To Be Loved: The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown : An Autobiography

To Be Loved: The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown : An Autobiography Hardcover Founder of the Motown empire, Gordy has written a revealing autobiography dealing with the interplay between his private life and his recording and motion picture ventures. He begins with his childhood in Detroit and his forays into music as owner of a jazz-record store and successful songwriter for singer Jackie Wilson. Citing civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and the auto assembly lines as inspirations, Gordy charts the rise of the Motown hit machine, which manufactured a close-knit stable of well-groomed African American performers-including the Supremes, the Temptations, and the Jackson 5-who brought a gospel-based pop to white America during the Sixties and Seventies. Throughout the book, the music entrepreneur portrays his personal life and his business as inseparably connected, including comments about his five-year affair with Diana Ross. He ends with the sale of Motown in 1988. Berry Gordy is transparent, frank, intimate and personal in his autobiography. He does not hold back in sharing the joy, heartbreak, good, bad and ugly of Motown. Berry is careful to acknowledge the people behind the scenes, working quietly in the background, who are just as much a part of Motown's success as the people upfront, in the spotlight. He begins the book telling us about his early childhood experiences, adult life and employment experiences before Motown.