Hitsville, Counted: Motown by the Numbers, 1961–1990
Berry Gordy started Motown in Detroit in 1959 with a house on West Grand Boulevard and a slogan about the sound of young America. What I have in front of me is drier than a slogan: a sheet listing every Hot 100 entry in this archive by the Motown family of acts, from the Miracles' "Bad Girl" scraping to #93 in October 1959 through the Four Tops' "Indestructible" in the summer of 1988. It runs to 511 charting titles. Fifty reached #1, and together they held the top for 115 weeks. I counted, by act and by decade, because the totals hide a story that's better than the totals.
One caution. The roster was matched by name, so a few entries belong to the family only loosely. Gladys Knight and the Pips had moved to Buddah by the time "Midnight Train To Georgia" hit #1 in 1973, and "Ebony And Ivory" is a Paul McCartney single that happens to have Stevie Wonder on it. Where it matters I'll say so.
A Twelve-Year-Old Gets There First
The near misses came early. "Shop Around" by the Miracles debuted in December 1960 and stalled at #2, and for three years the company kept landing in the top ten and no higher. The first Motown #1 in this archive is none of those polished singles. It's "Fingertips - Pt 2" by Little Stevie Wonder, a live recording of a twelve-year-old harmonica player driving a crowd out of its mind, and it went to #1 the week of August 10, 1963 and stayed three. The record that finally broke through was a kid hollering over a band that didn't know what key he'd come back in. Nobody else at the company would top the Hot 100 for another nine months.
Then the dam broke. "My Guy" by Mary Wells reached #1 on May 16, 1964, taking over from Louis Armstrong's "Hello, Dolly!" and handing off to the Beatles' "Love Me Do" two weeks later. It was Wells's only #1, and she left the company that year. Three months on, the week of August 22, 1964, the Supremes reached the top with "Where Did Our Love Go," and a label that had spent five years getting to #2 suddenly couldn't stay away from #1.
The Mid-Sixties, Counted
Here's what the sheet says about 1964 through 1966. Four Motown titles reached #1 in 1964, five in 1965, three in 1966. Twelve number ones in three calendar years, from a company whose entire chart history before that added up to one. The entries column is just as telling: 31 Motown-family titles debuted on the Hot 100 in 1964, 34 in 1965, 30 in 1966, and the label placed at least 30 new records on the chart every year through 1971. That is the machine Holland-Dozier-Holland built, one 45 at a time.
Most of those early #1s belonged to one group. The Supremes' five straight, "Where Did Our Love Go" through "Back In My Arms Again," are already covered on this site, so I'll only note that "Baby Love" was the big one, four weeks from October 31, 1964, and the five together managed just nine weeks at #1. Short reigns, quick turnover: what you'd expect from a label that treated the chart as an assembly line.
The other acts filled in around them. The Temptations' "My Girl" took a single week on March 6, 1965, and the Four Tops added "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" that summer and "Reach Out I'll Be There" the next autumn. Add it up and the Supremes finished the decade with 12 number ones under one billing or another, 22 weeks at the top. No other act on the sheet comes close for the sixties.
What surprised me is how thin 1967 looks. Two Supremes #1s, one week each, and that's the year. Holland-Dozier-Holland's break with the company came in 1967, and you can read it right off the chart. The answer arrived late in 1968, when "Love Child" ended "Hey Jude" and then Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" moved in on December 14, 1968 and stayed seven weeks, the longest Motown reign of the decade by a wide margin.
1970: The Biggest Year Nobody Talks About
Everyone knows the mid-sixties were Motown's peak. The sheet disagrees, at least by one measure. Count weeks at #1 per calendar year and the winner is 1970. Six titles, 15 weeks. The Jackson 5 took "I Want You Back" to the top on January 31, 1970, followed with "ABC" and "The Love You Save," then closed with "I'll Be There," five weeks from October 17, 1970, the longest Motown stay of the entire decade. (Their four straight are told elsewhere here.) In between, Diana Ross's first solo #1, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," took three weeks in September, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles finally got a #1 of their own with "The Tears Of A Clown" in December, ten years after "Shop Around" stopped one place short.
The seventies as a whole hold up better than the legend suggests: 22 number ones on the sheet, 38 weeks, against 19 and 41 for the sixties. The difference is who delivered them. After "Someday We'll Be Together" closed out the Supremes in the last week of 1969, the label's number ones came from grown-up solo careers. Stevie Wonder went from harmonica novelty to "Superstition," "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life," "I Wish" and "Sir Duke" (three weeks in 1977). Marvin Gaye added "Let's Get It On" and "Got To Give It Up." Diana Ross took three more solo records to the top inside three years, and the Commodores turned up with "Three Times A Lady" and "Still."
Notice the running times, though. Of those 22 seventies #1s, 11 held the top for exactly one week. Motown could reach #1 with almost anyone on the payroll and rarely stay there. And notice the entries thinning after the move to Los Angeles in 1972: 30 new Hot 100 titles in 1971, 22 in 1972, 14 in 1975, 7 in 1978. The number ones kept coming. The depth was gone.
The Lionel Richie Years
The eighties flip the pattern. Only nine roster #1s in the decade, but 36 weeks at the top, nearly what the sixties managed with 19. Fewer number ones, much longer ones, and nearly all of them ran through one man.
It starts with Diana Ross. "Upside Down" went to #1 on September 6, 1980 for four weeks and stayed on the Hot 100 for 29, the longest chart life of any title on the sheet. Then, on August 15, 1981, "Endless Love" by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie arrived and did not leave until Christopher Cross's "Arthur's Theme" moved in on October 17. Nine weeks, tying "Hey Jude," and the longest reign by anyone in the Motown family across the whole archive. It was Ross's last #1 on the sheet and Richie's first under his own name.
His solo run follows: "Truly" (two weeks, 1982), "All Night Long (All Night)" (four weeks, 1983), "Hello" (two weeks, 1984) and "Say You, Say Me," which reached #1 on December 21, 1985 and held through January 11, 1986. Four solo #1s, 12 weeks. Count "Endless Love" and his two Commodores chart-toppers and Lionel Richie is attached to seven Motown number ones and 24 weeks at the top, which makes him the biggest act the label had after the Supremes. Stevie Wonder kept pace with "I Just Called To Say I Love You" (three weeks from October 13, 1984) and "Part-Time Lover," bringing his solo total to eight #1s from "Fingertips" onward.
And then it stops. "Say You, Say Me" is the last Motown-family #1 in this archive; nothing else from the roster reached the top before the archive closes in 1990. Gordy sold the company in 1988. The final roster entry on the sheet, fittingly or not, is the Four Tops' "Indestructible," which debuted August 20, 1988 and peaked at #35.
The Scoreboard
The tally, as I count it. The Supremes: 12 number ones, 22 weeks. Stevie Wonder: eight and 14 on his own. Diana Ross solo: five and 11, or six and 20 with "Endless Love." Lionel Richie solo: four and 12. The Jackson 5: four and 10. The Temptations: four and six. Marvin Gaye: three and 10. The Four Tops, the Miracles and the Commodores: two each. Mary Wells: one. Strip out the Buddah and Columbia strays and the family's honest total is 48 number ones and 106 weeks.
I started this expecting the mid-sixties to win every column. They win the one the legend cares about, number ones per year, with 1965's five. But 1970 wins on weeks, the eighties win on staying power, and a twelve-year-old with a harmonica got there before any of them. The numbers don't argue with the myth. They just keep adding rooms to it.
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