At a time when white audiences were ignoring most forms of black music Motown was taking the market by storm. This was despite the fact that many R&B aficionados probably thought that the label was not soul's best representative. If this was the case, then how did Berry Gordy's company become so dominant and in particular how did it woo the blue-eyed markets? The most obvious answer is that other labels never tried, they were quite happy to produce black music for black people. Such a simple explanation does not tell the whole story however as there were many other contributory factors that accounted for Motown's success.

In the first case Motown developed a clean-cut image as their groups invariably appeared on record sleeves and in live concerts wearing formal clothing. The men sported tuxedos whilst the women were attired in expensive evening dresses. Gone were the shabby jeans and chequered shirts of the 'Blues' Era. If Motown was to get its hands on middle class money it needed to be marketed as a middle class product. On some album covers the Temptations later appeared wearing hippie type clothing, but that was not until the seventies. By that time their reputations had long been established and 'opting out' had become trendy with middle class kids anyway.

The second major difference between 'Motown' and 'Soul' was in the way they handled sex. Soul had always produced songs that were overtly sexual and it was far more tolerant of the subject than the white middle classes found acceptable. It wasn't just the sexual theme, it was also that much soul music did not make any moral judgements. It often looked sympathetically on illicit affairs and refused to condemn its participants. This stance only gave ammunition to racist views, which would label black people as promiscuous. It was probably true that black people were more sexually active, but this had more to do with economic rather than racial differences. In any disadvantaged society sex becomes significantly more important than in a non-disadvantaged society. Everybody needs some form of recreation and when other forms of pleasure are denied then sex takes on a far more significant role. Motown must have been painfully aware of this white prejudice and for this reason chose to restrict sex as subject matter for their music. Romance is there in abundance, but sex is virtually non-existent. The point can be clearly illustrated by the case of former Raelette Mable John. She was one of Berry Gordy's first acquisitions when she joined the company at the end of 1965. By 1966 she had left Motown to go to Stax because in her own words,

"Motown is not basically a soul company - it's more pop and I'm not a pop singer. Gordy had no soul writers or producers so I asked for release and without any misunderstanding he gave it to me."

Her first big hit on Stax was "Your Good Thing", a song based on her own personal experience. She had employed her homeless cousin to work as her childminder until one day on returning from work early she found the girl in bed with her husband. Besides them, in its cot, lay her baby nursing its bottle. Mable decided to cut a song about this experience and this was how "Your Good Thing" came about. As she herself explained,

"That is what makes Soul Music different from other music".

In any event it was not the type of material that Motown would touch with a barge pole. It wanted no part of perpetuating the stereotype of black people's promiscuity.

The sixties saw President Kennedy and Martin Luther King both being assassinated. It saw the rise of the Malcolm X and the black power movement and Soul became an effective propaganda weapon in the fight for civil rights. Artists such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke were all involved but Motown stars were conspicuous by their absence. This may or may not have been a company policy but in either eventuality any hint of militancy would certainly have affected their sales to the white markets. By the seventies the Temptations were producing 'message' songs such as Ball of Confusion, Law of the Land, Cloud Nine, Papa Was A Rolling Stone, all rich in social comment. Marvin Gaye was also in on the act with songs like 'What's Going On', but by then the political climate was very different. Protest songs had become trendy with white kids buying them by the bucketful. These artists had also achieved superstar status, which meant that they were able to negotiate more artistic freedom than some of their lesser-known Motown stablemates.