So Billy, tell me in addition to the energy in the city on the street corners and the talent shows, there was also music in the church experience.

Oh, the church experience started long before the music in the '50s actually, you know. From the time you're able to walk you're going to church. And I went to Sunday school uh in the morning on Sunday and went to church in the afternoon and sometimes again in the evening, uh, if my grandmother wanted me to. So, uh, you were exposed to a lot of gospel music in the choirs because the church is full of music. And uh, if you were, um, young and black in Detroit in those days you went to church, there's no doubt about that, uh, on Sundays, and you were exposed to gospel music and, and that type of, uh, influence was there, I'm sure, with all of us. It certainly was with me. It showed up latter with the Sam Cookes of the world, and, uh, also a lot of the soul singers started out in church. I'm sure you've heard that story a million times, well, it's true. We did go to church on Sunday, you know, and it was a great influence.

You mentioned Sam Cooke, I was going to ask you more about that. Now you were about, pretty much a contemporary of his, weren't you? The question is this, when he stopped recording as a Soul Stirrer and started doing pop music, was that a big event?

Oh, that was a major event. That was a big controversy.

Let me ask you to start over and just explain, when Sam Cooke started.

When Sam Cooke for instance, um, switched from gospel, from the Soul Stirrers, to um, to um, singing pop music, it was a major event. I mean the, the adults, none of them liked the idea of Sam Cooke, who was one of their idols, uh, when he was with the Soul Stirrers, singing pop music. I mean like, uh, my, my grandmother and, and her friends uh, in the whole neighborhood like, was like, I remember hearing conversations of how bad they thought that was. Because the young people thought it was great. And especially after his records began to come out, and uh, eventually he won them over as well, you know. Um, uh, how can you not like "You Send Me", you know? His version of that song, which was just fantastic. But um, no, the, the, the grownups did not like the idea of Sam Cooke singing gospel, and that was true with a lot of the, the, the acts who, uh, started out in church and became big. Aretha Franklin, I know her father would not allow her to sing anything but gospel for a while. Because, uh, uh, Berry Gordy and I wanted to record her at one time, and uh, uh, we ended up recording her sister, uh, Irma Franklin, because her father said, no, Aretha couldn't do it, she was too young, etc. So, no, the parents were, against a lot of the rock-pop music at that time.

Let me ask about your first experience with Berry. Can you tell us just briefly about how you happened to meet Berry Gordy and how you happened to start writing songs for him?

Okay. I met Berry Gordy, uh, uh, in the late '50s, I guess about '57, '58. Um, I was working at the late Al Green's office in Detroit. Al Green was the manager of Laverne Baker, the twiddly-dee thing, and uh, Johnny Ray, who was a big pop start at that time. And he also owned and managed the Flame Show Bar, which was the big nightclub in Detroit. And Berry's sister, Gwen, um, uh, approached Al and Al sent Berry up to see me. Um, Berry was a writer. Berry showed up one day with his reel of songs, and uh, I listened to them, and of course recognized that he had a lot of talent. I had some problems with the material, because in my opinion it wasn't quite commercial enough, meaning that the hooks weren't there, the stories, some of them, uh, had the tendency of being long. Not enough repetition like you find in a lot of pop music. Uh, not that I had a lot of experience but I had a couple of hits by that time. Um, with the Moonglows and Flamingoes, and um, while Berry respected what I said, he um, was a little reluctant to do anything about it, um, and um, and I think originally he might have thought I was just trying to cut in on his songs or something. And after a week or so, he came back, uh, up one, one Saturday, and uh, I was there alone. And uh, I was working on something, that day we ended up, sitting down writing a song together. I don't remember exactly what it was. Nothing ever came of it, but something came of the relationship. I think it was then that Berry began to realize what I was saying, and where I was coming from as a writer. And um, that led to us forming a partnership, um, that was very fruitful, um, for both of us.

Tell me also about your initial impressions of Berry just as a person. What was he like? He was about 28 I think when you met him?

Yeah, around that age, yes.

What was he like in terms of ambition and drive or wanting to make a buck.

Berry was very, very strange when I first met him. Because he didn't say a lot. He wasn't very talkative. He was very serious about um, what he wanted to do in his songs. And he was looking to get his songs recorded and published, um, but um, he was a little skeptical and, uh, untrusting of most people. And um, uh, but he had a lot of ambition I think. A lot of people thought he didn't, that he wasn't very ambitious. But I always thought that he was very ambitious. And um, looking for the best deal that he could find. And uh, but I imagine Berry had heard so many stories as I had, and had experienced, um, uh, about people, uh, in the business taking advantage of young talent and so forth. And he didn't want to end up being one of those people, which I could understand. Um, and uh, but, uh, he was very ambitious. He was uh, he wanted to have a lot of confidence in himself and wanted to get ahead.

You knew the whole family. You were dating Gwen at some point, and you must have known all the sisters and everybody. Tell me a little bit about the family.

After meeting Berry he and I became partners, writing partners. And we decided, we just really hit it off, and decided to team up, everything, put everything in the kitty that, everything that I had and everything that he had, we were going to put it in the kitty and, and go for it. And uh, as a result I got an opportunity to meet um, um, members his family, um, Gwen Gordy. Which was his youngest sister. And Gwen and I ended up hitting it off together, uh, as a couple. And um, uh, uh, Gwen was very supportive of Berry. She helped him out, and uh, a lot of ways financially. For sure, I guess she's one of the key reasons he was able to leave the factory, the automobile factory, uh, to try his, his music career. She helped support him at the time. And um, he was always, always very grateful and appreciative of, of that. Plus there was the very tightness of the whole family. Um, his mother, uh, who was an executive in an insurance company. His sister Esther, um, uh, who um, who ran a campaign for the governor of Michigan, uh, uh, his, one of his brothers was a, ran a, uh, printing company. And so his family was in business and they were a true family as far as togetherness is concerned. And I believe they still are. Um, so yes I became very close to them, as close as you can. I found out one thing that you were, as close as you got, you were never a member of the family. You can come close to the family, but you never became a member of the family. Which is fine, as long as you understood that, you know. And at that time I think I was probably as close as you can get to them. And uh, they were, there were some marvelous people there.

Let's talk a little bit about the song the two of you wrote for Jackie Wilson. You told me before that Berry's style was more jazz-oriented, and you were coming from more of an R and B place. Tell us a little bit about the song "Reet Petite" and work in where Berry was coming from and where you were coming from.

Berry's style of music and my style of music, uh, was somewhat different in as much as, some of his early experience and type of music he's, that he was exposed to and liked a lot was jazz, you know? I like jazz. But I was really more into rock 'n' roll, and, and, and, uh, uh, that form of music. And um, you would wonder how those two forms got together. But they, they worked fine, you know, because there was a mutual respect, um, that we had for each other. And had it for, I loved jazz, and he loves rock 'n' roll, even though we liked the other more than one. So when Berry sat down, um, to a piano, and was working on something, and I came in and it was interesting to me because it might have been a little different.

Maybe you could tell us briefly about the collaboration of you and Berry writing "Reet Petite."

"Reet Petite." Well, that was one of the, it was the first hit that Berry and I had together that we had written. Um, "Reet Petite" was born out of an idea that I had had, uh, even before meeting Berry but was never completed. When you first start playing the piano or doing anything, um, one of the first licks you learn is [sings] on the piano, a boogie lick, right? I loved it, I loved it. And so it inspired me along with my love for a young girl, uh, who was very cute, she was really fine, but she had a boyfriend who was six feet five and very big. So all I could do was look. So the combination of me loving that boogie riff and loving to look at her, inspired that idea, [sings. But it was never completed, it was never completed as a full song. When I exposed Berry to it, he loved it. We were looking for the right songs for Jackie. And he loved the idea of it, and um, we sit down and completed the song. It was fantastic. They, of course, Jackie added his two or two dollars to it, and it became a massive hit, as one of the great experiences I think that Berry and I ever had together was when "Reet Petite" came out as a record and um, it came on a local radio show. And um, his sister Lucy came running in the room, and said, gee, it's on Dick Clark, you know. And wow, what an experience, everywhere, we were running from the living room to the dining room listening to Jackie singing "Reet Petite." You only experience that ever once. It was great.

You told me once before about some elements that make a good song and that you and Berry always felt that the song came first and then the artist and the production. Could you kind of briefly give me an idea of that and how you and Berry worked with that in mind?

You know Berry and I always felt that the song was the most important element in producing a hit record. Songs that are performed well by artists become hit records. Performed well by artists and produced well by producers become hit records. And there are some records that become hit records that have mediocre songs, but not a lot of them. Unless you have an artist like Jackie Wilson who could take just about anything and make it a hit almost. But uh, our philosophy was that the song had to be there. You know, what I mean by the song. It had to be melodically sound, a melody that anyone could sing. The melody had to be there. There had to be a story line that the young people could relate to. You know, they can say, yeah, yeah, that happened to me, or yeah, man, that's where it's at. So that they can relate to it. So the story line had to be there, the melody had to be there, and it had to have the thing like the repetition of a hook, a simple idea that came back at you a few times, uh, lyrically as well as melodically. so when you heard that record in two minutes, in those days, records were, had to be less than two minutes, uh, you heard the hook two or three times, and you went away humming the tune because you've heard the tune two or three times. So those elements had to be there. Um, so that's what I meant, what we meant by the song had to be there. If it was a good song, you know, then just about any artist could do it.

Could you talk about that a little bit in relation to "Lonely Teardrops".

For instance, uh, uh, "Lonely Teardrops," um, was what we thought was a good song. It was a good song idea. It was about, uh, uh, how you felt when someone you love left you and you wanted them back. You don't feel much worse than that. And you do cry a lot of lonely teardrops. So the idea we thought was appealing to a lot of people. Um, and uh, but it was written originally as, as a blues, a ballad [sings]. And but it never really worked, even with Jackie doing it, uh, he sung the heck out of it, but um, it was never there, it was never really, really there we felt. We were looking for ballads. Uh, "To Be Loved" was written around the same time. "To Be Loved" was recorded and came out and it was a hit. And it was an idea that was born out of uh, uh, of the fact that a popular dance, the cha-cha, was popular at that time in Detroit, and um, we were fooling around with the song one day, and, and um, decided to do it in a cha-cha. Well, the minute you put it to a cha-cha rhythm, it worked. Jackie got a hold to it and made it his own, as he does most songs, uh, and there again, the song then was married with the right arrangement and the right artist, by being, the song became a hit, so all the elements was there. It does take a great talent, take a good talent. You can't just take any song, or a song just because it's good and give it to a talent because the talent is good. The marriage has got to be right. That's why a lot of songs will come out once with an artist and not make it. Come out two years with another artist and wow, top ten. So the marriage has to be right as well.

So those were those early lessons that Berry kind of learned in working with you that he applied later to Motown?

I think that, that philosophy, uh, was carried all the way through. If you listen to Motown's songs, you go all the way back to the beginning, you know, they had those, those elements were there and every one of them. And later we added strings and horns were added to make them sound more pop, to make them more acceptable to play on the, on the pop stations. Most of them were not playing R and B records at that time until the R and B record became a hit as a result of exposure on the R and B stations. And there was probably one, sometimes two stations in a town, uh, so the, the philosophy of having uh, a good song with the melody and, and a hook line, and the right marriage with the artist was there. And it was consistent in, in all of Motown songs.

Now you talked about the pop versus R and B, which of course is something that Motown built its fortune on essentially. It was making those pop records. Is that something that you and Gordy talked about early on, what you need to cross over into the broader marketplace?

Yes, uh, to, to Berry and I talked about and we tried to make sure that our songs, uh, had the elements in them that where a song could be played on, on WXYZ in Detroit or KLOW in Windsor, the big pop stations that were going to make a big difference as far as exposure to more people and therefore generate more record sales. Uh, if, we made sure it had a melody and was not just preaching or not just rhythmic. You know. Or the same blues changes that you've heard a, a million times. That it had a little bit more than that. Those elements had to be there. We did talk about it. Um, the arrangement, how the songs were going to be arranged. After the Drifters hit of "There Goes My Baby", they used violins I think for the first time on a rock music, uh, was such a big hit, it made us go, wow, we can use violins and horns and, and, and that's also going to help our case. Our case was to get the songs after they were produced, played on pop radio. And so these elements I'm sure helped tremendous in the crossover effects of R and B music into the pop field.

It was an idea that disk jockeys liked it but they weren't sure.

A strong rhythm section was always there, uh, in R and B music, whether it was slow or fast. The Motown stuff and Chess Records stuff had strong rhythm beats, you know. And those elements were there, and uh, and the pop disk jockeys on the pop stations, uh, who generally played the Pat Boones of the world, uh, loved it. But they weren't too sure that their audience, uh, would like it. And the program director and so forth, therefore wouldn't play it. You know they hesitated initially, uh, with some, with a few exceptions of course, uh, Alan Freed here in New York and John Ritchburg in Nashville down in Tennessee, uh, uh, began to play it. And they, uh, were looking for other elements, to, to, to, so they could justify playing it. And that's what the good melodies, and the violins and the horns did. They said, wow, this is different, this is not on R and B music, so this must be pop. And that gave them a right to play it.