Founded on this day in 1959, Motown Records broke racial barriers in pop music with its beloved hits

On January 12, 1959 Berry Gordy Jr. started Tamla Records with the help of an $800 loan from his family, starting a journey that would change the music industry forever. The next year it was merged recorded at Motown Record Corporation.

For Gordy, starting his own label was the product of a long-standing love for music. When he returned from military service in 1953, he opened a short-lived record store in Detroit. Later, to amuse himself on Ford’s assembly line, Gordy made up songs. He eventually wrote for singer Jackie Wilson and helped young singer William “Smokey” Robinson and his band, best known as the Miraclessell records.

The limited return: one royalty account Gordy reportedly received only $3.19, which motivated him to start Motown. “In those days, especially if you were black, no one paid you what you should be paid, if they paid you at all. So Berry decided to start his own record company and gave us that outlet,” Robinson told AARP Magazine in 2018.

In an industry dominated by only a handful of major labels, success was no easy feat. The industry tended to market music by black artists – usually all lumped under the umbrella of “rhythm and blues” – exclusively to black audiences. Those R&B tunes often only reached a white audience when a white artist like Pat Boone or Elvis Presley decided to cover them.

To succeed, Gordy had to appeal to the predominantly black R&B market and the broader, predominantly white “pop” audience. Indeed, an early analysis of Motown’s success is forthcoming Fortune magazine attributes Gordy’s financial success to his ability to attract talented black artists and “recognize those melodies, lyrics and audio effects” that would appeal to both black and white listeners.

In addition to creating songs with mass appeal, Gordy also focused on marketing to white audiences hire white marketers to leverage their connections in the industry. Sometimes, he avoided putting musicians on album covers so that they would not immediately be disregarded because of their race.

Motown’s first album was Hello… We are the miraclesreleased in 1961. The album included ‘Shop Around’, Motown’s first single which sold over a million copies.

The label took off quickly. Motown’s songs kept pace with tunes from bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and earworms from groups like the Supremes helped Motown sell more 45s than any other company in the country. By 1971, it had released 110 Billboard Top 10 hits.

The integration of Motown’s acts into the upper reaches of the pop charts had a leading ripple effect groups like the Supremes to be invited to clubs with a predominantly white audience. They were not always welcomed with open arms: several Motown artists, including Joe Billingslea of ​​the Contours, have talked about the racism they have experienced while touring.

Gordy was hesitant to let artists try to convey a message with their music. Him initially, for example vetoed Marvin Gaye’s incredibly successful 1971 album What’s going on? because it talked about social and political issues. He only relented when Gaye threatened never to work with him again.

“I never wanted Motown to be a mouthpiece for civil rights,” he says told TIME in 2020. Instead, he saw the label as an example of a successful Black business and a force for inclusion through music. Yet Gordy and Motown played an active role in civil rights history intake Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, unknowingly creating an important archive of the now famous speech.

“I saw Motown just like the world [King] what we fought for – people of all races and religions, working harmoniously together for a common goal,” Gordy shared TIME. Gordy later sold the label, but its beginnings and golden era have left a deep mark on history.

“Our music made you feel good, but we also had a message of equality,” says Martha Reeves of Motown’s Martha and the Vandellas. told NPR in 2011. “It’s just the sound of young America.”