History of Motown Records Free Essay Example

Berry Gordy played a paramount role in the 1960’s African American shift into the American Music Industry through the establishment of the highly recognised company and genre “Motown”. As the Progenitor of Motown Records Berry Gordy introduced to the American Music Industry some of the most sizably voluminous artists of all time take the stage and within a decennium engendered the “Black Pop” genre, which was heedfully auricularly discerned and purchased from a segregated audience.

The business transmuted the way record labels would polish, nurture and distribute their artist, having an impact on the number of jobs that were introduced into the Music Industry, dealing and consulting with marketing, artist development, choreography.

With Berry Gordy’s all rounded adeptness set including musical composition inscribing, business management, engendering and artist development coalesced with his entrepreneurial spirit, it is clear he has had a paramount and lasting impact on the music industry, which commenced with the establishment of Motown Records.

Motown of course, stands for more than just historic music.

The label and it’s remarkable legacy is a reflection of the strenuous exertion of dedicated individuals surmounting incredible obstacles to achieve great prosperity. The birth of Motown music came to be in a small recording studio named Hitsville, U.S.A. it was owned by Barry Gord who came from a middle class family whom he had borrowed money from in order to start up Motown.

The main stage of Motown music emanated from a minute house that had been remodeled into a recording studio, the denomination of the company was Hitsville, U.

S.A. Mr. Gordy had amassed the best jazz and blues players in and Motown was born through his genius.This minute but dynamic record company has engendered and avail make many stars that we all know today such as Diana Ross and the Supreme, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and more recently the Jackson 5, Boyz II Men , and Queen Latifah. Hitsville U.S.A. was one of the first African American owned record companies, this was just one step in popularizing and taking a step for African’s Americans many aptitudes to become prominent and chart topping.Motown has become America’s pop soul music for anyone and everyone.

Berry Gordon’s legendary Motown made its mark not just in the music industry, but at society with the immensely large, with the sound that has become one of the most paramount musical accomplishments and stunning prosperity stories of the 20th century. The great prosperity of Motown records contributes all the embodies and all the aptitude he brought out in others. Under his leadership and through tenaciousness and support of the family Motown and artist, Gordy forged incipient grounds minorities and made the Motown sound an ecumenical success beloved by millions to this day.

In1968, the company has 5 records out of the top 10 on Billboard’s sultry 100 chart. In the tardy 80s and 90s all of Motown’s major artists were inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame. Upon his own induction in 1988, Motown’s progenitor was given the following encomium: “ Gordy endeavored to reach across the racial divide with music that could physically contact all people, regardless of the color of their skin. Under this tutelage, Motown became a model of ebony capitalism, pride and self expression and a repository for some of the greatest aptitude ever assembled at one company.

Motown’s stable of singers, songwriters, and musicians took the concept of simple, catchy pop musical compositions to a intensity…After Motown, ebony popular music would never again be dismissed as a minority taste…Aesthetically no less than commercially, Motown’s achievements will likely remain nonpareil and unstoppable”.

Motown had 110 top 10 hits. Motown acts were relishing a widespread popularity among ebony/white audiences kindred where William “Smokey” Robinson verbalized “Into the ’60s, I was still not of a frame of mind that we were not only composing music, we were making history.Mr. Gordy earned 367 million dollars in 16 years. Motown sold millions of albums between 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s. Although Motown sold more in the 70’s and 80’s,

BMotown will always be recollected for the hits they produced in the 60’s because no other company had produced so many hits during that time. With Motown having celebrated its 50th Anniversary, the public’s desire for the Classic Motown material has not diminished. The legendary Motown vault is continually explored to unearth previously unheard material.

Thus verbally expressing Motown’s cultural impact. The record company specialised in a ‘type’ of soul music it referred to with the trademark “The Motown Sound”, made and crafted with an auditory perceiver towards pop appeal, Motown Sound typically used tambourines to accentuate the back beat, melodic electric bass-guitar lines, distinct melodic and chord structures, plus a call and replication singing technique style that originated in gospel music. The utilization of involute arrangements and elaborate melismatic vocal riffs were avoided and Motown producers believed in the principle of “KISS” (Keep it simple,stupid ).

Motown always stuck to the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) philosophy. One of the most paramount aspects of a legendary break emanates from its facility to be utilized in repetition; if it becomes too intricate, then it is less liable to work its way into the mind of its listeners. A vigorous backbeat begets an optimum break, and Motown had vigorous backbeats in spades. The Motown Sound always revolved around the backbeat of drummers like William ‘Benny’ Benjamin, Richard ‘Pistol’ Allen, and Uriel Jones to carry everything else forward, and it was typically accented by Jack Ashford’s tambourine and the rhythmic basslines carried by the legendary index finger of James Jamerson.

Motown music became a symbol of hope, and it was doing astronomically well by reaching audiences across ethnic lines around the world.The concept of Motown was to transform unknowns off the street into national, sometimes international stars and refine their sound for mass appeal. The music commenced out as music for adolescent America, with a primary fixate on white America. It was withal a leverage for Ebony artists to be optically discerned and aurally perceived in an image they had control over, during a time where non-white representation was nonexistent and Ebony music was vilified.

Motown music was at the precipice of what the modern music landscape looks like to now, except the shout-and-call of gospel has been superseded with the lyrical wordplay of rap and the throbbing beats of trap music. The legacy of Motown is that it lives on through the ascendance of contemporary genres such as rap, which currently reigns as the most popular music genre in the U.S. In other words: pop music is Ebony music, and it would have to experience a radical shift to divorce itself from the bedrock Motown established.