Celebrating the Legend that Is Motown

It was so heartwarming to see Motown legends such as Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie, as well as Berry Gordy himself, honouring Michael Jackson at his memorial service.

Motown is a legendary music label which came to prominence in the 1960s, featuring young African American talent. The label was founded by Berry Gordy. Its roster included the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and many more. Together, they changed the face of popular music.

When studying Black history and our African heritage, we may be very aware of the suffering we have endured and our fight for survival. It's also important to remember and celebrate the good times. We have a lot to be proud of, and to be thankful for.

In the mid-1960s, the Beatles were are the top of the charts. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, as well as many of the Merseybeat bands, were strongly influenced by the Motown sound. The Beatles' second album, "With the Beatles", contained covers of three Motown hits. Top acts such as the Beatles and the Stones were very vocal in stating that African American musicians and bands were their favourite artists.

But it was hard to get hold of Motown records in the UK, or even hear them on the radio. Pirate station Radio Luxembourg was the only station to give them any airplay.

In 1964, The Supremes' "Baby Love" hit No. 1 in the UK pop charts.

In 1965, the Motown Revue toured the UK for the first time. Martha and the Vandellas toured along with The Supremes and Stevie Wonder. They were met at the airport by the British Tamla Motown Society. The exquisitely coiffeured performers such as The Supremes wowed their audiences.

The Supremes' "Stop in the Name of Love" knocked the Beatles off the No. 1 position in the charts. But the crowds never turned out for the Motown acts. Mary Wilson of the Supremes described the tour as "a big disappointment".

Dusty Springfield got the Supremes onto hit TV show Ready Steady Go, which featured the kind of music and performers British young people wanted to see.

At a time when there were few Black faces on TV, Ready Steady Go broadcast an hour-long Motown special. The fact that Dusty Springfield hosted the event guaranteed a large audience.

In those days, musical performances and gigs in the U.S. were often segregated, particularly in the South. It was not unusual in some towns to have a rope suspended across the middle of the dancefloor, separating Black people on one side from the whites on the other Motown acts such as Smokey Robinson were among the first to insist that the rope be taken down. Michael Jackson would follow in his footsteps many years later, in challenging the exclusion of African American artists from MTV.

A year later, when the Motown Revue toured again, the crowds went crazy. The Motown performs found that, like the Beatles,, they sometimes had to escape through the back door to avoid the crowds. Sometimes they used ambulances to make their getaway. Motown had arrived in Britain.

It was a great shock to wake up one morning to the news of the death of Michael Jackson.

August would have seen his 51st birthday and his farewell concerts here in London.

Check out the Black Gifts Guide for MJ's music, videos and downloads.

As a child, Michael was gorgeous and all the girls had crushes on him. The lead singer of the Jackson 5, he was an exceptionally talented singer, dancer and songwriter. He grew up to be one of the biggest stars on the planet - deservedly so.

Click here to watch a video of Berry Gordy speaking about Michael Jackson.

Although he later moved to other labels, Michael's talent was first nurtured in the Motown family.

Michael Jackson was known for being extremely shy. It has been said that Michael's own father used to make fun of his nose. As an adult, one of the first things he did was to have the shape of his nose altered.

Although Michael suffered childhood abuse, which he discussed in his interview with Oprah, he was reportedly a very caring father.

Why is it that some of the most talented performers have such troubled private lives? See also, What Can We Learn from Elton John?

Michael Jackson was one of the first African American performers to have a video shown on MTV, which up until that time had been known almost exclusively as a white rock-oriented station. He thus opened up opportunities for thousands of other African American artists. Every Black artist whose work has been shown on MTV since then was able to do so because of Michael.

In this, he resembled Sammy Davis Junior, who successfully challenged racial segregation in Las Vegas in the 1950s. Every casino begged Sammy to come, but they would not allow him or his band members to stay in the hotel. He insisted that they be allowed to stay there, have a drink in the bar and gamble in the casinos. Only when one hotel finally agreed to this did Sammy consent to perform in Vegas.

The 1982 album Thriller remains the best-selling album in history, and produced an unprecedented seven hits. The Thriller video was truly groundbreaking and is still influencing filmmakers today.

As an adult, Michael increasingly became a crossover artist, wooing white audiences.
The British press was, at times, vicious towards Michael, labelling him "Wacko Jacko". It later emerged that some of the strangest stories about him, such as his sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, were generated by his own publicity machine.

Followed constantly by crowds of fans who held vigils outside his hotel rooms when he was on tour, Jackson increasingly felt the need for privacy. He became more and more isolated, often preferring to spend his time with animals and children.

Gaining ever larger numbers of white fans, Michael increasingly resembled them physically. Black fans thought of him as strange, and his appearance was bizarre, but we remained loyal to him because of his music.

Like many African Americans, he changed his appearance to make himself appear more white. This gave evidence of a specific type of hatred, i.e. internalised racism, which affects people of African heritage. This was heartbreaking for those of us who remembered how beautiful he had been as a child.

On Jackson's death, film director Martin Scorcese said: "When we worked together on Bad, I was in awe of his absolute mastery of movement on the one hand, and of the music on the other."

His death at age 50 is surrounded by rumours and allegations. It has been suggested that he was taking a cocktail of prescription drugs, including painkillers and sedatives, at the time of death.

I saw a recent interview with Smokey Robinson in which he described his first meeting with Ray Charles.

He and a bunch of young people, including Berry Gordy, went to the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. It was their first-ever visit. What they didn't know was that there was a house orchestra at the Apollo and they were expected to have brought orchestral arrangements for their songs.

The manager of the Apollo was furious because they did not have the arrangements they needed.

Now, it just so happened that Ray Charles had come to the rehearsal that morning. He asked Smokey, "Do you know your song?". Smokey was so nervous he could barely get the words out. "I can play it on the piano".

Ray Charles heard the song one time, then he sat down at the piano and played it. He said to someone, "the guitar goes here. Write that down. The strings go here" and so forth. So, he made up the arrangement as he went along.

After that, Smokey said, anytime Ray Charles wanted him to do something, he could be in Timbuktu and if he got a call from Ray, he would get on a plane from Timbuktu and go anywhere Ray wanted him to be.

Just goes to show you, when you do something for somebody else, it pays off time and time again.