Jim Carroll continued his occasional series on the history of record labels on Arena, celebrating the iconic sound of Motown, a label that started almost 60 years ago and provided us with some of the greatest pop songs ever written. As Jim puts it,
"Every single tune they released in their hay day up to I suppose the mid 70's is just a classic. It's an absolute classic. You could just put on the greatest hits of Motown and that will do you for the rest of your days."
Motown began life as Tamla Records, set up by Berry Gordy, a former boxer and automobile worker in Detroit City. He was earning extra money on the side by writing songs but quickly realised the real money was in publishing and record releasing so he set about getting a slice of the action for himself, egged on by songwriter and close friend Smokey Robinson.
"He started releasing records and he just hit this perfect formula. Every single thing they released in the early 60's was just gold. It was a hit factory. Detroit is synonymous with Motown records and it's synonymous with car plants and basically what Gordy did was, he took the car plant, the assembly line process and he applied it to music."
To his winning formula, Gordy added great songwriters, great talent, including Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye, house band The Funk Brothers and the Artist and Repertoire division whose makeover skills turned fresh face, wide-eyed Detroit kids into stars.
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