Listen closely, however, to “Please Mr. Postman,” “Ain’t That Peculiar,” “Quicksand” or “Mickey’s Monkey” and the grit and groove of pure r&b become readily apparent. Furthermore, a square look at the life of Berry Gordy, Jr., the man who built the Motown empire, will reveal that he had firsthand experience with all the trappings of the r&b lifestyle.
He was born in 1928 into a large, close-knit family. His parents had come to Detroit from Georgia in the 1920s and eventually had eight children. There was a lot of attention, discipline, affection and apprenticeship in their household. Pops (Berry Sr.) had several enterprises including a grocery, a plastering contracting business and a carpentry service. He expected his children to learn these businesses and join them. The Gordys were solidly middle-class, well-groomed and involved in civic matters.
Young Berry Jr. greatly respected his father, but couldn’t work up any passion for the family’s sources of income. At about the age of twenty, he began to have some success as a boxer, but he was also a rabid music fan by then.
Detroit had ample room for families like the Gordys and that of Reverend C.L. Franklin, the famous preacher at the city’s New Bethel Baptist Church. (He was also the father of Aretha). In fact, the Gordy offspring often visited the Franklin home for singing and musical conversation.
There was another side to life for the city’s black population, however. From an early age, Berry Jr. knew about the night life to be found in the venues along Hastings Street and John R Street, places with names such as The Twenty Grand, The Royal Blue, the Flame Showbar, The Paradise Theater, The Chesterfield Lounge, The Graystone Ballroom and The Frolic Showbar. Some stretches of these streets offered glitz and top-name entertainment such as Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington and Miles Davis. Next to these were pockets of hardcore vice, where sex and dope were peddled day and night. Gordy became familiar with both environments.
The aspiring songwriter came of age as communism advanced upon the Korean peninsula and he was accordingly drafted into military service. His first out-of-country experience involved driving his commanding officer around in the mountains of northeast Asia. He kept that stint as short as possible and returned to Detroit upon his discharge in 1953.
