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Now Motown. The best brown sound is, of course, that sung by Negroes. Last year 42 of the bestselling rock 'n' roll songs were produced by one man: Berry Gordy Jr., 35, who as head of Detroit's Motown Records, employs some 175 Negro artists. A former auto assembly-line worker, Gordy operates out of three adjoining shingle houses which bear the proud banner HITSVILLE, U.S.A. Beginning with a $700 loan six years ago, Gordy has built Motown into the nation's largest independent producer of 45-rpm records (1964 sales: 12 million records). Next to the Mersey sound, the "Motown sound" currently dominates the rock 'n' roll market. It is a swingy city blues sound, propelled by a driving beat, tambourines, violins (from the Detroit Symphony), hand clapping and an ever-present "Oh yeah, oh yeah" refrain from the chorus.
The prize fillies in Gordy's stable are the Supremes, three girls who grew up together in Detroit's squalid Brewster Housing Project. With four consecutive No. 1 records, they are the reigning female rock 'n' roll group, followed by Motown's Martha and the Vandellas. Diana Ross, 21, the Supremes' lead singer, is greatly envied for the torchy, come-hither purr in her voice. Her secret: "I sing through my nose."
Splash in Surf. Distinct from the brown-sound school are the Beach Boys from California: "We're not colored; we're white. And we sing white." They made their big splash with the "surf sound"—clean, breezy orchestration, a jerky, staccato beat and a high, falsetto quaver reminiscent of the Four Freshmen. The Beach Boys' tenor harmony goes so high that it sounds almost feminine, a fact that has all but locked out girl singers from the scores of surf groups performing on the West Coast. Beach Boys' songs, says Jack Good, producer of the rock 'n' roll TV show Shindig, "almost sound as if they were sung by eunuchs in the Sistine Chapel."
With hits like Surfin' and Hang Ten (toes over the edge of the surf board), the Beach Boys—three brothers, a cousin and a neighbor—have sold more than 2 million records, grossed as much as $25,000 for one concert in Sacramento. They write their own songs, following one rule of thumb: "We picture the U.S. as one great big California."
Part of the subculture of the surf sound is the hot-rodders' hit parade. Poaching off their own sandy preserve, the Beach Boys started with Shut Down, a classic of pit-stop poetry:
To get the traction, I'm a-ridin' the
clutch . . .
Pedal's to the floor, hear his
dual-quads drink . . .
He's hot with ram induction, but it's
understood,
I got a fuel-injected engine sitting
under my hood.
Extrapolating the style, Jan and Dean (the "Father of Falsetto"), deliberately mix the sounds of surf and drag races into their records until the ear strains to grasp the lyrics. Explains Jan: "If the kids can hear the words, they'll turn their radio down. We want them to turn it up. It sort of relieves a kid's anxieties if he can drown out his parents."