Episode eighty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Money" by Barrett Strong, the dispute over its authorship, and the start of a record label that would change music. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.

Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Alley Oop" by the Hollywood Argyles.

Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/



Errata

I say “His name didn't appear on the label of the record.” I mean here that Strong's name didn't appear on the label as a songwriter. It obviously did appear as the performer.

More significantly, I appear to have got the date when "Money" charted wrong -- see the comment thread.

Resources

As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.

You might want to listen again to the episode on Jackie Wilson, in which we looked at Berry Gordy's career to this point.

I used six principal sources to put together the narrative for this one, most of which I will be using for most future Motown episodes.

Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown.

To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography.

Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown, including Janie Bradford.

I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown.

The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history.

And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 693 tracks released on Motown singles.

There is a Complete Motown Singles 1959-62 box available from Hip-O-Select with comprehensive liner notes, but if you just want the music, I recommend instead this much cheaper bare-bones box from Real Gone Music.

And this set contains every recording that Barrett Strong made for Tamla as a performer.

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Transcript

Today, we're going to look at a record which was the first success for one of the most important record labels of all time, which has one of the most instantly recognisable riffs of any record ever, and which was the product of a one-hit wonder who would, several years later, go on to be a hugely important figure as a writer, rather than a performer. Along the way we're going to look at the beginnings of many, many, other careers we'll be seeing more of in the next couple of years. Today, we're going to look at "Money" by Barrett Strong:

[Excerpt: Barrett Strong, "Money"]

When we left Berry Gordy Jr, he had just stopped writing songs for Jackie Wilson -- while the songs he'd co-written with his sister Gwen and her boyfriend Roquel Davis had been massive hits for Wilson, Wilson's manager had believed that any songwriters could bring the same amount of success, and that Wilson's records were selling solely because of Wilson's performances.

Davis and Gwen had started up a new record label with the help of another Gordy sister, Anna, after whom they named the label. But at the start, Berry Gordy had little involvement in that label. While Gwen had wanted Berry to become a partner in the business, Berry had soured on the idea of business partners after some of his other ventures had failed due to conflicts between him and his partners. Berry was going to work for himself. He would write and produce for his family's record labels, but he wasn't going to be a partner in their businesses.

Instead, he focussed on