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Motown Progress

Berry Gordy launched a small record label in a two-story frame house on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, in 1959. His unique style of music was the first to break the race barrier and to gaining the national acceptance of black music and the well-deserved recognition of the singers and musicians behind it, Gordy's "Motown sound" gave birth to the largest and most successful black-owned business in America.

Gordy soon started his own music publishing company, which he called Jobete, a combination of letters from his three children's names. The business wasn't as good as he'd hoped, and he therefore decided to open his own record company instead with encouragement of his fellow friend singers

Using $800 his family had loaned him, Gordy formed Tamla Records on January 12, 1959.
Berry Gordy ended up co-writing the Wilson hit "Reet Petite," and also wrote Wilson's "Lonely Teardrops” and "To Be Loved."

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