Gordy, Berry, Jr., 1929–,
African-American music-industry executive, b. Detroit. After stints in the
army and as a professional boxer, Gordy opened a Detroit record store and
began to write songs and produce records. He founded (1959) Motown Records,
and its success made him the first African-American owner of a top recording
company. Gordy transformed the company into a music empire, developing the
“Motown sound,” a pop-, gospel-, and
rhythm-and-blues-inflected crossover version of soul that revolutionized
American popular music in the 1960s. His first big hit, “Shop
Around” (1961) by Smokey Robinson (with whom Gordy wrote several
songs) and the Miracles, was followed by hundreds of chart-topping singles
by various artists. Gordy discovered or developed many of the era's great
performers—including also the Four Tops, the Temptations, Jackie
Wilson, Mary Wells, Martha Reeves, Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye, Stevie
Wonder, Michael
Jackson and the
Jackson Five, and Diana Ross and the The Supremes—backing them with a
talented staff of in-house songwriters, producers, and musicians. In the
1970s Gordy moved Motown to Los Angeles and began producing films, notably
Lady Sings the Blues (1972) starring Diana Ross. He
sold Motown in 1988, the year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame. Gordy was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor in 2021 for his
contributions to American music.
See his autobiography (1994); V. Aronson, The History of Motown (2000); G.
Posner, Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power (2003), N.
George, Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise and Fall of the Motown
Sound (2007), A. White and B. Ales, Motown: The Sound
of Young America (2019).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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