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Tuesday, November 5, 2024

New Book: ‘Motown: The Sound Of Young America’

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‘I wanted to sell all music to all people: whites, blacks, Jews, gentiles, cops and robbers’: A remarkable new book reveals how Motown conquered the world

Hot on the heels of a new West End musical, a brilliant new book – featuring rare images of The Jackson 5, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder and more – joyously evokes the sights and sounds of that…

‘I wanted to sell all music to all people: whites, blacks, Jews, gentiles, cops and robbers,’ says songwriter and former amateur boxer Berry Gordy who, aged just 29, launched his own record company in January 1959 with $800 from his family’s savings fund.

Yet by the mid-Sixties, Motown was on its way to becoming America’s largest black-owned business, with a stable of artists including The Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Martha & the Vandellas, The Four Tops and The Supremes.

Gordy was renowned for the strict work ethic he brought to Motown, evolving a musical production line that mirrored the Detroit car factories in which he had once worked.

Across the front of the record company’s first building was painted a simple declaration: ‘Hitsville USA’.

Motown’s music-makers were taught that a record must seize attention.

Gordy even conducted focus groups of teenagers to ask if they would buy a particular Motown 45 or a hot dog.

Championed by The Beatles and Dusty Springfield, Motown became a sensation in the Sixties and grew through the Seventies and Eighties, as its stars were joined by The Jackson 5, Lionel Richie and Rick James.

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Their astonishing stories, alongside these rare photos from the Motown archive, have been collected in a definitive new book which reveals the epic struggle to establish this revolutionary

This book is 400 pages and contains few photos of the Jackson 5.

SOURCE: DailyMail & Thames & Hudson

Pre-Order HERE

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