Who Created “the Motown Sound”? (Recordings Galore!)

By Nicholas Stix

As “everyone knows,” Berry Gordy (1929-) created the Motown Sound, when he founded the Motown Records in 1959, at the two-family house he had bought for that purpose at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, which would become the most famous address in Detroit, which was then the Motor City.

The entry at Encyclopedia Britannica helpfully explains that Gordy benefited immensely from the excellent music programs that were provided and maintained by the Detroit public schools during the 1950s. However, the entry fails to mention that those schools and their programs were maintained by Whites. black rule destroyed both.

(In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Detroit was positively bursting with talent. Several years ago, I stumbled onto an oral history of Motown. One interview was with a woman who had gotten a secretarial job from Gordy. She recalled how the musicians’ union used to make “surprise” visits, to make sure enough people were working recording sessions. Gordy got a heads-up in advance of one such visit, and hustled the secretary into the studio. Soon enough, he gave her a chance to sing and, lo and behold, she had professional-caliber talent.

Gordy hired an array of house musicians who would become legendary. One was a quiet fellow who was paid to play the drums. He sat in the back wearing a hat and sunglasses. One day, he got a chance to sing. His name: Marvin Gaye.)

Unfortunately, the Encyclopedia Britannica completely misrepresents another aspect of Berry Gordy’s success. While it does mention, in passing, that Gordy relied on his parents for financial backing (that was apparently only because they were black), it asserts that he was dependent on black role models to succeed in the business. The anonymous author asserts that the black founders of Vee-Jay Records were the trailblazers whom Gordy followed.

That is a lie. Apparently, even Encyclopedia Britannica has submitted to black supremacism.

[Full disclosure: Ted Pappas, since 1998 Encyclopedia Britannica’s executive editor, was from 1988-1998 the managing editor at Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, where from 1992-1998 he was the closest thing to a “rabbi” to me, and shepherded a dozen of my articles to publication (both as N.S. and as Robert Berman), including having me replace historian Eugene Genovese, with a profile of George S. Schuyler’s black nationalism, when Genovese took ill and could not do the article he’d been commissioned to do. As soon as Ted left, drunken editor-in-chief Thomas Fleming, who never thanked Ted for carrying him for ten years, decided that I was no longer of use, and refused to publish or pay me for an ambitious profile of New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.

I don’t recall Ted ever cutting more than two words from any given manuscript: One time he deleted “Jim Snow,” and another time, he cut my reference to Washington, D.C. as “Chocolate City,” which I had learned its black denizens called it.

More recently, an editor has repeatedly butchered my work, and then suggested to donors that I’m no longer a competent writer: “Nicholas’ work requires editing.” I would edit each manuscript dozens of times before submitting it.]

Berry Gordy’s heroes had names like Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn, Jack Warner and Darryl F. Zanuck. Gordy consciously modeled Motown on the Golden Age Hollywood studios to a “t,” including even having a finishing school, teaching his pupils how to walk on stage, dress, dance, and even comport themselves in public.

Enter our friends.

In 1956, a fledgling composer named Burt Bacharach and a veteran lyricist named Hal David cast their lots together.

However, Bacharach complained that arrangers and producers were always ruining his songs.

In 1961, Bacharach encountered a 20-year-old who was singing backup at a recording session of The Drifters, a popular black group. (The Drifters were Bill Pinkney, Willie Ferbee, Clyde McPhatter, Gerhart Thrasher and Andrew Thrasher.) Bacharach immediately knew that she was for them. Her name: Marie Dionne Warrick.

As Rudy Radelic would write in Copper magazine, October 11, 2021 (Issue 147),

“This led to background vocal work in recording studios in New York. At a session for The Drifters’ single ‘Mexican Divorce,’ her voice was noticed by Bacharach. He and Hal David hired her to record demos of tunes they were composing, in order to pitch them to the record labels. One demo in particular was for a tune intended for The Shirelles, ‘It’s Love That Really Counts.’ When Florence Greenberg, the president of Scepter Records, heard the demo, she insisted Warrick be signed to the label. A deal was worked out with Warrick joining Bacharach and David’s production company, which in turn was signed to Scepter.”

(Warrick became “Warwick,” due to a mistake a secretary made with the paperwork at Scepter. She went with it.)

In 1962, Bacharach and David wrote the first song they promised to Warwick, “Make It Easy on Yourself.” The only problem was that Florence Greenberg didn’t like it, and refused to let them record it for Scepter.

Enter Calvin Carter and Jerry Butler.

Butler, a black Chicago pop singer with a rich baritone, was acquainted both with Bacharach and with Calvin Carter, an “A&R man” (artists and repertoire) from Vee-Jay Records. Carter was the brother of Vivian Carter, who had co-founded and co-owned Vee-Jay with her husband, James C. Bracken. (Actually, although not the owner, a record label’s A&R man is almost as powerful as its owner, due to his influence over what will be recorded, and by whom.)

Songfacts.com reports (undated):

“Bacharach is credited as an arranger on the song, but he also produced it, which was a first for the composer. The experience led to an upswing in his career and ushered in a catalog of classics with Bacharach in the producer role. He told The Guardian: ‘An A&R man in Chicago – Calvin Carter at Vee-Jay Records – called me and said: “Listen, Jerry Butler wants to record this song of yours, ‘Make It Easy on Yourself.’ We want you to come to New York, book the musicians, set the tempo, and you basically are in charge.” That was the first time anybody let me do that. I think we’d written some pretty good songs that became not-good songs by the time a producer or arranger got hold of them. Being allowed to be in control opened up whole new avenues: working with Dionne, Gene Pitney. I just went from there.’”

(I’ve seen Butler (1939-) referred to as a “soul singer,” but that just means he’s black.)

Butler claimed, in an npr interview circa 2004, just after his ghostwritten autobiography, Only the Strong Survive came out, that due to Florence Greenberg’s disinterest, the song was orphaned, but that V-J’s Carter told Butler that he wanted to record it, and Carter told Bacharach that he would give him full creative freedom to produce and arrange it.

To Bacharach, who was always complaining of producers’ and arrangers’ mischief, Carter was making him an offer he couldn’t refuse. But that meant betraying his musical protege.


Jerry Butler” “Make It Easy on Yourself”




When Bacharach and David broke the news to Warwick, the budding young diva was inconsolable, and cried out, “Don’t make me over! Don’t make me over!”

The songwriting team mused over Warwick’s plaint.

In those days, Bacharach and David were so talented, and on such a roll that they could write conventional ballads like “Make It Easy on Yourself” (Dionne/Butler), and create a whole new sound, “the Motown Sound,” in response to a young woman’s wail of frustration. “Don’t Make Me over” was recorded by Warwick in August 1962, and released in October, 1962.


Dionne Warwick: “Don’t Make Me over”




In any event, the earliest hit recording I’m aware of from Motown with a recognizable “Motown Sound” was “Heat Wave,” by Martha and the Vandellas, from August, 1963, almost a year later than “Don’t Make Me over.” (“Martha” was Martha Reeves.)


Martha Reeves & The Vandellas: “Heat Wave” (1963)




The next year, Bacharach and David turned on a dime yet again, creating a completely different, jazzy song of early marriage and romance that became Jack Jones’ Grammy-winning, breakthrough record, “Wives and Lovers,” and country-crossover song for Gene Pitney, “Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa.”


“Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa”: Gene Pitney



“Wives and Lovers”: Jack Jones