#11-The Rise # Fall Of Motown

Our Motown Heritage (Part 11)
United We Stand - Part 1
The Rise & Fall Of Motown Records

by Robert Dennis

           United We Stand

Motown Records was the child of Berry Gordy, Jr, better known at the time as "BG." He conceived it, he founded it and he made it work. He was the producer for all of the product and he was the undisputed head of a black music family called Motown. In the early 60's it was all about family and helping each other achieve the music goals everyone wanted. Secretaries were recording stars and the music groups did background vocals for each other.

As the family grew in size and creative talent, Berry started letting others produce artists, starting with the production team of Brianbert (Robert Bateman and Brian Holland).   Motown Records established itself with back-to-back #1 million sellers, Shop Around by the Miracles (Produced by BG) and "Please, Mr. Postman (produced by Brianbert).

Maintaining hits by their "established" artists and getting new hits on other artists, Motown began a three-year building period - making a hit-factory. Berry encouraged "friendly competition" by letting any writing and producing team work on any artist and by releasing was was judged "the best" rather than releasing a song because it was produced by particular team. Just because you got an artist a hit, didn't mean you would get the follow-up - you had to compete with the other producers and writers.

During this period, remarkably diverse collaborations formed with hall of fame writer-producer Smokey Robinson releasing the hit, Mickey's Monkey, written and produced by the Holland-Dozier-Holland team. Several acts had a string of hits with the production team changing every other release. The "family" was happy working under these terms and with the vibe of "let the best team win."

Motown would "explode" and establish itself as the number one hit record company in 1964 beginning with the top-of-the-year smash releases by three of the prominent teams. Smokey Robinson's "My Guy" was released on Mary Wells (one of the biggest black female vocalist of the time), BG's, The Way You Do The Things you do was released on the Temptations and Holland-Dozier-Holland's, "Where Did Our Love Go?" was released on The Supremes.

The second Supremes hit, "Baby Love," would displace the Beatles as the number#1 national hit and the whole world would notice Motown. It seemed that anything released in 1964 was a hit. By the end of the year, statistics didn't lie and over 75% of Motown's many releases reached at least top 40 on national pop charts. They sold more single records than any record company in the world, capturing over 10% of this huge music market.

It would be another three years of glory times for Motown before the very policies that established the hit factory would begin to drive devastating wedges in the family structure.

          But Divided We Fail

Holland-Dozier-Holland formed when Bob Bateman (Motown's first recording engineer/ producer) left Motown for "greener" pastures in 1962. HDH quickly established themselves as the prime writing/producing team at Motown.

The 1964 explosion of Motown was largely due to this songwriting/producer team. Motown had captured 10% of the market in 1964, but a full 75% of the releases that were hits were written and/or produced by the HDH team members. Theoretically, at least, HDH by themselves could have been the biggest hit record company in the world.

For the next three years the HDH team maintained their creative supremacy at Motown coming by up with an unheard of string of six #1 hits on the Supremes, an almost-as-impressive hit series on such artists as the Four Tops and individual productions on many other artists.

But three years of reigning the number one team and receiving no special priority began to grind on the Holland-Dozier-Holland team. The situation was strained when Berry was considering giving the next Supremes release to another team after HDH had litterly made the artist. Eddie Holland, the business mind of team, began letting the team's reaction to the situation be known to BG.

Berry was not ready to admit that the "best team" vibe was past it's prime. When HDH saw that they wouldn't make much progress on an exclusive production deal on Motown Artists, they suggested that BG let them develop new artists exclusive to them while continuing to produce for regular Motown artists under the "best team" rules. By today's standards this is a logical deal that would be entered into in a minute, but to BG at the time, it was destruction of a basic operating principle that had served him well.   When he said no, the unity that was the true cause of success split wide and far.

BG tried to placate HDH by making Brian Holland a Vice President in charge of Quality Control and Eddie Holland the A&R Director. From these executive positions in the company, they would have more control over what was recorded (A&R Department) as well as what was released (Quality Control Department). But the team didn't want music politics, they wanted to make music and have it released. Their reaction was to plot their exit from Motown.

A separate HDH and Motown would continue to be a major force in the music industry for another five years until a major record company attack would leave HDH totally stultified and Motown a minute shadow of its former self.

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