Berry Gordy: 1960s Music Industry Game-changer
How it All Began
Many of today’s celebrated black business leaders include Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, Sudan’s Mo Ibrahim, and Zimbabwe’s Strive Masiyiwa. We celebrate entertainment moguls such as Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan or Bob Johnson. But before these black success stories, there was Berry Gordy. The man behind the sound that changed America and the world.
In the 1960s, Barry Gordy and the sound of Motown emerged as one of the most influential music ever produced in the world. Berry Gordy built Motown records, an independent music label which put black music on the map. Nobody in history had ever built a business that turned small independent black musicians into global icons. Black American sound captured the imagination of the world but little is ever said nowadays about the visionary Berry Gordy, how he started the company and how he shaped it into one of the most successful record labels in America at the time.
The story of Berry Gordy is very fascinating because it is the story of a family how families can come together and build an Empire and leave a legacy. When Gordy started he had done many things in his life; he was a veteran who had served his country during the Korean War. He came back to America and began working at the Ford assembly plant. The genius of Gordy was how he was able to connect the dots between his life and his work on the assembly line. He developed systems in his own company and produced artists that consistently topped the charts.
Gordy knew that his life was much more than being a worker on an assembly line so he did what any self-respecting American would do which was to pursue his dream. While working on the assembly line, he began to write songs. He wrote some of his first songs for Jackie Wilson who was very popular at the time. He is credited with writing some of Jackie Wilson’s bestselling records. Unfortunately, he was not compensated for his work. However, he learned a very valuable lesson from this experience. True compensation lay not just in the writing of the song the but in the ownership of the song. Berry Gordy believed that the only way he could truly own his music was if he owned the production company. He borrowed money from his family members who were only able to give him $800. Using the $800 Gordy started what became the most successful black owned entertainment company at the time, something many people had never even dreamed of.
Berry Gordy was an entrepreneur, a job creator, a masterful creator and a hero in the African American community. He is personally responsible for growing wealth for the African American community and created many millionaires in the process. Gordy was able to employ his own people and give them dignity and opportunity while selling a quality product. Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, Gladys Knight were signed by Berry Gordy.
