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In a glass-walled confer-
ence room above Sunset
Boulevard, many of the liv-
ing luminaries of the Mo-
town Records empire gath-
ered Monday to honor one of
their own — the man respon-
sible for launching more
than a few of their careers,
and changing popular music
as we know it.
Soon, the celebration
would move downstairs to
the corner of Sunset Boule-
vard and Argyle Avenue,
where assorted friends, fans
and looky-loos were gath-
ered in anticipation of the of-
ficial dedication of this Hol-
lywood intersection as
“Berry Gordy Square,” in
honor of the Motown Re-
cords founder, entrepre-
neur, songwriter and pro-
ducer Berry Gordy.
But for now, the room
thrummed with the lively
energy of a long-awaited
family reunion. Everyone
was embracing and catching
up and snapping pictures.
Rock and Roll Hall of
Famer Smokey Robinson
was waving kisses at a wom-
an across the room, from his
seat at a big conference table
plastered with Walk of
Fame-style Hollywood stars.
Singer Thelma Houston,
who scored a No. 1 hit for Mo-
town Records with her 1977
recording of “Don’t Leave
Me This Way,” was leaning in
for a selfie with multi-hy-
phenate actress-dancer-di-
rector Debbie Allen, who
won an Emmy for her chore-
ography on the 1983 “Mo-
town 25th Anniversary Spe-
cial.”
A moment later, Los An-
geles City Councilman
Mitch O’Farrell, who repre-
sents this district and shep-
herded the dedication
through City Hall, was lean-
ing toward Houston.
“I’ve danced to ‘Don’t
Leave Me This Way’ live with
you performing,” the coun-
cilman told the sequin-clad
septuagenarian singer of her
disco hit.
That was a prevailing
message of many of the
speakers at the ceremony,
and those who gathered to
watch: The music of Motown
Records had provided the
score for their lives, and the
broader cultural fabric of
1960s and ’70s America.
“It’s the soundtrack of
our lives, that’s why I can’t
sit down,” Yevette Renee
Nelson, a film critic who’d
brought half a dozen ex-
tended family members to
witness the dedication, said
as she danced along to the
catalog of hits played from a
sound system set up in the
closed-off street.
In 1959, Gordy founded
what would become Motown
Records in a small Detroit
house with grand ambitions
and an $800 family loan.
Gordy was a working song-writer, but the time he’d
spent working the assembly
line in a Lincoln-Mercury car
plant helped influence his
creative vision.
“I wanted to have a kid off
the street walk in one door
unknown and come out an-
other door a star, like an as-
sembly line; that was my
dream,” he told the British
newspaper the Telegraph in
2 016.
“My family said, that’s
stupid. Those are cars. You
can’t do that with human be-
ings.”
Gordy thought differ-
ently. In time, he’d be known
not just as a hitmaker and an
empire builder, but also for
his prowess in minting stars,
many of whom, like Rob-
inson, were signed as teen-
agers.
Speaking during the ded-
ication ceremony, Robinson
attributed the success ofMotown to music being
Gordy’s first love.
“We had a music man at
the helm, who was teaching
all of us how to become mu-
sic makers,” he said.
In the decade between
the Miracles’ 1961 “Shop
Around,” which was written
by Gordy and Robinson and
became Motown’s first mil-
lion-seller hit, and the
Temptations’ 1971 “Just My
Imagination,” the label pro-
duced more than 100 top 10
hits.
Their era-defining roster
included the Supremes, the
Four Tops, the Jackson 5
and Stevie Wonder, among
many others.
Gordy built Motown into
what was for a time the larg-
est black-owned business in
America, in large part
through his success in bring-
ing music written and per-
formed by African Americanartists to the record players
of white teenagers. His
crossover acumen helped
shape the sound of music for
decades to come.
In 1972, Motown relo-
cated west from its name-
sake Motor City to Los Ange-
les. The booming record
company was head-
quartered in the very build-
ing at the corner of Sunset
and Argyle where friends
and family would gather to
honor Gordy nearly five dec-
ades later.
“As a kid growing up on
the eastside of Detroit,
Hollywood was an unattain-
able, mystical fantasy,”
Gordy said during the cere-
mony, standing beneath
palm trees at a lectern a few
blocks east of Amoeba Re-
cords and the ArcLight Cin-
ema.
He said that it was a place
where magic happened anddreams came true, and that
he never imagined ending
up here in the sunshine.
“But as Motown grew, our
success made me realize
that there was no limit to
how far we could go. I wanted
my artists to reach their full
potential, so we came here to
Hollywood.”
Gordy, who sold the label
in 1988 and announced his
retirement earlier this year,
will turn 90 this week. The
actual date won’t roll around
until Thursday, but that
didn’t stop his family from
turning the finale of the ded-
ication ceremony into an im-
promptu birthday celebra-
tion, complete with a vegan
cake and Stevie Wonder
leading the dancing crowd in
a joyful rendition of “Happy
Birthday.”
Wonder’s version of the
song, of course, which was
released by Motown in 1980.Intersection honors Motown founder
MOTOWN RECORDSfounder Berry Gordy, holding up his sign, is flanked by Stevie Wonder, right, and Smokey Robinson at Monday’s
dedication ceremony in Hollywood. Gordy started the Detroit label in 1959 and moved it to Sunset Boulevard and Argyle Avenue in 1972.Al SeibLos Angeles TimesSoul singers gather in
Hollywood for tribute
to songwriter behind
the legendary label.
By Julia Wick