Hoping to make more money as a studio owner than a songwriter, Berry Gordy leveraged an $800 loan from his family to start a new record company in Detroit called Tamla Records 56 years ago on January 12, 1959. The following year, he changed the company’s name to Motown (“motor town,” riffing on Detroit’s auto industry ties). The company name, and the sound it became associated with, were largely behind helping black musicians achieve mainstream success in the 1960s.

Motown placed 79 records in Billboard’s Top 10 singles chart during the 1960s, and 110 between 1961-1971. The Supremes, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5…all of them released singles from the Motown hit factory. (The Hitsville recording studio Gordy purchased and renovated in 1959 was open 22 hours a day.)

Gordy recognized the resistance to black musicians in much of the country in the 1960s, which he countered by carefully controlling the images of his artists, many of whom had no experience with public life. He schooled them on how to dress, groom, and speak before sending them out.

Combining a squeaky-clean public image with an R&B/soul sound that was designed to have crossover appeal with black and white audiences, Motown arrived at the perfect time. White kids were getting turned on to black musicians against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement. Smokey Robinson described the change in the country years later: “I would come to the South in the early days of Motown and the audiences would be segregated. Then they started to get the Motown music and we would go back and the audiences were integrated and the kids were dancing together and holding hands.”

Motown couldn’t solve all of society’s problems, but it did make it impossible to go back to the days of segregated musicians for segregated audiences. After Motown, there would just be musicians and audiences, period. And once a culture changes, society itself isn’t far behind.

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