After years of pursuing them, Berry Gordy in 1965 had finally signed the Four Tops. The Detroit group had been together for a decade, had recorded singles and albums, and had developed a stage presence that was slick, professional, and appealing. But Gordy knew that they could be much better — and more lucrative — […]

Since the pandemic happened upon us in March, many references have been made to Daniel Defoe’s “non-fiction novel,” A Journal of the Plague Year. Rightly so. The book was published in 1722 and concerns the plague that hit London in 1665, when Defoe himself was only about six years old. The book does not recount […]

They were the best girl group ever, and they’ve got the numbers to prove it: 12 top-ranked pop hits, Grammy nominations, membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, packed concert halls, numerous television appearances, and always and everywhere the stars of the show. The numbers and the facts don’t lie. The Supremes in […]

In March we shared a post about the writer William Styron and the controversy he stirred in the 1960s with his novel The Confessions of Nat Turner. The post referred to an article by Styron’s daughter Alexandra and discussed her father’s intentions in writing the book and the difficulties he had in defending himself against […]

Of all of the super-talented, hardworking musicians who walked through the doors of Motown’s headquarters in the 1960s, an argument could be made that the most talented — and the one who took his music far beyond most others — was Stevie Wonder. His real name is Stevland Hardaway Morris (né Judkins), and he was born in 1950 in […]

Berry Gordy is undoubtedly Motown’s founding father, but Gordy would not have achieved his spectacular success without Motown’s founding brother, Smokey Robinson. To those of us who were fans of Motown, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles was simply part of the astonishing lineup of artists that Motown produced during the 1960s and 1970s. Behind the […]

Joe Biden is stuck in his basement. Donald Trump is stuck in the White House or in Mar-A-Largo. Neither of the presidential nominees-to-be is out “on the hustings” or “pressing the flesh,” as would be happening in normal quadrennial years. No big rallies, no $1,000-a-plate fundraising dinners, not even conference rooms with staffers to plan […]

No group that Motown produced exemplified the Motown sound better than the Temptations. Throughout the decade of the 1960s, the Temptations dominated the charts with their deep, soulful rhythms, the near-perfect blend of their harmonies, and most of all their mesmerizing choreography. Those guys could dance, and if you saw them either live or on television, […]

Not quite 30 years old in 1959, Berry Gordy needed money. Gordy was from a solid, hard-working African-American family in Detroit —  a family that emphasized discipline and education — but Berry, the seventh of eight children, had not accomplished much in his first three decades. He had been in the Army, which he didn’t […]