The Motown artist who shocked Berry Gordy with their ability: “In every field”
Back in the 1960s, Motown Records was as much in the business of collecting talent as it was releasing hit records.
If you look back across the roster of their peak years, the sheer volume of now-iconic names who fell under the label’s ever-expanding roster is staggering, but even Berry Gordy knew that a handful of those names stood head and shoulders above the rest.
Unlike the established music industry, which often aimed to poach pre-made talent and exploit it for all that it’s worth, Motown worked a little differently. With a few notable exceptions, the vast majority of Motown signings were virtual unknowns when they first passed through Hitsville USA, allowing Gordy and his crack team of producers and songwriters to essentially mould those artists into something new.
Take The Supremes, for instance: when the vocal trio first came to Motown in 1961, under the name The Primettes, they were fairly rudderless and without a clear artistic direction or sound. Within a few years, the label had transformed them into the Diana Ross-fronted flagship act that earned the label more hits than anybody else.
There were, of course, casualties to this approach, and Motown never had any shortage of underutilised, underrated, and often forgotten artists on its roster – the likes of Chris Clark, Brenda Holloway, and The Originals, for instance, never really got a chance to exercise the extent of their talents at the label.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, though, Stevie Wonder went from a childhood novelty act to one of the greatest songwriters in American history during his time with Motown.
Little Stevie Wonder, as he was originally billed, signed up to the Detroit label aged just 11, and spent many of his adolescent years packaged as the kind of child R&B sensation that Motown would later strike upon once again with The Jackson Five. As the years went on, however, it became clear that Wonder’s talents were being woefully underutilised by two-bit recordings of Ray Charles songs and middle-of-the-road R&B hits.
As Berry Gordy himself once put it, “He excelled in every field, it wasn’t just his writing. But it was his producing that was unique, sound that was unique and his chord structure that people are still trying to figure out today.” In fact, Wonder’s talents were so all-encompassing that he managed to beat the label at its own game, negotiating his own contract and giving himself full creative control over his output.
This unprecedented deal then allowed Wonder to exercise the extent of those multi-faceted talents Gordy was talking about, striking upon a selection of his all-time greatest records during the 1970s, transforming the very perception of the Motown sound with groundbreaking works like Innervisions, Talking Book, and, of course, Songs in the Key of Life.
Wonder had always been one of Motown’s greatest assets, even if he wasn’t always allowed to reach his full potential during those early days, but his output post-contract negotiations in 1971 ushered in an entirely new age, not just for the label but for the entire landscape of soul music.
