Esther Gordy Edwards: The Ber-Berry Co-op, Motortown Revue and Hitsville

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Esther Gordy Edwards was born on April 25, 1920, in Washington County, Georgia, the eldest daughter of Berry Gordy Sr. and Bertha Fuller Gordy, and moved with the family to Detroit at age two. She attended Cass Technical High School and graduated from Howard University. In the mid-1940s she founded the Gordy Printing Company with two brothers, and in 1951 she married Detroit politician George Edwards. With her husband she set up the Ber-Berry Co-op, a family fund with dues and formal loan proposals at a time when banks would not lend to Black entrepreneurs. In 1959 her brother Berry applied to it for $800 to start a record label, and she approved the loan.

Once Motown launched, she ran management and booking, and in 1962 she organized the Motortown Revue, routing buses of young performers through a segregated country, finding safe lodging, handling nightly cash and keeping teenage stars fed and focused. By the mid-1960s she held the titles of vice president and chief executive officer, serving until 1972, when the episode says Smokey Robinson succeeded her. She joined the boards of the Bank of the Commonwealth and the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce. When Motown moved to Los Angeles she stayed, and in 1985 became director of the new Motown Historical Museum, preserving Hitsville U.S.A. on West Grand Boulevard.

• She was the second oldest of eight Gordy children, a sibling roster that included Anna, Gwen, George, Berry and Robert.
• Family members paid dues into the co-op and had to submit proposals to borrow from it.
• The hosts compare her Motortown Revue role to a military quartermaster running a mobile supply chain.
• She died at 91 on August 24, 2011, at her Detroit Towers condominium on Jefferson Avenue.
• She was posthumously inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2022.