Motown

About Motown

Berry Gordy founded Motown Records in Detroit in 1959 with an 800-dollar loan and ran it like the car factories he had worked in: an assembly line of songwriters, the Funk Brothers house band, and artist development classes that turned local teenagers into the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson 5. The Sound of Young America made Black pop the mainstream sound of the 1960s. The label moved to Los Angeles in 1972, but Hitsville U.S.A. on West Grand Boulevard remains the most visited house in American music.