Motown Beryy Gordy Honored By HistoryMakers

By Geoff Brown, Chicago Tribune reporter

Berry Gordy Jr. always took the unconventional route to success — whether in creating a record company, producing movies or facing a traffic stop, he told an audience Saturday night at the Art Institute of Chicago.

As a child, Gordy said, he couldn't do his ABCs from A to Z, but he could reel them off backward. This came in handy many years later when a Beverly Hills policeman pulled him over, primed to arrest him for drunken driving. The officer ordered Gordy to walk a straight line and touch his nose. He passed. Then he was asked to recite the alphabet. "Forward or backward?" Gordy offered. The cop answered, "Backward, wiseguy." Gordy ultimately drove away free.

The story was among many that the ebullient founder of the Motown recording empire recounted during a fundraising gala for The HistoryMakers. Founded in 1999 by Julieanna Richardson, the nonprofit, Chicago-based HistoryMakers has created a digital archive of oral histories documenting African-American achievement in the U.S. and also conducts educational programs. Journalist Gwen Ifill interviewed Gordy for the event, which will air on PBS in early 2013.


Ifill coaxed Gordy, who will turn 83 on Nov. 28, into playing "Berry's Boogie," a piano tune he said he composed at age 7. Accompanying the Motown mogul was a live band featuring "American Idol" music director Ray Chew on keyboards.

Gordy noted that even after his triumphs in music, doors to other projects didn't open easily. He had to pay Paramount Pictures to complete the hit 1972 movie "Lady Sings the Blues" because, he said, the studio had budgeted only $500,000 for a black film. "This is not a black film, it's a film with black stars," Gordy told the studio, to no avail. He paid Paramount $2 million, he said.

The evening was not all about entertainment. Guest speaker the Rev. Jesse Jackson remarked that Gordy once took care of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s payroll during a rough time for the civil rights leader's organization in 1965. Former Motown executive Suzanne de Passe said Gordy "was way ahead of his time in putting women in positions of authority."

Audience members were treated to a performance by two cast members of Gordy's upcoming Broadway show, "Motown: The Musical." The scene, he said, re-enacted Gordy (portrayed by Brandon Victor Dixon) and Diana Ross (played by Valisia LeKae) falling in love in Paris. The song: Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "You're All I Need to Get By."

Among relatives in attendance were Gordy's son Stefan "Redfoo" Gordy of the group LMFAO and daughter Hazel Gordy. From the Motown roster present and past, singer Kem teamed up with Valerie Simpson (last year's HistoryMakers honoree) to perform the Jackson 5 tune "I'll Be There." Another guest performer was Janelle Monae, who sang the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." Others who took their bows: Claudette Robinson, an original member of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles; early Motown artists the Velvelettes; Scherrie Payne, a onetime member of the Supremes; and her sister, singer Freda Payne.

The spry Gordy left the stage emulating the dance routine from LMFAO's 2011 music video for "Party Rock Anthem."