I just want to go over again the idea of writing and producing songs that will crossover into the larger market. And to ask you more specifically, what is it, trying to think back to the late '50s and early '60s, when you working with Berry and writing for Jackie Wilson, what specifically would you try to do with a song to make it appeal to that wide market? Or telling me what you wouldn't do is important too.

It was very important when you, when you wrote a song, uh, or produced a record to make sure it had crossover potential in those days. Which meant that it was going to be exposed to a larger audience of course, which made it more possible to sell more records. Uh, so it was important then that for you to get the records so that they are, that the, more than just the R and B stations would play it. The pop stations, the CKLWs, the XYZs of the world would, would play the record. And so we had to make sure that certain elements were there. It couldn't be just a chant that repeated a thousand times, uh, not in those days, a la James Brown, there's a riff that repeats a lot of times. Um, it couldn't be just a regular blues with the guitars and the rhythm section. Um, it had to have a melody that was singable, you know, that anyone could sing it. It had to have a simple lyric concept storywise that ordinary people would identify with. And it had to have a sound, a sound that wasn't threatening, threatening to the general audience or the pop disk jockeys or the program directors, threatening anything that was too funky, too bluesy, it was a little bit threatening. No, no, no, that's not for our audience with the, would be the spill that you would get. So it was okay for them to have a rhythm and a beat, as long as you didn't get too funky with it. So one thing that we did was to keep the rhythm strong and decorate it with a little icing, a little violins, a little horns, a little group in the background, and that made it more acceptable, all right? Okay, well, this really is not R and B, you know? Because a lot of disk jockeys were looking for an excuse to play it anyway. You know, they loved it personally but they were afraid of it, of what their bosses would say, and what their audience would say. And the end results were, the audience loved it. And so the revenues for the stations came in, and then their bosses loved it, you know. Uh, so, it was important, uh, that you had those elements in the music to make everyone love it.

You were saying a minute ago about you had to be careful not to make it too funky. What do you think was happening toward the middle and later '60s when the really funkier sounds out of Memphis and Muscle Shoals started crossing over and hitting the pop charts. What had changed to make that acceptable, do you think.

I think that perhaps, uh, it's like anything else, once they were exposed to it, you know, then those prejudice that existed no longer existed. It was a form of music, you know, so they didn't have the restrictions weren't there, in their mind, the restrictions weren't there. So as a result, it opened a door for, uh, the Memphis sounds, the more funkier or earthier sounds if you will to come in and be accepted, accepted. I don't think it was the audience. I think it was always the institution of the management of the radio stations who were segregating and separating the music styles. They were saying, hey, my audience don't like that, that's not for my audience, in the beginning. Then once we got in the door with R and B music by putting the icing on it and making sure everything was very melodic, you know, but still with a feeling, the soul of authentic R and B music, it, once we got in the door, then all of it became okay. You know, that's why in later, in the later '60s, you know, T-Bone Walker, and all the old blues guys, and B.B. King and Little Milton, and they all became popular again, because it was okay, hey, it's okay now. But in the beginning it was not acceptable. It was a little bit too earthy, too R and B, and a lot of jockeys said, you know, that's black music, which is what it was called before it got to be R and B, um, it's not for our audience. You know, um, which was just another form of segregation. So, uh, then when they got to know the music, uh, they realized, hey, this is great stuff, man that's okay, especially when they're, when their daughters and sons began to write in and call in, and request plays of that R and B music, then it became okay by a lot of stations. Of course, it still wasn't easy. You can ask, as the late Alan Freed proved, uh, he ran into a lot of problems, uh, because of a lot of things that were associated with rock music in those days. Unfortunately, a lot of it, there were a lot of characters and a lot of things happening that gave it a bad name. It wasn't the music, it was a lot of, some of the people who were performing it and playing it and associated with it, um, gave it the bad name.

I want to shift the subject. I wanted to ask you about the song "Money" for Barrett Strong. Could you start out the story by saying that you and Gwen Gordy had this company, Anna Records, and that the biggest hit you had was this song "Money" that Berry had written and maybe give us a little bit of how it went.

Where you want that end up?

I'd like to lead into hearing the song. So maybe you could tell us how Anna Records put out Berry's song "Money" and it became a hit for him and kind of helped move him in the direction of wanting to start his own label.

There was a time before Motown, very few people probably are aware of that, um, there was a time in Detroit, um, where Gwen Gordy, Berry's sister and I had an opportunity to, to start a record label in conjunction with Chess Records, Leonard and Phil Chess, whom I had been associated with and had a little bit of success with. Um, we started a record label called Anna Records, you know. This was part of Motown and part of Tamla. And Berry at the same time was working, uh, and producing

Before Motown, Tamla, Gwen Gordy and I had a label called Anna Records, which was, Anna was the name of Gwen's sister and Berry's sister. And uh, it was in association with Chess Records who distributed the label nationally. So we produced stuff and put it out on Anna and Chess Records would distribute it. Berry had written and co-produced a record with Barrett Strong, uh, called "Money". That's what I want, money. And he could release it locally, uh, on Tamla, but he didn't have the national distribution. So, um, uh, we talked, and we put it on Anna Records, and it became a big national hit with Chess's distribution system nationally. And it earned a lot of money. And uh, perhaps that made Berry know, and it certainly made me know that there was a lot of money in a big hit record. It was the first, uh, big hit on Anna, and probably the first really big money-maker for Berry, uh, which led to a lot of other things.

Hi, I'm Billy Davis, or is it Roadkill Davis, or some people call me Turang Carlo, I guess you can call me all three.

Hello, I'm Billy Davis.

As writers, Berry and I, uh, uh, did not make a lot of money, because there was not a lot of money to be made as writers. People, all your friends thought that you were rich, you had a hit record and wow, you must be really rich. Well, we made one cent, which we shared between ourselves for every record that was sold. So even if you told a million, you only made 10,000 dollars and we had to split that, so, we were not rich by any stretch of imagination. So it was difficult as a writer, it was difficult as a producer, you know. Um, but even more difficult as a record company. A young, uh, independent record company, really, um, was in jeopardy of going out of business before it even got into business. Let me explain that. Um, you work to get a record. You get it on the air, it gets played. It becomes popular, you know? and gee, you wanted to go, I got a hit record, so you send it all over the country to distributors, right? And they say, wow, yeah, I heard about this record in Detroit, I'm going to put it on the air. Then they order a thousand records from you. Two, three days later, they say, they call you up. It's a hit, Billy, it's a hit, hit. Send me 10,000. So you go out and you borrow money from your uncle, your aunt, your mother, your cousin and have all these records pressed up. And you ship them out to these distributors, and then you, and you wring your hands and you wait for the check to come in, right? And you don't, you don't get a check, you don't get a phone call. So you call them. And they start saying, well, you know, um, we gotta wait. Wait for what? But, you know, it's the end of the month, you owe us the money, we sent you the records, the records sold. Well, we don't just owe on that. What do you mean? You ordered them. The fact of the matter is they gave us a line that they had to wait to see if they were going to get returns, that if the records were going to come back. The distributors would take the records and just automatically put them out in the record shops, with the understanding that if they didn't sell, that the record shops would return them to the distributor, and the distributor then would return them all to, to us, the manufacturer. So it was very difficult. And a lot of times, you had a hit record and you would go out of business because you spent all your money, you had to run up debt and you didn't have anything coming back. And a lot of times you just didn't get paid period. The guys would just disappear, you couldn't get them on the phone. So not until you got your second hit or your third hit did you have any leverage with the distributor. So you could have a hit record and go out of business, so it was very difficult. And what happened with Motown makes it, it was even more phenomenal because of that. Um, but I think because there were, there were a consistency of hits coming out, uh, gave Berry leverage that he needed to demand the bucks to keep him going. But it was rough in the beginning.

Great, thanks. Just one other thing I wanted to ask you about. From your perspective, I mean, by the late ' 60s you're in New York, but I'm sure you're watching what's happening in the industry, what did you see happening towards the end of the '60s when things like James Brown's "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," the more social conscious black consciousness, black power sorts of songs were becoming popular. What was your sense of what was happening in the country then, musically, with black music?

Well, I, I think the whole black movement, the whole civil rights movement, you know, had, was at a peak, in the, in the late '60s. From the movement that was, that started and, and, and with Martin Luther King, and uh, so the black people became more aware of themselves and their, and their pride. And the young artists, all right, um, begin to speak up in the only way they could speak up, and that was through their music. Um, and that's what led to, uh, songs like "I'm Black and I'm Proud," the James Browns, and it was, uh, it was an opportunity to say something, uh, that could reach a lot of people that you couldn't ordinarily say, you know, that would fall on deaf ears. And it got attention. There were a lot of stations who didn't play it because of what it was saying. It's like a lot of stations don't play a lot of rap now for one reason or another. But um, it was purely black consciousness, you know, saying, hey, here we are. We are who we are and we're proud of it. And uh, you just gotta accept that. You know, we're just like you in many ways. So um, this is what the music, the messages were in those songs in those days. And there was a, there's a correlation between that and the movement of the flower children and the end of the Vietnam War. There's a definite correlation to that. Young people from that generation, be you white, black or, uh, or Hispanic or Indian, uh, was very conscious of what they were, uh, doing and saying, and where they were in their life. And they did not appreciate where their parents had been or were taking them.

And do you think that the death of Martin Luther King had an effect on the music industry? On what the trends were in black music? Did things get less joyful, less --

I don't know. I can't say that it definitely had an effect on the music industry on black music. Uh, but it certainly had an effect on all of us. Um, uh, and it was not, it was a positive effect in some ways, but, uh, it was like taking a giant step backward. It was a feeling until you got yourself together and leaped forward. So it was sort of paralyzing in a way, I think, at least was to me, uh, his death was like, um, you know, you're almost there, and communicating something that you're equal, that you had your rights, and uh, and then your leader gets slain in that way, it's paralyzing, you know. You feel a lot of emotions, you're hurt, you're frustrated, you're angry, you're bitter. You go through a lot of emotions. But I can't say that, uh, that showed up in our music as anger or, or uh, uh, at all. We were certainly frustrated.

Do you think Motown enjoyed its great years of success in the mid-'60s as part of the great flush of the civil rights movement. Here was a black company doing well, people wanted to support it, there was a lot of positive energy, was that part of the story do you think?

Motown being a black company, uh, uh, uh, at the time that it was a black company certainly was unique. And um, uh, this happened to be at the time of the, uh, civil rights movement, uh, that it came along as well. I'm not too sure that it, the civil rights movement and the grip it had on the country had any positive effects on Motown. You know, I think Motown would have been Motown if the civil rights movement was not taking place at that particular time in the way it was. I think it was the music that was a crossover barrier that broke down barriers. It was a great tool of the civil rights movement. I think the reverse happened, you know? It, uh, it, the music broke down the barriers that were not there, went into homes that it would have not have been in before. So the messages was there, the people, the culture got inside of people's homes who had never seen a black person in some cases. You know, uh, it may sound ridiculous, but that's true. And certainly never exposed to their music. So I think, uh, uh, the sounds of Motown and R and B music helped the civil rights movement.

And so when something like the Supremes being on Ed Sullivan nationally, did that have a great effect in the black community? Was that a very prideful moment?

Yes. The acts of, of Motown, because they're all class acts, you know. Uh, a little different. You take the Supremes, uh, for instance, they're a class act. They, they dress classy, they look classy, they act classy. This was all taught. This, this was part of a plan. Every act that came out of Motown was polished to, to, to a great extent. They knew how to carry themselves in public. So they were, they were a source of, of black pride in the black community. You were proud of them, right, and having them represent you, you know, and that was, that played a very important part, uh, in gaining their popularity in the black community, and a very important part in their acceptance in the white communities.

So was there any feeling in the black community, or just thinking for yourself, that some of these acts were getting too white, kind of overly polished in going through the mass market?

No, I, I don't think that from my perspective or from a lot of us that, uh, certainly, you, you had the blues lovers might say that, hey, the Supremes, they're, they're acting and looking and sounding like the Maguire Sisters. Well, you know, that's, that's a little biased and uh, uh, a little prejudiced on the other side, you know, and, and not true at all. They may not have been acting like typically as one might expect it, or what one might want or used to. Certainly wasn't accustomed to seeing, uh, uh, three black girls standing up in evening gowns, you know, who knew how to talk, walk, and, and act and carry themselves, uh, it was a little different image that was being projected on American, uh, society, black community as well as white.