Berry Gordy The Real American Legend

Berry Gordy, Jr.^[1] (born November 28, 1929) is an American record producer, and songwriter. He is best known as the founder of the Motown record label, as well as its many subsidiaries. Gordy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

The Gordys are an African-American family of businesspeople and music industry executives. They were born to Georgia-reared parents Berry "Pops" Gordy, Sr. and Bertha Fuller Gordy and raised in Detroit, where most of the siblings played a pivotal role in the international acceptance of rhythm and blues music as a crossover phenomenon in the 1960s. The accomplishment is attributable to the creation of Motown, a company founded by the seventh-oldest sibling, Berry Gordy, Jr. Gordy was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1998.

Gordy delivered the commencement address at Michigan State University on May 5, 2006, and at Occidental College on May 20, 2007. He received an honorary degree from each school.

Gordy received the Songwriters Hall of Fame's Pioneer Award on June 13, 2013. He is the first living individual to receive the honor.

• Gordy was portrayed by Billy Dee Williams (whose career Gordy had helped to jump-start in the 1970s) in the 1992 miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream. He was also portrayed by Obba Babatunde in the 1998 miniseries The Temptations.
• The character Gordy Berry in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is a reference to Berry Gordy.

• The character of Curtis Taylor, Jr., a music executive, in the 2006 musical film Dreamgirls has been called "a thinly veiled portrayal" of Gordy.^[16] The film was based on the 1981 musical Dreamgirls, but the film made the connection to Gordy and Motown much more explicit than the musical did, by, among other things, moving the setting of the story from Chicago to Detroit. Taylor appears in the film as unethical and insensitive to his artists, which caused Gordy and others to criticize the film after its release. Gordy called the portrayal "100% wrong," while Smokey Robinson said it "blatantly painted a negative picture of Motown and Berry Gordy and of the Supremes."^[17] In 2007, the producers of the film, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures, issued a public apology to Gordy, saying they were sorry "for any confusion that has resulted from our fictional work." Gordy accepted the Apolo
• .In 2014 Berry Gordy received the Visionary Award

• truly this was long overdue form the beginning Motown has been the father of black talent with Berry being the grandfather for birthing the family of musical superstars like the Jacksons.