The war that had been raging inside me – music versus boxing – was finally over.
-Berry Gordy
As a kid growing up in the 1970s, I watched Roller Derby on TV. And who can forget the Kansas City Bombers, made famous by Raquel Welch in the 1972 movie Kansas City Bomber:
Classic stuff. That’s how I remember L.A.’s Grand Olympic Auditorium, the home of the Roller Derby’s Los Angeles Thunderbirds.
However, the Grand Olympic Auditorium was first famous for boxing history. The 1960s and 1970s were a major boom period for the Olympic, as major boxing and wrestling events were held there every other Friday night. Charles Bukowski wrote about the Olympic:
even the Hollywood (Legion Stadium) boys knew the action was at the Olympic. (George) Raft came, and the others, and all the starlets, hugging those front row seats. the gallery boys went ape and the fighters fought like fighters and the place was blue with cigar smoke, and how we screamed, baby baby, and threw money and drank our whiskey, and when it was over, there was the drive-in, the old lovebed with our dyed and vicious women. you slammed it home, then slept like a drunk angel.
Many professional boxers made their names boxing at the Olympic Auditorium:
Here’s a look inside:
Later on, the Grand Olympic Auditorium was used by Hollywood for iconic boxing scenes from Rocky (1976) Raging Bull (1980), and Million Dollar Baby (2004). However, the most famous person to box there might just be the founder of Motown Records, Berry Gordy.
In his autobiography, To Be Loved, Berry Gordy wrote, “After school and whenever I wasn’t working for Pop, I’d hang around the Brewster Center, a city-run recreation facility for inner-city kids, some five miles from my house.”
From the first time he stepped in there, he loved the smell, the sound, seeing all the young kids boxing, and all the excitement. He was taken in by legendary trainer Eddie Futch, who sparred with Joe Louis and later trained heavyweights Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, and Riddick Bowe. Before long, he was hooked. He quit school in the tenth grade to turn pro.
On November 19, 1948, at the Olympia Auditorium in Detroit, Gordy was on the card with his hero Joe Louis, who had trained in the basement of the Brewster Center.
He was on top of the world. Here’s the fight card:
However, throughout Gordy’s pro boxing career, music was always on his mind. Gordy wrote:
Then, one hot August day in 1950, a remarkable thing happened. The Woodward Avenue Gym was packed. Pitting myself against the big bag and feeling very much the victor, I decided my tired, profusely sweating body deserved a break. As I sat down on a bench, my eyes fell on two posters on one of the four square pillars that supported the gym’s ceiling. I got up and walked closer.
The top poster announced a Battle of the Bands between Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington for that same night. The one below was advertising a bout between two young fighters, scheduled for the following Friday night. There it was again: Boxing versus Music. This time it was visual.
The war that had been raging inside me – music versus boxing – was finally over. I had my answer.
That day I took off my gloves - for good.
Once the boxing gloves came off, Gordy started to write music.
One day later that year, he noticed in a magazine ad that for $25 he could send in a recording of a song and get sheet music written. He sent in a recording of his song You Are You. He wrote the song for Doris Day, America’s Girl Next Door. When the sheet music came back, he sent it off to her with this note, “Dear Doris, here’s a song I’ve written for you.” He addressed it: “Doris Day, Hollywood California.” He writes, “After about three months a letter came, but it was not from Doris Day. It started with ‘Greetings’ and ended with ‘Please report to Fort Custer.’ I had been drafted.”
Gordy returned home from the Army in 1953. He had joined the Army and fought for his country, now he was ready to make some noise in the music world.
The first thing he did was open a jazz record store. With the help of a loan from the church credit union and some money from his brother George, he opened 3D Record Mart - House of Jazz. However, before long he discovered that Jazz lovers are few and far between and the record store slowly went out of business.
Jobless and in debt, Gordy took a job working on the assembly line at Ford Motor's Lincoln assembly plant. He composed songs while working on the assembly lines and tried to get the singers at a black nightclub where his sisters owned a cigarette concession to perform his songs. In 1957, Gordy quit his job at Ford and devoted himself to composing music full-time
A professional singer and an old friend from Gordy's boxing days, Jackie Wilson was the first producer to record Gordy's material. Wilson recorded several of Gordy's songs, including Lonely Teardrops. Gordy, however, did not receive much of the profit for he was just the composer of the song, and the real money was found in the music production industry. Therefore, Gordy set out to create his own record-producing company. With a $800 loan, he founded Tamla Records on January 12, 1959, which was incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960.
In 1962, Gordy formed the short-lived Workshop Jazz record label. Their first release was Earl Washington’s All Star Jazz:
From that album here is Washington’s Opus No. 3:
Interestingly, this session was not recorded in Detroit. Motown leased it from Chicago’s Formal record label. Washington’s band was made up of Count Basie alumni Detroit native Thad Jones on trumpet, Frank Foster on sax, Frank Wess on flute, Ben Powell on trombone, Ed Jones on bass, and Sonny Payne on drums.
Another solid Workshop Jazz release is the George Bohanon Quartet’s Boss: Bossa Nova, released in 1963. El Rig was written by Detroit native Kirk Lightsey, and he has a nice piano solo. Also, dig Cecil McBee’s killer bass intro:
Note that the guitarist on this song is The Funk Brother Joe Messina. Motown’s The Funk Brothers were one of the most successful studio groups ever.
Another artist Gordy recorded for the label was Detroit native Roy Brooks. Brooks was an important force in the development of post-riot jazz in Detroit. In 1964, Workshop Jazz released his album Beat:
It was recorded in Studio A at Hitsville U.S.A., which I visited a couple weeks ago. Here’s the studio:
From this album, here is Soulin’:
Brooks’ band for that album is basically the Horace Silver Quintet that recorded on Silver’s Blue Note albums Doin’ the Thing (1961), The Tokyo Blues (1962), Silver’s Serenade (1963), and Song for My Father (1965). It featured Brooks on drums, Junior Cook on tenor, Gene Taylor on bass, and the fabulous Blue Mitchell on trumpet. For this Detroit release, Brooks added native sons Hugh Lawson on piano and George Bohanon on trombone.
Here’s one more for the road. When I was at Studio A, I noticed a bunch of dimes on top of the candy machine. They were put there for Stevie Wonder, who liked Baby Ruth candy bars. Gordy made sure they were always in the same place in the machine - fourth lever from the right. When Stevie came to the studio he’d reach up on top of the candy machine, grab a dime, and get himself a Baby Ruth. Here’s that candy machine:
As you all know, I am a harp player and get stuck on that road from time to time. In 1967, Motown subsidiary Gordy Records released a single by Eivets Rednow (Steve Wonder spelled backward):
Based on the success of this single, Gordy released an album in 1968 that contained Philemon Hou’s classic Grazing in the Grass:
In the summer of 1959, Gordy bought the former Gene LeVett photo building on West Grand Boulevard and it became the headquarters of Hitsville U.S.A. The Motown organization grew rapidly and eventually was the largest black-owned enterprise in the nation. For the first time black music was successfully brought to mass white markets by a company that was in black hands. But when I think of Berry Gordy, I think of his first two loves: boxing and jazz - and wonder what might have been….
Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and pay our respects to Carla Bley, who passed away last month.
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Until then, keep on walking….