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• "Gordy Guiding Motown's 50th Anniversary"
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Full interview. (23:28)
 

Motown Records founder tells Tavis what it was like working with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson as children. (3:22)
 

Tavis: It is such a rare thing to get Berry Gordy to sit for a conversation about his life and legacy. He's sort of modest in that way, but this year is the 50th anniversary of Motown which, of course, he started at Hitsville, USA in Detroit five decades ago. So last night, if you saw this program, we were in a conversation with Mr. Gordy and the conversation got so rich at the end of 30 minutes, I was just getting warmed up.

So I asked him if he'd stick around for another 30 minutes to put another show on tape so we could continue our conversation about his life, his legacy and that of Motown which is, for so many of us, the soundtrack to our lives. So, Mr. Chairman, I'm glad you could stick around for a few more minutes to continue this.

Berry Gordy: So am I.

Tavis: I left our conversation last night talking about your songwriting. You were a boxer earlier in your career; then you started writing songs. We'll get to Motown here in just a second. But you started writing songs and one of the songs you wrote - you wrote many songs, but one of the songs you wrote and sold was to a guy named Jackie Wilson, a song we all know and groove to called "Lonely Teardrops." Tell me about that song.

Gordy: Well, Jackie was one of the greatest artists that I'd ever seen. My sisters, Ann and Gwen, were my big promoters and they introduced me to their boss, a guy named Al Green, at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit. Al happened to be Jackie's manager. But they were always promoting me, "My brother, the boxer; my brother, the boxer. We go to his fights." They all came to my fights and everything. "My brother, the songwriter. Help my brother."

Tavis: (Laughter) You had some good sisters, man. You got some good sisters.

Gordy: My mother, my sisters. Women in my life have been the biggest blessing ever and that's why I associate with them in so many areas. But my sisters were so strong. But at any rate, they introduced me to this guy, Al Green, who was managing Jackie Wilson. I got a chance to meet with Jackie and I saw him at the Flame Show Bar and he was just Mr. Excitement, the greatest, you know.

So I went to Jackie and I said, "You know, I want to write for you." (Laughter) He looked at me and he was like overwhelmed. "What do you mean, write for me?" I said, "I want to write a song for you. It's gonna be number one." He says, "Well, I don't have a recording contract right now" and this and that. I said, "Well, if you sing my song, it will be number one and you'll get a recording. You'll get everything."

Tavis: (Laughter) I just love your confidence.

Gordy: Well, I've always had confidence, you know. So he said okay, you know, not that easily, but, you know, we got back and forth and I kept bugging him, "You know, I'm here. I got some great stuff." So anyway, I wrote a song with a partner of mine, Billy Davis, and it was called "Reet Petite."

It was just a so-so song. "Reet Petite, the finest girl you ever want to meet," you know. Not the greatest song in the world, but he made it a classic. He made it a classic. It was a big hit. His first record. And my head used to hurt when they would play that record on the air.

I turned on the radio one day and it was playing on the radio and then I turned on Dick Clark just because I wanted to see what he was doing and they were playing the same record. It was that big. So my head hurt. That was my most exciting day probably in my life. Anyway, so that was "Reet Petite." Then after that, I'm not sure whether I did "To Be Loved" with Jackie after that or "Lonely Teardrops."

Tavis: They were both big. It don't really matter what order they came in. (Laughter) They were both hits, yeah.

Gordy: You know, "Lonely Teardrops" was - really my heart was crying when I wrote that song, you know.

Tavis: When your - I'm gonna jump forward and then come back again.

Gordy: Okay.

Tavis: Your autobiography which I love so much is entitled "To Be Loved."

Gordy: Right.

Tavis: If you don't have Berry Gordy's book, you got to get it. It's a great book about his life and legacy that this conversation can't really do justice to in a matter of 30 minutes, but you got to get his book, "To Be Loved."

So in your autobiography, "To Be Loved," that title for that book was obviously very important to you. I mean, there's so many things you could have named your book, so many things. Why did you go with "To Be Loved"?

Gordy: Well, because I wrote "To Be Loved" because - you know, like I said, this is such a rich history. I am the luckiest man in the world, the happiest man in the world, because everything has worked out right. But I was divorced by my wife, you know, my first wife because I was basically kind of a bum.

You know, I was trying to do my music. I was trying to do stuff and, you know, I eventually had to get a job in the factory, Lincoln-Mercury, where I got most of my ideas for the assembly line and all that stuff that happened which we can go into another time. But anyway, I left my house. I had no place to go and I had my bag and I knew I could go to my sister's.

I walked in there unannounced and everything at one o'clock in the morning or whenever it was and opened the door. Tears were in my eyes a little bit, but I just said, "I'm here." She said, "What do you mean?" "I'm here, I have left, I no longer have anybody, so I knew I could come here because I heard that home was a place that, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

(Laughter) So I just felt this is my home and my sister, Gwen, opened the door and she said, "What's happening?" I said, you know, "I'm being divorced and I got three kids and they're not gonna know me. They're not gonna love me." She said, "Oh, don't worry about that. They'll love you the same as we do. Come on in here and get some rest."

I stood there and I just started crying, you know, and I held her and I walked over to her piano. She had a piano and I sat down and I just started playing, crying, "Someone to care, someone to share, lonely hours and moments of despair, to be loved, to be loved, oh, what a feeling to be loved." Just wrote it out.

So I'm wishing for fortune and fame and all that stuff. I just sat there at the piano and I was crying and that became - and then I realized that, in order to be loved, you have to love.

Tavis: Um-hum. That's the trick.

Gordy: You know, that's how that came. But every song has a story because what we do at Motown and what we did at Motown and what I tried to bring to all the people is we deal with truth. You don't have to figure out what's somebody else's. What's the truth to you, you know? The truth to your production, the truth here, so forth and so on.

Tavis: How much did it help you, then - now I'm finally turning two nights late into the Motown story. How much did it help you, then, when you started working with all these artists? We'll talk about Diana and Stevie and Marvin and Michael and his brothers in a second. How much did it help you, then, when you became the Chairman of Motown that you knew the experience?

There are a lot of people who run record companies, but you knew the experience of being a songwriter. You knew the experience of having number one hits. You knew the experience of putting your truth on paper. I assume, as head of a record label, that helped you immensely because you had been there. You had done that.

Gordy: Of course, of course, because you're hands on and you do it yourself. I mean, I was a writer. In fact, I considered myself a great writer, you know. I wrote "To Be Loved" (laughter). I wrote "Do You Love Me?" I wrote all those things and I thought I was a great writer.

Smokey came in. I met him at an audition, Jackie's audition. They turned him down and I liked him. I said, "Man, you're really great." Smokey then, you know, said, "Well, I was turned down." I said, "But I'll help you" and I did. So we got together and Smokey at that point was not - I listened to a lot of his songs and he wasn't a great writer. He was a brilliant poet, but not a great writer.

Tavis: But you taught him how to be a great writer.

Gordy: Yes.

Tavis: He tells that story all the time. You got to tell a story. It's got to have a beginning; it's got to have - yeah.

Gordy: Yeah, well, that's it. Anyway, but once he got it, he became incredible putting the stuff together and then me as a writer, I dropped down a couple of notches. Then when Stevie and Marvin came, I dropped way down, you know. I was like in free fall, you know (laughter), as a writer. And the other artists, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Eddie Holland. Awesome. It kept happening through my career and I kept dropping. Lionel Ritchie, you know.

Tavis: (Laughter) How did your ego handle that since you're such a great songwriter?

Gordy: Oh, great, great because I kept telling myself, you know, you wanted to make people happy, didn't you? This was what you wanted. This is what you started out. So they were all happy and I was happy they were happy. I got a chance to learn so much more about life, you know. I still wrote, but my songs were like turned down after that because we had a Friday meeting -

Tavis: Before you tell this story, I wanted to go there. You read my mind.

Gordy: Okay.

Tavis: I want to preface this before you tell this story.

Gordy: Okay.

Tavis: I was in New York just a few weeks ago and, in New York, I stay at the same hotel all the time. At this particular hotel, Ashford and Simpson were performing for a few nights. I went downstairs and bought some tickets to see Nick and Val and I sat in the audience and enjoyed the show.

At a certain point in the show when they start singing the string of hits that they wrote for many of the Motown artists, where they do this part in the program where they sing their string of hits, they tell the story of how they got into Motown with Berry Gordy.

And you want to hear a story, Nick can tell this story of the first time that he went to Motown and sat around this table for the Friday meeting (laughter) stuff, he tells a great story about how it went down, but you were about to say that every Friday you all had a meeting where all you all sit around a big table, you play these records. I'll let you tell the story. It's a great story.

Gordy: Well, we come to this room and we sat around. In that room, you were immune to anything. You could say anything. You're immune. You could talk about me, you could say my records were garbage or whatever it was, and they were all immune and they knew they could talk to me as the Chairman like that and no reprisals.

Sometimes the sales department wanted to put out a record and get into the meeting and they would just knock it down, you know, and they would sometimes take reprisals on the people that didn't go with what they wanted. (Laughter) Once they told me about it, man, those guys were in real trouble. Hey, man, when you come into this meeting, man, that's what it's supposed to be. It's about truth. But then, of course, I had lost out because a lot of my records lost out to Smokey when they'd put his up and put mine up and didn't win.

I knew they were only doing that because I was the Chairman and they had the right to go against my records because I had always told them, you know, "I'm in charge, but logic is the boss. If you can prove me wrong, do it." So a lot of those records that Smokey got credit for, I mean, I had some better hits that didn't get out. (Laughter) They were in the can because people got mad at me and they would just vote on Smokey.

Tavis: Or at least that's your story and you're sticking to it. (Laughter)

Gordy: That's right. (Laughter)

Tavis: As Nick tells the story -

Gordy: I wanted to say about Nick and Val, when they came in, their record - they were at that meeting and their first record, I believe, was the Marvin Gaye record, Marvin and Tammi, and their record just won hands down. But they were incredible.

Tavis: He tells the story of what scared him was to that meeting that you describe about truth, right before he got up, they had voted down a number of other records and the person before him was Smokey. On that particular day, Smokey's record got voted down.

He said he knew that that was it for him and Val. They had presented nothing, but they had voted Smokey down? He knew he was in trouble, but he played the record and you all took him in and the rest is history and they started writing hits for Motown.

Gordy: That's right. They were awesome because their record was so strong, you know. Anyway, but they were just great all the way. In fact, they were single-handedly responsible for Diana Ross's single career. They wrote all of her first records, "The Boss," all that whole album thing. I mean, those people were awesome.

Tavis: This is a story that I've heard so many times, but it is so moving for me and you've been so humble about it over the years that it's worth telling again and that is the hit that almost wasn't. You and Marvin went back and forth over "What's Going On."

Gordy: Yeah.

Tavis: You all went back and forth. Maybe one of the greatest songs ever written, but you and Marvin went back and forth about "What's Going On." Marvin obviously won in the end.

Gordy: Right, absolutely.

Tavis: But tell me about that. What were you not hearing?

Gordy: (Laughter).

Tavis: What were you missing that day, Mr. Chairman?

Gordy: Well, I wasn't missing anything, you know. I loved the record, but I was his manager and I was his record company and I was all those things and I was like the protector of these young people. Marvin Gaye was the biggest pop singer that Motown had ever seen, you know, with his stature and everything, you know, "You Are A Wonderful One," "Pride and Joy," you know, all the stuff that he did, "I Heard It Through The Grapevine."

Marvin was our number one superstar single male and I was his manager. So when he came up with this protest record, you know, police brutality, all these things, you know, the Vietnam War, I'm saying, "Wait a minute. This is my sex symbol guy?" All of a sudden, he's now coming in and, you know, that's kind of rough. But I was more concerned about him as his manager.

So I'm saying, "Marvin, do you really want to come out? Police brutality; the Vietnam War? You want to get political? You want to get all these things? You got this great career going." We went back and forth, but Marvin was the kind of person that would just disagree to disagree. I mean, he had a long history when he came into the company.

He wanted to do Frank Sinatra type songs, period. He refused to do what he later did. We said, "Well, Marvin, I want you to be you. Be who you are." So he did this album called "When I'm Alone I Cry" and it was a beautiful great album, Frank Sinatra type album, but it didn't sell. In fact, I used to tell him, "It went double plastic, Marvin." (Laughter)

Tavis: Not double platinum, double plastic. (Laughter).

Gordy: So then, I said, "Okay, the next song you do should be something more like who you are." So they wrote a song called "Stubborn Kind of Fellow." They put it out and it was a big hit, so he realized about being himself. So at that point, he was himself and he just got into it. So when he came into "What's Going On," he was himself more than I wanted him to be himself because that's what he felt. But he convinced me.

He said, "Man, I really feel this, you know, and I want to waken the minds of men. I got, you know, a brother in Vietnam, I got this. . ." Whatever he did, he was convincing that he really, really believed. I said, "What about your career, Marvin?" He said, "I don't care about the career. I want to waken the minds of men."

Tavis: How tragic - I mean, I don't even know that you have the words for this. This may be an unfair question to ask. If it is, we can move right past it. But I know how the rest of us who loved and still love Marvin felt when we heard the news on that April 1. I know I and a bunch of other people thought it was a very, very sick April Fool's joke when I heard the news of Marvin's passing. But how did Berry Gordy navigate his way past that moment, past that news, when you heard that?

Gordy: Well, I don't know. I guess, you know, most of us were just numb, period, because we had a great personal love for Marvin. I mean, we were just numb. It was like it was, you know, one of those things where it was unbelievable for such a long time, you know. I mean, we were like the rest of the world. We were saddened and, you know, it was just a horrible day for all of us.

Tavis: Let me ask you another impossible question since I'm on a roll with impossible questions now. And if anybody can answer this question, you can. I've never asked this of anybody because I figured that Berry Gordy would have something to say to me about this. They're not the same age, obviously, they're not the same age, but Stevie comes to you as Little Stevie Wonder.

Gordy: Um-hum.

Tavis: Michael comes to you as Michael Jackson, but they're both kids. Compare, contrast - I'm not saying put anybody down. I'm just saying you got two kids who come to you and become towering artists as kids. Assess for me what you thought, what you saw, what you heard when you got Little Stevie Wonder, kid; Michael Jackson, kid. You got two kids here.

Gordy: Well, Stevie Wonder was first and I tried not to even see Michael Jackson because Stevie was incredible. He was a young guy, a young Black kid, and his mother was so tough on us. I didn't even like his singing, you know. I didn't like his singing at all. He played bongos, he sung, but I loved his harmonica playing. He was so great with the harmonica. The first record we put out on him was the harmonica and he was great.

But for the kind of work and trouble, he had to have a tutor; he had to have, you know, Clarence Paul who was his producer travel with him. He had a teacher. His mother was with him. It was like an entourage and the blind kid was not raking in any money at all. (Laughter) His mother was demanding all this stuff, you know, but she was so lovable and she loved her child so much and she really thought he was greater than he was at the time. (Laughter)

Tavis: At the time, yeah.

Gordy: Yeah. He wanted to be with Motown so bad, but his mother turned out to be just a great, wonderful mother. We have long talks and stuff like that. He just developed into - he did his harmonica thing for us and then he, you know, got lucky with a record at The Apollo, you know, where he was doing his little "clap your hands just a little bit louder" (laughter). What's the name of that?

Tavis: "Fingertips."

Gordy: "Fingertips," yeah. That was a big hit, but he had a little baby voice.

Tavis: And because of all that drama, you didn't even want to see five kids.

Gordy: Oh, no. When Suzanne came in and said, "I got this little group" and I said, "New group?" She said, "Yeah, they're kids." I said, "Oh, no, no, thank you. No thank you." She said, "Please, please, Mr. Gordy, just listen to them." I said, "No, no. I got Stevie Wonder and that's enough. I don't want no kids or tutors or this and that." She said, "Oh, please, you just listen to them. I'll understand it, but just listen to them." So I said okay.

She said Bobby Taylor, one of our artists, had turned her on to this group and they were just great. So knowing that she had good taste, I say, "Okay, fine. I'll just listen to them." Naturally, when I saw them, I went and grabbed my little new videotape recorder and started filming these kids because he was so great. The little tape you see with him, the little kids on TV or whenever you see it, that was my recording of it.

Tavis: You recorded that. So you say you're a boxer, songwriter, Chairman, videographer. (Laughter)

Gordy: No, it was so much fun and you don't realize what you're doing. You're doing all this stuff and just the love throughout that whole thing. What we're gonna do for the 50th is to show we had a lot of stuff coming, you know, a documentary telling in a long form documentary and then a theatrical documentary, all different in terms of different aspects of it because it was a phenomenal thing that happened.

I want it to happen again, so therefore I'm trying to, whenever I talk to the young people and people that really feel that they are - like I told "Vanity Fair" people, I say, "You can do a story" and they say, "What can we ask you?" I say, "Ask me everything. As long as you deal with the truth, I will give you everything."

So they asked me everything, you know, from the Mafia to this to that, the whole thing, and they went to the artists and got the truth and went to the people that worked there and went through all the people. Maybe you read the article.

Tavis: I read it. It was a great piece.

Gordy: So I was just very gratified that the story's out there. The legacy's fine.

Tavis: You're in good shape.

Gordy: I'm in great shape.

Tavis: He's in better than great shape. I'm speechless and I never am, but to have the opportunity to sit for not one night, but two nights with Berry Gordy, with the legacy that has left or is leaving - he ain't going nowhere anytime soon - the legacy he is leaving and the life that he is leading, all of our lives are enriched.

I mean, just imagine for a moment. Just take two seconds and imagine for a moment what our lives would be like had there been no Motown. All right, that's enough. I don't want you to get a migraine. Don't get a migraine. I can't imagine life without Motown.

So it's 50 years of celebration for Motown. There's a beautiful ten CD deluxe box set shaped like the house that Motown was made in and still exists in Detroit. Pick up your copy. I got mine.

Gordy: And those are hits from around the world, number one hits from around the world. You know, the original number one hits.

Tavis: That's why the box is so big. (Laughter) That's why the house is so thick. Honored to have you here.

Gordy: My pleasure.

Tavis: Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Good to see you.

Gordy: Yeah.