Post by Emerald City on Sept 20, 2007 13:01:13 GMT -5
More Motown bitterness
October 1, 1990
BY GARY GRAFF
Free Press Music Writer
When Berry Gordy Jr. sold Motown Records in 1988, he received $61 million. All Raynoma Gordy Singleton got was a plaque thanking her for her contributions. Singleton's retortm is "Berry, Me and Motown: The Untold Story" (Contemporary, $19.95), a bitter, finger-pointing work that may be the most biting and controversial book yet about Detroit's famed record label. Most Motown fans consider the company an institution, the Sound of Young America, built by Gordy with an $800 loan from his family. But Singleton -- whose 1960-64 marriage to Gordy was the second for each -- has a different story to tell.
"That's why I wrote the book, to document my contributions to Motown," Singleton, 53, said last week during a visit to Detroit. "It was something that was very important to me, and it's been devastating, after all my contributions to the company, to just be left out and to now be looking from the outside into something I built."
Singleton's story is a tale of deceit and torment. Classically trained and gifted with perfect pitch, she met Gordy in 1958 when he was writing songs for Jackie Wilson. They hit it off professionally -- and, later, romantically -- and she claims at least 50 percent credit for starting and directing Motown.
But hers is not a name you find in the various histories written about Motown, and there's nary a mention of her in the official company lore. In her book, Singleton claims this was Gordy's doing; shortly after the company was launched, she says, Gordy asked her to take her name off the partnership for tax purposes, a ruse that eventually allowed her to be bumped from the Motown brain trust. "I trusted him," she said. "Motown was built on faith and trust and loyalty. It was a family.
"He also promised that he would always take care of me. I kept hearing that and hearing that. It should've been the name of the book." Singleton has been hanging on Gordy's promise ever since, a desperate hope she says never has been rewarded. Their marriage -- which bore a son, Kerry -- was marked by arguments, emotional abuse and infidelities; Gordy, she says, even cheated on her on their wedding night. "When I first met him, I thought he was a sweet, sensitive guy," she says. "Obviously inside he was pretty hard core, insensitive and, to me, totally negligent."
After their divorce, Singleton hung on to loose ties with Motown. She operated the company's short-lived New York office, served as an aide-de-camp for Diana Ross and oversaw some of the company's projects during Motown's dry days of the late '70s and early '80s. The book chronicles Motown's dynamic office politics, as well as its personality conflicts; Singleton, for instance, is the first author to make the straightforward statement that Gordy and Ross were lovers and that Ross' first child was fathered by Gordy, not her husband, Bob Silberstein.
"The book is hot," acknowledged Singleton, "but it's not based on gossip or vendetta. It is the real inside, untold Motown story. I knew when I wrote the book that I would have to tell it like it was." Ironically, she says, Gordy called her nine months ago to ask her to help him write his autobiography. "Could you imagine me writing some whitewash bull---- with him?!" she said. "There's no way he could admit to the things I've written about. He wanted it to go down as a fairy tale, all beautiful and fabulous. It was a phenomenon, but Motown was triumph and tragedy. I think (her book) is an overall view of it rather than a one-sided view."
Not surprisingly, "Berry, Me and Motown" already has ruffled some feathers. Singleton says she's received word that Gordy and Ross are "not very happy" with what she's written. And Gordy's sister, Esther Edwards, who runs the Motown Museum, called the book "a good fiction." "All of the things she claims to have done, I just don't know when she did all that," Edwards said. "She certainly was around in the very, very early days ...but I don't think she had quite the impact she says she did. The thing I regret most is that there are people who really did work hard to build the company who are just kind of discredited by her efforts to take credit for things she didn't have a meaningful part in."
Singleton has supporters as well. Many of the early Motown artists who gathered in Detroit recently for a Motown memorabilia convention either voiced approval for the book or acknowledged Singleton's presence as a driving force in Motown's early days.
"By the time the company was really going strong, she was gone and a lot of the artists didn't know her," said Claudette Robinson, a former Miracle and the ex-wife of Motown superstar Smokey Robinson. "But she did play a great part in organizing the company in the beginning."
Nowadays, Singleton -- who lives near Los Angeles with her third husband, Ed Singleton, and his family -- spends her time managing the performing careers of two of her four children, Cliff Lyles and Rea Singleton. She's also negotiating with Hollywood studios for a movie version of "Berry, Me and Motown."
Writing the book, she said, was therapeutic, allowing her to purge many of the ill feelings she harbors for Gordy.
"The book has totally vindicated me from the negative feelings I've had," she said. "I used to figure that eventually (Gordy) would understand my contributions and how great I really was and that I'd ride off into the sunset with some money or some credit or something. It didn't happen, but . . . I've always been a very positive person, and that's the reason I've been able to survive. I'm not going to let (the problems with Gordy) kill me."
October 1, 1990
BY GARY GRAFF
Free Press Music Writer
When Berry Gordy Jr. sold Motown Records in 1988, he received $61 million. All Raynoma Gordy Singleton got was a plaque thanking her for her contributions. Singleton's retortm is "Berry, Me and Motown: The Untold Story" (Contemporary, $19.95), a bitter, finger-pointing work that may be the most biting and controversial book yet about Detroit's famed record label. Most Motown fans consider the company an institution, the Sound of Young America, built by Gordy with an $800 loan from his family. But Singleton -- whose 1960-64 marriage to Gordy was the second for each -- has a different story to tell.
"That's why I wrote the book, to document my contributions to Motown," Singleton, 53, said last week during a visit to Detroit. "It was something that was very important to me, and it's been devastating, after all my contributions to the company, to just be left out and to now be looking from the outside into something I built."
Singleton's story is a tale of deceit and torment. Classically trained and gifted with perfect pitch, she met Gordy in 1958 when he was writing songs for Jackie Wilson. They hit it off professionally -- and, later, romantically -- and she claims at least 50 percent credit for starting and directing Motown.
But hers is not a name you find in the various histories written about Motown, and there's nary a mention of her in the official company lore. In her book, Singleton claims this was Gordy's doing; shortly after the company was launched, she says, Gordy asked her to take her name off the partnership for tax purposes, a ruse that eventually allowed her to be bumped from the Motown brain trust. "I trusted him," she said. "Motown was built on faith and trust and loyalty. It was a family.
"He also promised that he would always take care of me. I kept hearing that and hearing that. It should've been the name of the book." Singleton has been hanging on Gordy's promise ever since, a desperate hope she says never has been rewarded. Their marriage -- which bore a son, Kerry -- was marked by arguments, emotional abuse and infidelities; Gordy, she says, even cheated on her on their wedding night. "When I first met him, I thought he was a sweet, sensitive guy," she says. "Obviously inside he was pretty hard core, insensitive and, to me, totally negligent."
After their divorce, Singleton hung on to loose ties with Motown. She operated the company's short-lived New York office, served as an aide-de-camp for Diana Ross and oversaw some of the company's projects during Motown's dry days of the late '70s and early '80s. The book chronicles Motown's dynamic office politics, as well as its personality conflicts; Singleton, for instance, is the first author to make the straightforward statement that Gordy and Ross were lovers and that Ross' first child was fathered by Gordy, not her husband, Bob Silberstein.
"The book is hot," acknowledged Singleton, "but it's not based on gossip or vendetta. It is the real inside, untold Motown story. I knew when I wrote the book that I would have to tell it like it was." Ironically, she says, Gordy called her nine months ago to ask her to help him write his autobiography. "Could you imagine me writing some whitewash bull---- with him?!" she said. "There's no way he could admit to the things I've written about. He wanted it to go down as a fairy tale, all beautiful and fabulous. It was a phenomenon, but Motown was triumph and tragedy. I think (her book) is an overall view of it rather than a one-sided view."
Not surprisingly, "Berry, Me and Motown" already has ruffled some feathers. Singleton says she's received word that Gordy and Ross are "not very happy" with what she's written. And Gordy's sister, Esther Edwards, who runs the Motown Museum, called the book "a good fiction." "All of the things she claims to have done, I just don't know when she did all that," Edwards said. "She certainly was around in the very, very early days ...but I don't think she had quite the impact she says she did. The thing I regret most is that there are people who really did work hard to build the company who are just kind of discredited by her efforts to take credit for things she didn't have a meaningful part in."
Singleton has supporters as well. Many of the early Motown artists who gathered in Detroit recently for a Motown memorabilia convention either voiced approval for the book or acknowledged Singleton's presence as a driving force in Motown's early days.
"By the time the company was really going strong, she was gone and a lot of the artists didn't know her," said Claudette Robinson, a former Miracle and the ex-wife of Motown superstar Smokey Robinson. "But she did play a great part in organizing the company in the beginning."
Nowadays, Singleton -- who lives near Los Angeles with her third husband, Ed Singleton, and his family -- spends her time managing the performing careers of two of her four children, Cliff Lyles and Rea Singleton. She's also negotiating with Hollywood studios for a movie version of "Berry, Me and Motown."
Writing the book, she said, was therapeutic, allowing her to purge many of the ill feelings she harbors for Gordy.
"The book has totally vindicated me from the negative feelings I've had," she said. "I used to figure that eventually (Gordy) would understand my contributions and how great I really was and that I'd ride off into the sunset with some money or some credit or something. It didn't happen, but . . . I've always been a very positive person, and that's the reason I've been able to survive. I'm not going to let (the problems with Gordy) kill me."