Top Highlights

• functions: create, make, sell. It became Gordy’s slogan. Create covered the writing, producing, and recording of a record. The Make phase, run by his sister Loucye, was the manufacturing and pressing of discs. That grew quickly to support inventories, deliveries to far-flung distributors, and billing. The
• Gordy later liked to brag that if one of his records sold a million, whites bought 70 percent. “I don’t like to call it black music,” Gordy once told the Detroit News music critic. “I call it music with black stars.”
• “We don’t serve colored people,” the host told the foursome. “That’s all right,” replied Gordy, without missing a beat. “I don’t eat them.” Ales roared with laughter, and the group refused to leave until they were served. Incidents like this allowed the two men to bond early on.
• “Please Mr. Postman” became the company’s second million-selling record and its first number-one pop hit. (It was actually the first number-one pop hit ever produced in Detroit.) It was, for a black-owned recording company, with black artists, a remarkable feat. Many inside the company
• an e to his surname. He needed to do more than that. It bombed. Chastened, Gaye spent his time as a studio musician for part of the year, even playing the drums on “Please Mr. Postman.”