Origins of Hitsville USA: What was Motown’s first hit?
Hit singles come and go like the changing of the tides, but back in the 1960s, nobody dominated the pop charts quite like Motown Records. From humble origins back in the 1950s, the label founded by Berry Gordy Jr helped to popularise the infectious sounds of funk and soul music across the entire globe. During the 1960s, the label became an undisputed hit factory, producing immensely successful records by now-iconic artists like Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, and Smokey Robinson, among countless others.
So, who was the first to kick off that unparalleled run of hit singles?
Soul music was a vitally important movement within American popular culture. Rooted in the sounds of gospel and R&B, soul was the sound of Black expression during the 1950s and 1960s. For the most part, though, soul artists were restricted to small independent labels, usually situated in cities like Chicago or Detroit. It was only when Motown came along – and subsequently bought out a lot of these smaller labels – that soul music really began to take hold in the American mainstream, soundtracking an era of civil rights and highlighting Black excellence.
During the 1960s, Motown entered something of a golden age, producing a whopping 110 top-ten singles between 1961 and 1971. These timeless classics gave rise to colossal stars like Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder, inspiring countless future generations of musicians across the United States. However, to truly understand the enigma that was Berry Gordy’s hit factory, we must go right back to the beginning.
Back in the late 1950s, a young Berry Gordy Jr began writing songs for a plethora of artists and quickly started leasing these songs to record labels across the nation in order to gain widespread attention. Before too long, Gordy realised his hopes of establishing his own record label, Tamla, using money borrowed from his parents. With that newly established imprint, Gordy released Marv Johnson’s ‘Come To Me’, the first bonafide Motown single, kicking off an entirely new era of soul music.
Although ‘Come To Me’ brought Gordy enough success to continue on with his Tamla record label, the song did not trouble the mainstream charts in the US. The beginning of Gordy’s longtime relationship with chart success kicked off a few months later, with the release of the groundbreaking single ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ by Barrett Strong. Penned by Gordy alongside Janie Bradford, the song made it to number two on the Billboard R&B charts and number 23 on the Hot 100 in January 1960.
The song might have been issued as a single on Tamla, but it was distributed nationally by Anna Records, run by Gordy’s sisters, Anna and Gwen Gordy. It was this national distribution which allowed the song to enter the charts, rather than its Tamla pressing which was largely confined to local distribution around the Detroit area. However, the song’s success brought Tamla newfound attention from the musical mainstream and, eventually, Gordy’s label consumed Anna Records.
Barrett Strong’s fantastic track defined the early days of Motown, perfectly establishing the sound and energy of Gordy’s label. It would not take long before Gordy’s label witnessed its very first number one single, when The Marvelettes’ ‘Please Mr Postman’ reached number one in 1961, only a year after Strong’s single entered the charts. The rest, as they say, is history.
What happened to Barrett Strong after ‘Money’?
‘Money’ might have been an essential track in establishing Motown Records, but it was not big enough to firmly establish Barrett Strong as a performer. Following on from that hit single, Strong never re-entered the charts as a vocalist. In total, Strong released six singles on Tamla Records, but none of them recaptured the magic of ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’. That is not to say, however, that Strong’s career was a failure.
After all, ‘Money’ went on to become something of a soul standard, covered by everybody from The Beatles to The Flying Lizards, with varying degrees of success. What’s more, Strong’s career as a songwriter only increased in notoriety following the release of that 1959 single. The performer had a hand in writing such classics as ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ (popularised by Marvin Gaye), ‘War’ (popularised by Edwin Starr), and ‘Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone’ (popularised by The Temptations). So, even if he failed to recapture the spirit of ‘Money’, his songwriting genius meant he was never short of a bob or two.
