Founder and owner of the Motown Records Corporation, he was also a songwriter for the company, as well as a compelling media personality.

To learn more about Gordy, click here.

Motown's famous songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland wrote more hits than Lennon and McCartney.  Famous Holland-Dozier-Holland songs include "Baby I Need Your Loving," "You Keep Me Hanging On," and "How Sweet It Is"

To learn more about Holland-Dozier-Holland, click here.

Mort Persky: Abrams' contact at the Detroit Free Press, editor Persky helped make the Free Press into Motown's most reliable source for positive media attention. . Persky recalls: "We were just wildly lucky. We saw that Motown was the biggest, most glamorous Detroit phenomenon of the 1960s, and we treated it that way. Meanwhile, our opposition, the Detroit News, treated it like a collection of high-school bands. So for quite a while, we had the best of this terrific story all to ourselves." While the News eventually came around, the Free Press was often the media outlet that broke Motown stories first.

Alan Freed: The disk jockey who coined the term "Rock 'n' Roll," he played Motown records—when he recieved payola—and thus helped spread the sound to a national, white audience.

Motown's first employee, he served as a press agent and public relations consultant for Motown.  He made deals with DJs to get records played on the air, wrote press releases, ghostwrote magazine features purportedly by stars like Diana Ross, and acted as a liason to the Detroit media, which, thanks in large part to his efforts, became extremely sympathetic to Motown.

I conducted an interview with Abrams about his role in selling the Motown Sound.  The interview is posted here, as part of the LivingMusic project at the University of Michigan school of Music.

To learn more about Abrams, click here.