Janie Bradford: From Hitsville's Front Desk to Money and the HAL Awards

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Janie Bradford was born on June 2, 1939, in Charleston, Missouri, and moved to Detroit as a child during the Great Migration. As a teenager she took a job as the receptionist at Berry Gordy's young label, working in the house on West Grand Boulevard where the garage served as the studio and the kitchen as the control room. From that front desk she supplied lyrics and co-wrote Money (That's What I Want) with Gordy, a blunt song about cash rather than romance that Barrett Strong recorded in 1959 and that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones later covered.

Bradford stayed a Motown songwriter for more than 25 years, writing for Marvin Gaye, a young Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, Diana Ross, Kim Weston and the Marvelettes. She moved with the company to Los Angeles, married Wardene Hobbs in 1971, and left Motown by the end of the decade. She then co-founded Twin Records with Marilyn McLeod and created the HAL (Heroes and Legends) Awards, which honored music veterans while raising money for performing arts scholarships through the Janie Bradford HAL Scholarship Fund.

The Rolling Stones put Money on their first UK EP in 1964, and the Beatles recorded it for their second album.
Her catalog includes Too Busy Thinking About My Baby, first cut by the Temptations, and Your Old Standby for Mary Wells.
She co-wrote the early Supremes song Time Changes Things and one of their last recordings, We Should Be Closer Together.
She crossed into country by writing Plant a Seed for the Oak Ridge Boys.
The episode reports she died on August 21, 2026, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 87.

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