When it comes to dealing with the Motown Records company, it's fitting to start with Berry Gordy, who is practically Motown Records personified. He started the company in 1959 and it was a massive success nearly from the start. Being Black, he turned Motown into the most successful Black-run private business in the U.S. for decades. Gordy became a household name, thanks to Motown's distinctive sound and his innovative business practices.
That said, I don't think a lot of people appreciate that, on top of all of his business success, he was actually a very talented songwriter! He was a songwriter first, and he had a lot of success writing or co-writing hits for Jackie Wilson, Etta James, and others before Motown Records even existed. The reason he formed the company was because he was frustrated at how little money he was getting writing hit songs. He correctly realized that he was getting ripped off by very ruthless music companies.
A challenging question here though is just how much he actually participated in the writing of the songs presented here. Gordy wasn't above being ruthless himself sometimes. For instance, I haven't included any version of the song "You've Got What It Takes," even though it was a big hit multiple times by different artists, and Berry is typically considered one of the co-writers. That's because soul guitarist Bobby Parker wrote it and released it in 1958. Then, in 1959, Marv Johnson put out a version on Motown Records and simply ignored the songwriting credits of the earlier version, giving the songwriting credit to Gordy, his wife, and two others instead.
So if Gordy did that once, he could have done it other times. That said, it seems he generally played it straight while running Motown. I've read a bunch about Motown, and other people like Motown star Smokey Robinson have said that Gordy's songs were treated the same as those of any other songwriter at the time. Motown was run much like an assembly line, with strict rules about every aspect of the business. As part of that, over a dozen company leaders had weekly meetings to decide which songs would get released as singles. Majority vote ruled, and songs written or co-written by Gordy got rejected just like everyone else.
Furthermore, there's plenty of evidence that Gordy was a talented songwriter, even putting aside his songwriting success prior to Motown. He usually co-wrote songs with others, but not always. For instance, the Contours song "Do You Love Me," reached Number Three on the U.S. single chart in 1962, and it was written solely by him. Some other songs here were also credited just to him. In fact, songwriting legend Smokey Robinson says that in the late 1950s, Gordy was actually his songwriting mentor, since Robinson was just starting out at the time and Gordy already had multiple hits he'd been involved with. Robinson seemed very impressed with Gordy's songwriting talent.
What seems to have happened is that, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Gordy wrote a lot of songs. But as the 1960s progressed, he was increasingly preoccupied by running the Motown company, and he realized he could delegate most of the songwriting to other very capable people. So his songwriting credits steadily declined as the decade went on.
Then something curious happened around 1969. Motown's top songwriters, the Holland-Dozier-Holland team, left the company in 1968 due to a dispute over not getting enough royalties. By that time, Holland-Dozier-Holland had gotten very famous due to writing so many hit songs. Gordy wanted to make sure this didn't happen again. So he created something called "The Corporation." This was a group of four songwriters who wrote most of the songs for Motown's hot new act, the Jackson 5. Their records were credited simply to "The Corporation" so the individuals wouldn't get too famous and thus later make big demands on him. The four main songwriters involved were Freddie Perren, Alphonso Mizell, Deke Richards, and... Gordy himself.
But was he actually involved in co-writing the songs, or was this a new scheme to take some of the profits by a new songwriting team? I suspect it was a bit of both. The first big hit by the Corporation, which turned out to be one of the greatest songs of all time, was "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5. Since it's such a famous, classic song, I was able to find out some about how it came to be. It turns out it was originally written by the other three in the team. (Perren, in particular, would go on to great songwriting success. I plan on having an album of his songs in this series.) However, when the song was first presented to Gordy, it was a very different song, including having the title "I Want to Be Free." Gordy made numerous improvements to it, so he definitely deserves songwriting credit for that one.
I suspect that was the case for the other big hits by the Jackson Five. Gordy promised the band that their first three songs at least would all be Number Ones, and that surprisingly turned out to be the case. He really, really wanted this band to succeed, and it seems he pulled out all the stops to make them a success, including getting directly involved in the songwriting. But the Corporation is credited with writing dozens of songs around the early 1970s, and I'm making the guess that Gordy was too busy running Motown to be involved with most of those.
If anyone has a better idea about this, please let me know. Gordy's songwriting is rarely discussed, since his success running Motown totally dominates any discussion about his life. (Remarkably, as I write this in 2024, he is still alive at the age of 94.)
Anyway, it seems after this final flurry of songwriting activity for the Jackson 5, Gordy essentially gave up songwriting altogether. The songs here are presented in rough chronological order (check the mp3 tags for details). The last two songs, "Good Thing Going" and "I'll Be Satisfied," were hits by Sugar Minott in 1981 and Shakin' Stevens in 1982 respectively. However, both songs were actually written and first released by others in the 1960s. The last new song Gordy was involved with that's included here is "Get It Together" by the Jackson 5 in 1973.
Here's Gordy's Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:
This album is an hour and 15 minutes long.
01 Reet Petite (Jackie Wilson)
02 To Be Loved (Jackie Wilson)
03 It's So Fine (LaVern Baker)
04 Lonely Teardrops (Jackie Wilson)
05 Come to Me (Marv Johnson)
06 That's Why [I Love You So] (Jackie Wilson)
07 I'll Be Satisfied (Jackie Wilson)
08 All I Could Do Was Cry (Etta James)
09 Shop Around (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
10 Seven Day Fool (Etta James)
11 Do You Love Me (Contours)
12 Shake Sherrie (Contours)
13 Money [That's What I Want] (Beatles)
14 Try It Baby (Marvin Gaye)
15 Do Right Baby, Do Right (Chris Clark)
16 I Want to Go Back There Again (Chris Clark)
17 I Want You Back (Jackson 5)
18 I'm Livin' in Shame (Supremes)
19 ABC (Jackson 5)
20 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
21 I'll Be There (Jackson 5)
22 Mama's Pearl (Jackson 5)
23 The Love You Save (Jackson 5)
24 Get It Together (Jackson 5)
25 Good Thing Going [We've Got a Good Thing Going] (Sugar Minott)
26 I'll Be Satisfied (Shakin' Stevens)
https://www.upload.ee/files/17282873/COVRDBRRYGRDY19571982_atse.zip.html
alternate:
https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZN5vFGt8
The cover photo is a very early publicity photo of Berry Gordy. (It might be hard to tell from just this much, but he has a black jacket slung over one shoulder.) I'm guessing this is from around 1960. The photo was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Palette program.
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