS BY NICK BRANCACCIO; [Berry Gordy] BOOK BERRY GORDY BERRY GORDY, SEATED, AT BOOK SIGNING. [Ewart Abner], WITH GLASSES, IS FORMER PRESIDENT OF MOTOWN.; BERRY GORDY LITTLE [Stevie Wonder], LEFT, SIGNS HIS AUTOGRAPH AS AN X FOR BERRY GORDY, AS OTHERS, INCLUDING DIANA ROSS, BACK CENTRE, WATCH...; IR EXPRESS DEPARTMENT ...BELOW LEFT, GORDY CLAIMS NO ONE COULD DANCE THE ``BALLROOM'' LIKE DIANA ROSS.; IR EXPRESS DEPARTMENT ...BELOW, THE CORPORATION, STANDING FROM LEFT: DEKE RICHARDS, GORDY, FREDDIE PERREN AND FONCE MIZELL WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FIRST THREE HITS BY THE [Michael Jackson] 5: TITO, JACKIE, MICHAEL, MARLON AND JERMAINE POSING WITH THEIR PLATINUM RECORDS.; IR EXPRESS DEPARMENT THE PRIMETTES, AN EARLY VERSION OF THE SUPREMES: DIANA ROSS, TOP, [Barbara Martin], LEFT, [Mary Wilson] AND [Florence Ballard].; IR EXPRESS DEPARMENT BERRY GORDY HUGS BUD JOHNSON, AN OLD FRIEND WHO HAD DECLINED TO BANKROLL THE FLEDGLING RECORD COMPANY, WITH [Robert Bateman] STANDING BEHIND THE TWO.; BERRY GORDY
Try for a minute to imagine a world without the sounds of the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, the Temptations and the Four Tops -- and you've just imagined a world without Berry Gordy.
But the unthinkable almost happened, and right here in Windsor. The world came close to losing the musical genius of Berry Gordy, the former Detroiter who founded the Motown entertainment empire.
``When we were kids, we used to hang out in Windsor because it took just a couple of minutes to get there from where we lived on the near-east side of Detroit,'' Gordy tells Express in a rare interview. ``One time when we were over there on one of the holidays for a picnic, I almost drowned. But my brother Robert saved my life.''
Fortunately, the rest of the Motown magnate's memories of Windsor are happier. And that auspicious beginning to the Motown-Windsor connection is one of the Gordy memories not to be found in the pages of To Be Loved, the just-published autobiography of the man who changed the sound of American popular music.
Gordy, the still-wiry former Golden Gloves boxer who turns 65 Monday, shared his memories of Windsor in an interview during his triumphant return last week to the city he literally put on the map -- the Motown that graces millions of record labels.
``Whatever we did, if it was movies, records or television, wherever we did it, we always carried Detroit with us. It was Motown,'' explains Gordy. But still, he wasn't ready for what he encountered at a suburban Target department store on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Rochester Hills, Mich., is about 12 km north of Detroit. It is a posh, upscale suburb which owes its spectacular growth to the body of affluent whites who fled Detroit and left the Eight Mile Road border crossing far behind. At first, it may appear to be an odd venue to host a book signing by an author whose roots are so clearly linked to the Detroit urban ghetto. But a glance at the crowd reinforces the belief that the music of Motown transcends all barriers.
Some had lined up inside the store as early as 10:45 that morning. It was now nearly 1 p.m., the announced time for the start of Gordy's signing. Black, white, young, old, they all shared one thing in common: a copy of To Be Loved clutched tightly in their hand.
Then came the hushed, almost reverential whispers of ``He's coming.'' Appropriately enough, down the store's centre aisle came Gordy, flanked by a formidable retinue of friends and family. Some in the crowd applauded as he took his seat. Berry Gordy had returned, the Superstar of Motown, a pop icon of a generation. The soundtracks of Murphy Brown and The Big Chill, in the flesh.
Later that afternoon, Gordy says, ``Being back home is like a major culture shock. Being surrounded by my oldest friends and family and artists, and by all this love is incredible. It is just incredible.''
It was not only Gordy's fans that turned out that day. An amazing array of Motown's early key executives and
behind-the-scene record producers and writers showed up to pay their homage. It was an almost surreal scene, a summit of the former powers behind the Motown throne, once again clustered around the King, while bewildered little old ladies struggled to push their shopping carts through the clogged aisles.
Gordy signed more than 200 books during his hour-and-a-half session. Although he would affix only his signature to the book's title page, declining to make any personalized inscriptions or to autograph anything other than the book, he dispensed warm smiles, greetings and often even hugs to those who had waited in line so patiently. He even posed for photos with people whose books he had just signed. Was it all an act? I think not. Stopping to sign a book for a late arrival, a man whose young son was perched upon his shoulders, Gordy pointed to the boy and told his father to let his son read the book after him. ``That's who I wrote it for,'' says Gordy.
But the real story why Gordy finally wrote this book is more complex. It was almost inevitable after his first press conference, held in August 1991, to announce his $100-million US lawsuit against J. Randy Taraborrelli, the self-styled biographer of Michael Jackson, who had accused Gordy of cheating the Motown artists out of their earnings.
As Gordy pointed out in his brief statement. ``Being only interested in the fulfillment of my vision for Motown and its artists, I never took time to answer derogatory remarks about me or false accounts of my work and activities ... When people around the world who have shared my dream for over 30 years believe a lie about my character or my lack of integrity, a part of their dream dies. It may be hard to believe a company as great as Motown could be built on solid honest principles. Well, it was. Dreams do come true. And this happened to be one that did.''
By now, you've probably heard the big buzz about Gordy's book. Yes, he does publicly admit for the first time his love affair with Diana Ross that resulted in the birth of their daughter, Rhonda. But gossipy tidbits aside, this is the story of a dream come true. And it is finally Gordy's opportunity to speak out about the hurtful accusations that he unfairly exploited the artists who became stars under his tutelage. And it is also Gordy's public thank you to the people of Motown, a geographic entity that includes southwestern Ontario and southeastern Michigan, for Motown has always been as much a state of mind in Windsor as it has in Detroit.
``I have so many memories of Windsor,'' recalls Gordy. ``It seems like I was always over there. CKLW was over there. They were so responsible for spreading so many of our records. And the Bill Kennedy show on CKLW-TV (now CBET) where the Supremes and Marvin Gaye performed live. And Robin Seymour's Swingin' Time TV Show. And of course the Elmwood Casino, where so may of our acts first played. Windsor was where we became international.
``The Motown success story is as much a story of Windsor as it is of Detroit. We love Windsor.''
And there are even more memories. Among those who have come out to the signing is Robert Bateman, the writer/producer with Brian Holland of such classics as the Marvelettes' Please Mr. Postman. It was Bateman who, in 1960, auditioned in the Hitsville U.S.A. studio lobby four young women who called themselves the Primettes. That was shortly after the four, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard and Betty McGlown (McGlown was replaced by Barbara Martin before the act became a trio), entered and won Windsor's 1959 Emancipation Day Celebration talent discovery contest at Jackson Park.
The Primettes were among the 17,000 Detroit African-Americans who took the 15-cent ride on the tunnel bus to Jackson Park that day. For the future Supremes, who were all 15 years old that summer, Windsor would be the launching pad for their fantastic ride to stardom. In exclusive interviews in The Star with this writer, both Diana Ross in 1981, and Mary Wilson during her 1989 theatre engagement in Windsor, warmly remembered Windsor as the starting point in their careers.
However, few know that the first white Motown recording artist was a 28-year-old Windsor singer named Mike Powers. When Gordy heard his name again, possibly for the first time in the 35 years since Powers' record of Teen-age Sweetheart was released and quickly disappeared from sight, he broke out with a big grin. Before there was even a Motown, there was a Zelman record label. And that's another story you won't find in Gordy's book.
Wait a minute! But for a turn of fate we could be talking about the Zelman and not the Motown Sound. Back in 1959, just a few months before the future Supremes won the Emancipation Day contest, Windsor was playing another key role in Motown's future.
In the interest of full disclosure, let it be duly noted that this writer was hired by Gordy and his then-wife, Raynoma Liles, as the fledgling company's first publicist and promotion man, solely on his ability to get a Detroit disc jockey to actually play the Powers disc over the Memorial Day weekend.
Powers, whose real name was Michael Poljakov, had come to Canada from Yugoslavia in 1958 with the dream of making it big in the music business. That quest brought him to Detroit, where Gordy and his wife had established the Rayber (RAYnoma and BERry) Music Writing Company as one of the entities created as a result of the now-legendary $800 loan to Gordy from his family credit union to launch his own label. Rayber and Zelman were the money-making arms of the operation, where, for a modest fee, an aspiring singer like Powers could have a record written and produced for him. Getting it actual airplay was another matter.
So why Zelman? Berry later said he chose the name for the same reason he gives in the book for coming up with the name of Stein and Van Stock for one of his music publishing companies.
This writer was only hired because after three solid hours of pestering disc jockey Larry Dixon of WCHB to spin the Powers record, the song received its one (and probably only) airplay at the exact moment Gordy and his wife were driving on Belle Isle and listening to the radio station.
The following week, this writer, with a compliant Powers in tow, arrived at The Star for an interview and photograph. Powers, a dishwasher who lived at 539 Church St., had his 15 minutes of fame. And Gordy, who was not even mentioned in the story, was the one who reached stardom.
Berry Gordy's sister, Esther Edwards, the driving force behind Detroit's Motown Museum, was also at the signing, and shares her Windsor memories. ``I remember when we used to take acts like Martha and the Vandellas and the Supremes over to the Elmwood so we could get them photographed with the headliners at the club presenting them with any awards they had received, so their pictures could get into white publications.'' Indeed, that is why photos sometimes surface showing otherwise puzzling combinations such as Phil Silvers with Martha and the Vandellas, and Jean Pierre Aumont with the Supremes. Or consider the liner notes TV host Bill Kennedy penned for a Marvin Gaye album!
Barney Ales, who twice ran Motown and was the label's sales whiz, was another who came to pay tribute to Gordy. His fondest Windsor memories are of the glory days of the Big 8, CKLW. ``I always remember going over to see Bud Davies and the other disc jockeys and bringing them records which they always jumped on in terms of airplay. Before they changed over to Canadian content, there was nothing like them. They broke more records for us than any station in North America,'' recalls Ales, still a frequent visitor to Windsor's Erie Street restaurants.
For a brief moment, it was a flashback to the past that afternoon in the Target Store aisles. There was Ales, his arm around Gordy's shoulder, whispering into his ear as he had done thousands of times. And there was Ewart Abner, once the legendary president of Chicago's Vee-Jay Records, the first American label to issue Beatles recordings, and later the man Ales would replace as head of Motown.
Also at the signing was Robert Gordy, Berry's brother, the one who saved his life in Windsor those many years ago. It was Robert, who as Bob Kayli, cut an early hit record called Everyone Was There, that met a quick death when it became known that Kayli was black. That's the reason you find a drawing of a mailbox, and not a photograph of the Marvelettes, on the cover of the Please Mr. Postman album. (And if you find a copy, check out those liner notes.)
Yet success didn't bring Gordy everything he wanted. He lost Diana Ross, ``the love of my life, the person who had given me the most thrills.''
To Be Loved is not a fairy tale. In terms of his relationship with Ross, it is a tragedy. Perhaps, it is best summed up by the poignant comment by Ross on the book's dust jacket: ``I also wish he had told me he loved me, as he says in the book. Maybe things would have been different -- and maybe not.''
To Be Loved. Like Martha and the Vandellas sing: Come and Get These Memories.
Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; Black & White Photo; EXPRESS PHOTOS BY NICK BRANCACCIO; BERRY GORDY BOOK BERRY GORDY BERRY GORDY, SEATED, AT BOOK SIGNING. EWART ABNER, WITH GLASSES, IS FORMER PRESIDENT OF MOTOWN.; BERRY GORDY LITTLE STEVIE WONDER, LEFT, SIGNS HIS AUTOGRAPH AS AN X FOR BERRY GORDY, AS OTHERS, INCLUDING DIANA ROSS, BACK CENTRE, WATCH...; IR EXPRESS DEPARTMENT ...BELOW LEFT, GORDY CLAIMS NO ONE COULD DANCE THE ``BALLROOM'' LIKE DIANA ROSS.; IR EXPRESS DEPARTMENT ...BELOW, THE CORPORATION, STANDING FROM LEFT: DEKE RICHARDS, GORDY, FREDDIE PERREN AND FONCE MIZELL WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FIRST THREE HITS BY THE JACKSON 5: TITO, JACKIE, MICHAEL, MARLON AND JERMAINE POSING WITH THEIR PLATINUM RECORDS.; IR EXPRESS DEPARMENT THE PRIMETTES, AN EARLY VERSION OF THE SUPREMES: DIANA ROSS, TOP, BARBARA MARTIN, LEFT, MARY WILSON AND FLORENCE BALLARD.; IR EXPRESS DEPARMENT BERRY GORDY HUGS BUD JOHNSON, AN OLD FRIEND WHO HAD DECLINED TO BANKROLL THE FLEDGLING RECORD COMPANY, WITH ROBERT BATEMAN STANDING BEHIND THE TWO.; BERRY GORDY
(Copyright The Windsor Star)