Motown

Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12, 1959, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. In the 1960s, Motown and its subsidiary labels were the most successful proponents of the Motown sound, a style of soul music with a mainstream pop appeal. Motown achieved 79 records in the top-ten of the Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 1969.

About Motown in brief

Summary Motown Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12, 1959, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a blend of motor and town, has become a nickname for Detroit, where the label was originally headquartered. In the 1960s, Motown and its subsidiary labels were the most successful proponents of the Motown sound, a style of soul music with a mainstream pop appeal. Motown achieved 79 records in the top-ten of the Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 1969. In 2014, UMG announced the dissolution of Island Def Jam, and Motown relocated back to Los Angeles to operate under the Capitol Music Group, now operating out of the Capitol Tower. In 2018,Motown was inducted into Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in a ceremony held at the Charles H. Wright Museum of Music in New York City. The most popular song produced by Gordy and his sister Anna was “Money’s on Me” by Debbie Reynolds, after the song popularized by the 1957 film The Bachelor, which also starred Debbie Reynolds. Gordy wrote or produced over a hundred sides for various artists, with his siblings Anna, Gwen and Robert, and other collaborators in varying combinations. In 1957, Gordy met Smokey Robinson, who at the time was a local seventeen-year-old singer fronting a vocal harmony group called the Matadors.

In 1958, he recorded the group’s song “Reet Petite” and released it as a single by leasing the record to a larger company outside Detroit called End Records. In 1959, he released “Come to Me’ on Gordy’s Tamla label on the hit “Tamla” Gordy originally wanted to name the label after Tammy Records, but the name was already in use. When he decided on Tamla instead, he found that the name Tamla was already used by Chess Records, which was distributed by Chess. In April 1959, Anna founded Anna Records which released about two dozen singles between 1959 and 1960 and distributed nationally by Chess and nationally by United Artists. In October 1959, the first single by the Miracles, “Got a Job’, was released on Anna Records, distributed nationally and locally by Chess by Janie Bradford, a secretary named Janie and Janie Gordy. In November 1959, the group released the single “Lonely Teardrops’”, a peak-popular hit of 1958. In December 1958, Gordy recorded a number of other records by forging a similar arrangement, most significantly with United Artists, and released them locally on his own startup imprint. In January 1959, ‘Come to me’ was released regionally on GordY’ and nationally on Chess Records. In November 1958, the group, now called the Miracle, released a single called “Get a Job,” which appeared in November 1957.