S5, E33: Travel to Listen: Everyone Knows Motown. Not Everyone Knows Its Story

Welcome to Travel to Listen, a new Unpacked series hosted by veteran music journalist Tim Chester. Over four episodes, Tim took us into the cities where music is more than entertainment—it’s the shortcut to a place’s soul. In this season finale, he heads to Detroit to explore the legendary Motown sound—and to find out what’s next for the little house on West Grand Boulevard that started it all.

Transcript

Tim Chester: I’m Tim Chester. This is Unpacked: Travel to Listen and that is the Isley Brothers, one of the many, many great bands of the Motown era. As a travel and culture writer and editor, I’ve always loved music. In fact, I’ve spent the past 20 years exploring the world through the lens of music. As a reporter for magazines like NME and Afar, I’ve traveled to some of the world’s best festivals and music scenes everywhere from Manhattan to Malawi and Beijing to Berlin. One thing I learned pretty quickly: music really is a shortcut to a city’s soul. And in this new Unpacked series, we’ve been taking that shortcut together. We’ve discovered the soulful sounds of Macon, Georgia, got lost in music with the desert rockers of California, and partied to Prince in Minneapolis.

On this episode, we’re heading to Detroit, home of the legendary Motown record label. The list of artists and songs that Motown gave the world goes on and on and on. The Four Tops, The Temptations, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder. And in the 60s, their songs defined an era. ‘I Heard it through the Grapevine’, ‘Tears of a Clown’, ‘My Guy’. There are a lot of successful record labels, but none have been quite the hit machine as Motown. It’s one of the very few labels that has an entire genre of music named after it.

Berry Gordy Jr. founded the label in 1959. Before he moved into music, Gordy worked the line at a Detroit auto plant, and the story goes that he built Motown the same way he built cars as a hit factory, with songs rolling off an assembly line. And while that’s a fun story, it’s not the full one. So I called someone who spent 40 years exploring the Motown story. Adam White is the author of Motown: The Sound of Young America, a book he co-wrote with Barney Ales, who was a president at Motown. He’s a former editor in chief at Billboard, writes a weekly blog about Motown, and knows pretty much everything there is to know about the label. His first exposure to Motown came through the airwaves of 1960s England.

Adam White: As I heard a record in 1963, unlike anything I’d heard before in my life. It was just an extraordinary piece of music, and I had to know more because it was very unlike most of what you heard on British radio at that point.

Tim: That record was ‘Heat Wave’ by Martha and the Vandellas.

Whenever I’m with him.

Tim: And after Adam heard it, he was desperate to hear more music like it. There was barely any pop radio in Britain back then, so Adam used to climb onto the roof of his house just to catch the American chart rundown coming in over Armed Forces Radio.

Adam: What helped was the fact that it was difficult to hear stuff like that. So you made an effort. You know, it was something extra special because it was hard to find.

Tim: Nowadays, Motown’s ubiquitous. I looked for a Deep Cuts playlist recently, and I knew all the songs. I asked Adam why it’s so enduringly popular. He cited the calibre of the songs, of course, but says it’s more than that.

Adam: Motown, particularly when it got going, you know, from 1964 on through the 1960s, was more than just popular music. It was culturally integrating music in the US and around the world. And the stars were exciting. It was the first time for many of us that we heard or saw stars like that, but I think what Motown did was, by introducing a sound, and then clearly a remarkable number of fine talents, all of that consistently at an exciting time in popular music, meant that it had more resonance than much of the other music around, and the identity of the stars has endured.

Tim: Then there’s Detroit itself. Funnily enough, Adam says it was the city’s lower rank in the music business pecking order that helped Motown thrive.

Adam: While it was a great music city. You know, particularly for jazz, you could see wonderful artists. There were clubs. It had a very lively music scene. It wasn’t a key part of the music business. New York and Chicago were far more important to the business as a whole, and even Los Angeles and obviously Nashville. So to an extent, it was slightly off the beaten track, and therefore in Motown’s case, it enabled the company and the people in it to develop at a pace to find themselves that I think would not have been possible in other music business centers.

Tim: Adam says that a key part of Motown’s success was due to a new media format that was taken over the world.

Adam: Part of the integration, if you like, was the fact that those stars were on television. You know, Ed Sullivan Show in particular would regularly put Motown stars on. So you’ll watch, tens of millions of Americans are watching this every Sunday night. So it was both the combination of the look and the sound. And Motown had that time, let’s say, from ‘59 to ‘63, to develop itself, to find itself, to polish the talent, to develop the artists, and able to do that in a way that it wasn’t always being peered at by the competition.

Tim: So Motown capitalized on the growth of television, but also had time to rehearse behind the scenes. And while the songs were made quickly, the artists would build up slowly.

Baby, everything is all right. Uptight, out of sight.

Adam: In a lot of those people were incredibly young, so they had that time to develop. And of course, the other thing about it, about Motown was the musicians. The studio players were the finest you could imagine, largely because most of them were in jazz. They played jazz in the city, in and around Detroit. So that music culture in Detroit gave the caliber of the musicians something really remarkable. And Motown was able to capitalize on that.

Tim: And that brings us back to the assembly line. Berry Gordy did borrow from the factory floor, But Adam says that summary undersells what Berry actually built.

Adam: He had the imagination to set up the company in a way, and this is a key part of it that is not always recognized. It was pretty much self-sufficient almost in every respect. About the only thing that Motown didn’t have of its own would distribute as they had, you know, their own studio, their own musicians, their own artists. It had its own music publishing division, which was absolutely essential, if only because if you think about it, 1963, The Beatles recorded 3 Motown songs on their 2nd UK album. So when The Beatles blew up in 1964 in the United States, there were those three Motown copyrights being sold around the world in the Beatles versions, channeling money back to Detroit and back to Motown’s publishing wing.

Tim: And while Berry Gordy Jr. Was earning royalties off the biggest band on earth, his business ran on something that money can’t buy.

Adam: It seems like a cliché in retrospect, but there was a huge family element about it. It really was. They worked together. They played together. They hung out together. They recorded together. All of those things put people together in a way that I think gave them influence and incentive, which helped to make the company what it was.

Tim: Most of us know the big stars of Motown, but I wanted to know who Adam thought had been overlooked.

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day.

Adam: I happen to think that Paul Riser, the arranger, you know whose arrangement of ‘My Girl’ alone is one of the finest moments of Motown music is under-recognized. And the fact is that up until about 20 years ago, nobody really knew who the musicians were. It really wasn’t until, firstly, a book and then the movie, Standing in the Shadows of Motown gave an identity to those musicians and people began to realize that, you know, it was James Jamerson on bass and Benny Benjamin on drums. Those names, which hitherto had not been known widely. I mean, they never appeared on record sleeves until 1971.

Tim: If you’re wondering why they kept the musicians anonymous, the conventional reason is that Berry didn’t want the musicians to be poached. And also maybe because they felt like family. After the break, we’re going to the little house where Motown began, and we’ll meet the woman who runs the Motown Museum today, who just happens to really be family.

That little house is Hitsville, U.S.A. 2648 West Grand Boulevard, where Berry Gordy Junior set up shop in 1959 and where Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, The Temptations, and Martha and the Vandellas all got their start. Today, it’s the Motown Museum and the woman in charge, Robyn Terry, isn’t just. It’s chairwoman and CEO. She’s Berry Gordy’s great niece. Her grandmother, Esther Gordy Edwards, founded the museum. Right now, Robyn is leading a $75 million expansion.

Robin Terry: We have now acquired the original Motown properties that once made up what we call the Motown Empire. So it was 8 little houses in a row on West Grand Boulevard, and they made up Motown Record Corporation. We’ve acquired, that some land behind us, and we are now developing a campus that will celebrate the legacy of Motown. And it is something that Motown fans from all around the world are going to be very proud of.

Tim: Those 8 houses are the expansion’s secret history. The museum’s acquisition of these houses actually echoes how Motown grew in the first place.

Robin: For those who don’t know that history, Berry Gordy is my great uncle. He was a little brother of my grandmother, Esther Gordy Edwards, and he started with the Hitsville House as a young songwriter. And then that house became magnetic. It attracted other songwriters, producers, arrangers, musicians, and then young talent. And then as the company outgrew that house, then they just my uncle just bought the next available house on the, on the block, and then the next available and the next until there were 8 little houses that made up Motown Record Corporation on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit.

Tim: Hitsville itself has been a protected historic site for decades, and the expansion leaves it untouched.

Robin: What Hitsville allows visitors to do is to literally take a step back in time to 1959, 1960, ‘61, ‘62. That building was actually open and functioning as a studio until 1972. But visitors get to literally walk in the footsteps of these musical icons and experience, you know, the way things looked and felt when folks were moving around in that building and Motown was operating out of that little house.

Tim: All this extra space brings opportunities to tell the Motown story and other ways. The expanded museum will include new interactive exhibits, a professional studio, and a state of the art performance theater. Best of all, it provides room to tell the stories of the people you might not have heard of, people like Hank Cosby. His name may be unfamiliar, but his playing enhanced many Motown records. Remember ‘Tears of a Clown’?

Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Tim: That Smokey Robinson hit was co-written by Cosby.

Robin: We’re really leaning into the voices of those folks that actually created this great history. Hearing from them directly. Finding those rare audio clips that allow you to hear them in their own voices, telling their stories. But Hank Cosby was not only an incredible member of the Funk Brothers, but he was also an incredible arranger and producer. And so for the first time, we were able to bring Hank’s story forward and folks go, oh, wow, like, I love that song, you know? And then and then realize, oh, this is somebody connected to it.

Tim: Now here’s the catch. The museum is closed during construction, and the full expansion isn’t due until 2027, but there’s plenty to do in Detroit right now. The nearby Esther Gordy Edwards Center for excellence has an exhibition running through September that might rearrange your idea of the Motown sound.

Robin: We are mounting our first exhibition in this space called Psychedelic Soul, which is really a journey through the evolution of music through that sweet spot of the ‘70s where there was just a unique sound in the Motown family. Norman Whitfield was really the architect of psychedelic soul and working with the, The Temptations. And so this is an opportunity to really explore that, tap into a little bit of Jimi Hendrix and just really look at how Motown has been influential, not only in the music, the traditional Motown sound of the 60s, or even the ‘80s. But the psychedelic period really called out something very special in the Motown sound.

You can have your fortune told. You can learn the meaning.

Tim: And this summer, visitors can still get the full Motown immersion at the plaza right in front of Hitsville.

Robin: And so folks come to that plaza. They sit there, park benches and trees so you can sit and just bask in the shadows of Hitsville, because Hitsville is right in front of you. But folks dance, they take pictures. And so it’s just, it’s just a fun space to hang out. And in the summers we activate those spaces. So you have food trucks and live performances pop-up performances.

Tim: Another way to get a dose of the magic is Smokey’s Soul Town on Sirius, which is on heavy rotation in my car.

People say I’m the life of the party cause I tell a joke or two.

Tim: There’s a regular show recorded at the museum.

Robin: And that’s there because folks wanted to, you know, have an ear to the ground at the birthplace of Motown in Detroit. And so that incredible show, which is hosted by Levi Stubbs III and John Mason, it’s just a wonderful way for our fans around the world to connect to Detroit. And what’s happening to Hitsville.

Tim: For Robin, Detroit and the museum has always been home. She was raised by her grandmother after her mother passed away when Robin was 15.

Robin: I’ve been around this museum since its inception, back in the days where my grandmother, who was a senior vice president at Motown, she traveled with the acts, and she’d collect things and collect things. And because so many people were making the pilgrimage to Hitsville just to see where these musical icons got their start, she started pulling out all the things she collected, and she would walk people through. And in fact, at one point, she called her brother, Berry Gordy and said, I think we made history. And we didn’t even know it because people were coming and coming.

Tim: She watches people make that same pilgrimage today.

Robin: When people experience Studio A, it’s like hallowed ground. It’s almost an experience that’s hard to describe because everybody experiences that differently. But no matter where they come from in this world, they step into that space, and there’s something about the notion of all of the incredible music that came out of that tiny space and the fact that you’re standing in it. There’s something that happens to folks. Some cry, some kiss the ground. I mean, we get lots of reactions, some get real quiet. But it’s a powerful, powerful space and that inspires me.

Tim: The newly expanded campus will have a whole educational center, too.

Robin: It was as important to us to amplify the legacy of Motown as it was to create a space for those inspired by it. The question we were asking ourselves was, how do we activate their inspiration? How do we give them a community to plug into of other music makers, other people who want to be in the music making space similarly to the community that Motown created? And as a result, we created Hitsville Next. And it is a magical community of emerging singers, songwriters, musicians, engineers who have created a sense of family and now support one another in their music making journeys.

Baby, love my baby love.

Tim: I asked Robin what makes Motown music so popular and timeless?

Robin: I think the secret sauce is that my great uncle chose to write about emotions and feelings and things that were part of the human experience, not the Black experience or the white experience, but the human experience and writing about emotions like love and things that we all want joy, peace, um, those things resonated with human beings across the planet. And, you know, not just in a neighborhood, but all across this globe.

Tim: Before I let them go, I asked both Adam and Robin the same question. It’s the question we put to everyone on this show. What’s the one song that sums up your city? Let’s hear from Adam first.

Adam: The song that in a sense, although it’s not only about Detroit, captures the excitement of the city and puts it in a context is ‘Dancing in the Street’ by Martha and the Vandellas. Somehow that exemplifies the Motown sound of the period because it references so many cities of the US. But somehow it just all comes back to the Motor City and it, it means something in that. So if there were anything that sort of typifies the sound and puts it in an urban context, it’s dancing in the street.

And records playing, dancing in the street. Oh.

Tim: Robin had a different answer. And it turns out the man who built the hit machine wrote it himself.

Hello, Detroit.

Speaker 5 There’s only one song that comes to mind for me, and that is ‘Hello Detroit’ written by Berry Gordy, performed by Sammy Davis Jr. It was Berry Gordy’s love song to Detroit.

Irresistible you hug and kissable you.

Tim: That’s a wrap for this episode and indeed the whole first season. I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out other episodes on Desert Rock, Minneapolis Funk, and Macon Soul.

This has been Unpacked: Travel to Listen, a podcast of Afar Media. The show is a part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. The podcast was produced by Aislyn Greene, Nikki Galteland and me, Tim Chester, music composition by Chris Colin.

And I will all ways care for you. Hello. Hello, Detroit.