To Be Loved
The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The story of Motown Records and how it changed the course of American music, as told by its founder—“an African American culture hero of historic stature” (The New York Times).
Berry Gordy Jr., who once considered becoming a boxer, started a record company with a family loan of $800 in 1959. Gordy’s company, Motown Records, went on to create some of the most popular music of all time. By the time he sold the company nearly thirty years later, it was worth $61 million and had produced musical legends including Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson 5.
Here, the revolutionary who shattered the color barrier in the American entertainment industry and forever changed the way the world hears music, shares his story of ambition and vision. From humble beginnings, Gordy amassed a fortune and became a musical kingmaker in the cultural heydays of the 1960s and ’70s. Quelling rumors and detailing his relationships with the artists he managed, Gordy pens “a vivid recreation of a great period and a seminal company in popular music” (Kirkus Reviews).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As founder and president of Motown Records, Gordy launched and developed the careers of many of the most talented pop musicians of our day, including Mary Wells, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. He here recounts how, in 1959 with a $800 loan from his family, he started the label he ultimately expanded into an entertainment empire, despite the racial prejudices he and his staff encountered. In 1988, he sold Motown to MCA for $61 million. His self-portrait, not surprisingly, is more flattering-many will consider the book an apologia-than the blistering memoirs written by several Motowners, among them Martha Reeves's Dancing in the Streets, coauthored with Mark Bego; and his former wife Raynoma Gordy Singleton's Berry, Me, and Motown. On his part, though, the 56-year-old Gordy is blithely generous to all: ``I've seen how important family always was to me, whether it was the family I grew up with, the Motown family or my family today of eight children and ten grandchildren.'' Photos. Author tour.
