Motown

Berry Gordy Jr. worked the Lincoln-Mercury line, wrote songs at night, watched his jazz record shop fail. The 3D Record Mart-House of Jazz opened in 1953, stocked exclusively with bebop and Charlie Parker sides. Gordy knew the blues too, from old-timers playing it at weekend house parties, but the shop sold jazz and only jazz. It went under. He went back to the factory floor.

The seeds took root in 1957. Gordy, with his sister Gwen and Billy Davis, wrote “Reet Petite” for Jackie Wilson, a former boxing buddy. They'd met the singer through Al Green, a manager at the Flame Show Bar who ran Pearl Music publishing. The song hit. Over the next eighteen months, Gordy helped craft six more Wilson singles, including “Lonely Teardrops.” Between 1957 and 1958 he wrote or produced over a hundred sides. Gordy has said all he ever wanted was to write songs and get paid fairly for them — the moderate success of those Wilson hits taught him he wasn't. This was the proto-Motown sound: gospel-inflected R&B with pop hooks, cut by Detroit talent and sold off to bigger New York labels.