Berry Gordy

Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records with an $800 loan from his family in 1959 and built it into the most successful independent record label in American history — a hit factory that produced more number-one singles than any label in the 1960s and broke down the racial barriers of American popular music. Motown's sound — sophisticated, joyful, impossibly catchy — was the soundtrack of integration.

Born in Detroit in 1929, Gordy was a high school dropout, failed boxer, and auto assembly line worker who wrote songs in his spare time. He penned several hits for Jackie Wilson before deciding he could earn more by producing and distributing records himself. With that $800 and a modest house on West Grand Boulevard — christened "Hitsville U.S.A." — he created a cultural institution.

Gordy's genius was systematic: he applied the quality control principles of Detroit's auto industry to music production. Every song was reviewed by a quality control board before release. Every artist received training in choreography, etiquette, and stage presence. The result was a roster of artists — the Supremes, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Jackson 5, Smokey Robinson — who crossed racial boundaries and proved that Black music wasn't a niche market but the center of American culture. He sold Motown in 1988 for $61 million.