Berry Gordy Jr. was born to Berry and Bertha Gordy in Detroit Michigan on November 28, 1929. During his life he had done many things because his family was so involved in business. His father owned a carpentry service, a printing business, and a general store. Some of the things he had done were featherweight boxing, then to the army, opened a record store, went back into the factory working, and then became the owner of Motown Records.
Although he always put his full effort into everything he did, Motown Records was the best yet. He came up with this idea while he was working at Ford's Mercury plant. He would often find himself bored, so he would hum melodies and make up songs to make the day more entertaining. He wrote a couple hits for
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As jazz was going out of style, Berry took it and made it his own by throwing in R&B and gospel music. He also had a lot of success because he had talented people. A main reason most of the artists were not getting recognized before was because they were African American. This gave Berry an advantage to become something. By the 1970's music had changed and Motown Records took off west to Los Angeles like every other music company. The company wasn't as successful in the 70's but they still did good. They had major artists such as The Jackson 5, Rick James, Lionel Richie, and Marvin Gaye. Things started to go astray when Gordy decided to go into filmmaking with the popular movie "Lady Sings the Blues" starring Diana Ross.
In 1988, Gordy decided to sell Motown to MCA for $61 million dollars. Artists had left the record and music tastes had changed, so Berry felt this to be the only way Motown would survive. Later after that first sell, it was resold to PolyGram in 1993. Gordy was no longer making records but he still had a hand in related projects to Motown. This would include a miniseries on TV and a Broadway musical. Motown was still successful in the 80's and 90's, some of their artists included Stevie Wonder, Queen Latifah, and Boyz II