9.1. Motown

While Atlantic Records were making hits with R&B and jazz in the 50s, a new record company from Detroit, Michigan was capitalising on this new soul craze, allowing for further racial integration within popular music. In 1959, Berry Gordy founded Motown Records and throughout the 60s it became one of the most well known labels with an emphatic roster including Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. Soul embraced the energy of R&B and cultural underpinnings of gospel with its secularisation. The 60s were a time of adversity for black people in the US but also for a “rebirth” and acceptance in society as the civil rights movement raged on

Behind the success was a tightly run business. Gordy employed a set of writers and musicians and controlled the output of every artist on the label. Freedom of artists writing their own material was practically non-existent during Motown’s heyday; this kind of behaviour led groups like The Jackson 5 to leave the label as the level of their success began to increase. Motown was also noted as being “the largest black owned and black managed businesses in the country”, according to Black Enterprise Magazine (Wright, 1974)