Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hitsville: The Making Of Motown’ On Showtime, A Documentary On How Berry Gordy Built The Legendary Record Label

Motown Records’ first 13 years of existence were a time when pop music was changing for the better, and the various acts going in and out of the complex built out of a residential neighborhood in Detroit created hits that rivaled the popularity of the biggest acts of the sixties, including The Beatles. In a new documentary, Motown founder Berry Gordy, Jr. and many of his label’s stars talk about just what went into creating the legendary songs that came out of Hitsville, U.S.A. Read on for more…

HITSVILLE: THE MAKING OF MOTOWN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: When Berry Gordy, Jr. created Motown Records in 1959, he did so out of necessity. He had owned a record store in Detroit that went belly up, and then went to work at a Ford auto plant before becoming a songwriter and producer. He knew that there were plenty of great R&B acts in Detroit, and he wanted to get them recorded and played on the radio. After meeting Smokey Robinson in 1957 and licensing the songs they created to other labels for distribution, he decided to do the distribution himself, first via the Tamla label and then, in 1960, via Motown Records.

Hitsville: The Making of Motown is a detailed look at how Gordy, with the help of songwriters like Robinson, Norman Whitfield and the team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland, built Motown from a tiny label operating out of the “Hitsville U.S.A” house on West Grand Boulevard to an international juggernaut that had massive crossover success.

Directors Gabe and Ben Turner take a methodical approach, having Gordy talk about the origins of his “assembly line” business plan, which is what led to Motown’s success. It’s a process where talent is found, they’re paired with songwriters, they go into the studio with the label’s backing band, and each record goes through contentious quality control meetings. For example, when Smokey wrote “My Girl” for the Temptations — out of a fierce internal competition and a desire to get a showcase for David Ruffin on lead vocals — we hear the quality control meeting where not all of the executives think it’s a hit that should be released as a single. But Whitfield, who had written the Temps’ previous hits, said something telling: “There’s no way this song is not a hit.”

Via archival footage and interviews with Gordy, Robinson, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Stevie Wonder, The Jacksons, Mary Wilson, Martha Reeves, and other legendary musicians and behind-the-scenes folks at the label, we find out a lot about the label’s formative years. Interviews with current artists like John Legend, Dr. Dre and Jamie Foxx reveal how much of an influence Motown has on today’s music. The label’s crossover success can’t be denied, considering that while the world was changing in the sixties, groups like The Supremes were showing up on The Ed Sullivan Show and gaining audiences across demographics and even borders (Motown was huge in the UK).

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There have been lots of documentaries on the history of Motown, but not many have been this detailed, with Gordy, Robinson, Wonder and others recounting stories about how classic, huge hit songs like Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” came about or how contentious (and romantic!) the relationship between Gordy and Diana Ross was at times.

Performance Worth Watching: In the many scenes where Robinson and Gordy are in one of the main Hitsville studios, reminiscing about the early years of Motown, the movie goes to a different level. Their sixty years of friendship are evident in how they joke with each other and discuss these stories about these huge hits like they were just something that happened in their lives. At some point, for example, Smokey bets Berry a c-note that Gladys Knight and the Pips’ version of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” was recorded before Marvin Gaye’s slower, more plaintive version, both of which became huge hits. When he loses, he peels off the hundy and pays his old friend right one the spot. That’s friendship right there.

Memorable Dialogue: During a national tour of Motown’s biggest mid-’60s acts, the artists and songwriters were shocked at the racism and segregation they had to deal with in the deep south, just as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. In one concert hall whites and blacks were separated by a rope, something that Smokey would not abide by. He recalls that when they went back to those places, everyone was mingling and dancing together. “A whole lot of the stuff they were trying to do legally or spiritually,” Robinson says of the civil rights activists, “we were just doing with music.”

Our Take: By concentrating on Motown’s early and most formative years, from its founding in 1959 to the time it moved to Los Angeles in 1972, the Turners were able to make Hitsville: The Making of Motown not just a celebration of the remarkable artists, songwriters and music that came out of that era without delving into the label’s ’70s and ’80s decline, but it allowed the directors and Gordy to take a real deep dive into the process of how those hits were made.

The most fascinating parts of the documentary were about the conflicts: Robinson writing “My Girl” as a response to “My Guy,” with the famous guitar riff created by the studio guitarist just noodling around; The Supremes being called the “No-hit Supremes” for years and having to spend a lot of time with the Artist Development staff in order to get them to the polished trio that became stars; Wonder deciding to rework his contract when he turned 21 so he could write his own music; Gaye recording “What’s Going On” over Gordy’s objections. Berry readily admits that he was wrong in many of those cases, especially when artists like Wonder and Gaye wanting to break out of the assembly line model and go their own way in the early seventies.

It is also to the directors’ credit that they got Gordy, who will turn 90 this year, when he was still able to recall those years pretty quickly. And through Gordy and Robinson, they likely had an in with the artists, songwriters, executives, and A&R people that made Motown what it was. Pretty much the only surviving megastar they didn’t get to speak was Ross. But Wilson gave more than enough perspective on the Supremes’ struggle to make hits while surrounded by hit machines to make the absence of Ross palatable. And Wonder, who was without question Motown’s most talented artist, brought a lot of insight into how it was to be in the machine during his teens and how he broke out of it in his twenties.

The Turners try to hit the brakes on overpraising Motown and its influence with the stories of those conflicts and Gordy showing how he was more interested in running a successful business than trying to be at the forefront of civil rights. But by concentrating on those first 13 years, where a black-owned label promoted black artists beyond traditional R&B radio and made them superstars, it’s hard to find places where they or Gordy could come under criticism. Motown’s run during those years is remarkable, and the film’s breakdown on just how that happened is riveting, despite the 111-minute runtime.

Our Call: STREAM IT. You may think you know a lot about the early years of Motown, but Hitsville: The Making of Motown will still surprise you at almost every turn, which is one of the highest compliments any documentary can get.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

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