When I was a kid my father owned a music store in our small town. My sisters and I loved to go dig through the stacks of Billboard magazine and pull out photos to hang on our bedroom wall. It made us kind of mini-celebrities with friends who couldn’t believe we were lucky enough to actually be able to hold an issue of Billboard, not just hear the name on the Top 10 countdown shows.
All these years later I accidentally met the former Editor-in-Chief, Adam White, through the web and am very excited to have him as a guest on my show!
An expert on Motown, Adam wrote the book Motown: The Sound of Young America with Barney Ales.
Barney Ales was Motown’s head of sales, the man who helped founder Berry Gordy build the company into a force that disrupted the music industry. He and White had been friends since they met in the 60’s when White was covering Motown for a British music magazine.
Their book is the authoritative source on Motown, one that Goldmine magazine says “effectively tears up every Motown history that has ever been published in the past, because you know that this time, the story is true.”
Adam joined Billboard in 1978 and worked his way up to International Editor, Managing Editor and finally Editor-In-Chief. After 20 years with Billboard, he joined Universal Music Group International as VP of Communications in 2002. He retired from Universal in 2012 and Motown: The Sound of Young America was published in 2016.
His website has a plethora of posts with behind-the-scenes stories and I highly recommend it for any music lover. That’s actually how I met him, after reading an article written about an interview with my cousin, Charles Kipps, about writing and producing Walk Away From Love for David Ruffin.
According to White’s site, “Among the artists, songwriters, musicians and businessmen Adam has interviewed are Al Bell, Ahmet Ertegun, Marvin Gaye, Berry Gordy, Holland/Dozier/Holland, Michael Jackson, Jay Lasker, Curtis Mayfield, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Nile Rodgers, Diana Ross, Mickey Stevenson, Henry Stone, Earl Van Dyke, Jerry Wexler, Maurice White and Stevie Wonder. In 1993, he co-authored (with Fred Bronson) The Billboard Book Of Number One Rhythm & Blues Hits. In 2005, his liner notes for Heaven Must Have Sent You: The Holland/Dozier/Holland Story were Grammy-nominated. Adam has scripted, presented and appeared in music documentaries on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Motown Invasion for the BBC.”
I’m thrilled to have Adam join me on my Facebook Live show to talk about Berry Gordy and how he built his history-making company. Don’t miss it! September 17, 2020 at 4pm Eastern.