The stars: The Jackson Five – Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael – were one of Motown’s biggest successes. Dancing in the Street, sung by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, top, became the record label’s unofficial anthem
WHETHER you're old enough to remember them first time around or heard your parents playing their records, chances are you will know and love at least one Motown song.
The legendary label celebrates its 50th anniversary on January 12 – giving fans a great opportunity to celebrate the glorious hits of artists such as Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Jackson Five, Mary Wells, The Four Tops and The Isley Brothers.
It all started with Berry Gordy Jr when he founded Tamla Records in Detroit in 1959 with an $800 loan from his family. A year later the label changed its name to Motown, derived from the city's nickname, Motor Town, as the hub of the US automobile industry.
Gordy, one of eight children dreamed of becoming a professional boxer. He dropped out of school to pursue that ambition and later served in US Army during the Korean War.
After the war, he married and set up a record store. He also began songwriting, penning Reet Petite, among other hits, for singer Jackie Wilson. But his real strength was in producing and talent spotting.
In the years leading up to Tamla's foundation he built up an impressive portfolio of artists and his friend, Smokey Robinson, encouraged him to start his own label.
Gordy, now 79, had worked in Detroit's Lincoln-Mercury automobile plant and reflects: "Every day I watched how a bare metal frame, rolling down the line would come off the other end, a brand new car.
"I thought 'What a great idea'! Maybe I could do the same thing with music – create a place where a kid off the street could walk in one door, an unknown, go through a process, and come out a star."
And that's how Motown worked. Behind the slick choreographed moves of The Supremes and The Temptations or the raw emotion of Marvin Gaye and The Four Tops was a well-oiled bank of songwriters, most notably brothers Eddie and Brian Holl-and, and Lamont Dozier. The trio wrote more than 200 songs for Motown between 1962 and 1967.
Music came courtesy of The Funk Brothers, the in-house band at Motown's Hitsville USA studio and who, it is said, would have had more No 1 hits than Elvis, The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones combined had they released each record themselves.
But why are we still so obsessed with the Motown sound?
Daryl Easlea, head of back catalogue at Universal Music (the company that now owns Motown), says: "Look at those early symphonies, He Was Really Sayin' Some-thing, Where Did Our Love Go?, Stop In The Name Of Love and so on. They are classic love songs. There was high drama, mixed with everyday phrases that gave it such incredible reach.
"Those songs could mean something to the man or woman on the street in Rotherham, or the man or woman in Richmond, Virginia."
In 1960s America, black artists struggled to be heard on the radio, with many stations refusing to play their music.
As the civil rights movement gathered momentum, Motown, along with other labels such as Atlantic, Stax and Chess, provided the soundtrack.
Martha Reeve's Dancing In The Street was adopted as an unofficial anthem, and the Vietnam War was sung about, particularly on Marvin Gaye's watermark album, What's Going On and in War by Edwin Starr.
It is perhaps no surprise to learn The Beatles also played their part in popularising Motown's music in Britain.
Russ Winstanley, author and something of a soul pioneer – he founded the world-famous Wigan Casino Allnig-hters that ran bet-ween 1973 and 1981 – remembers. "I got hold of With The Beatles, their second album, and on it were three Motown covers – You Really Got A Hold On Me, Money and Please Mr Postman. They often mentioned black American artists like Smokey Robinson in their interviews."
So what does the future hold for Motown? No other record company has achieved what Berry Gordy's did, and with artists like Erykah Badu, Damian Marley, Q-Tip and India Arie releasing groundbreaking new music for the label, it's still a going concern.
