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With the '60s era and Motown, my grandparents actually introduced us to that when I was younger, so I grew up listening to the Jackson Five, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, The Supremes and Diana Ross' solo stuff. I just loved it. -- Jordin Sparks
I've discovered that Motown and Broadway have a lot in common - a family of wonderfully talented, passionate, hardworking young people, fiercely competitive but also full of love and appreciation for the work, for each other and for the people in the audience. -- Berry Gordy
I've performed in Auburn Hills, at The Palace, so I haven't really been in downtown Detroit, but I've been able to be here, and I can really see, what the city was. Like, I can feel why Motown started here and how amazing it was. -- Jordin Sparks
Motown was about music for all people - white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone. -- Berry Gordy
I feel Motown really exploited me. -- Brenda Holloway
Motown, Motown, that's my era. Those are my people. -- Hillary Clinton
Once you're a Motown artist, you're always a Motown artist -- Smokey Robinson
People still look at Michael Jackson as being a Motown artist. -- Smokey Robinson
Motown was the mecca. It was every writer's dream to work there. -- Valerie Simpson
Motown's policy was to build one act at a time or their favorites. -- Brenda Holloway
Let's Get It On' is a classic Motown single, endlessly repeatable and always enjoyable. -- Jon Landau
Motown will always be a heavy-duty part of my life because those are my roots -- Smokey Robinson
Once you're a Motown artist, that's your stigmatism, and I was there from the very first day -- Smokey Robinson
Well, I had an after hours club in Vancouver and when any of the Motown acts would call. -- Tommy Chong
One thing I can say about the Motown acts is that we were a family. That's not a myth -- Smokey Robinson
I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown. -- Gary Oldman
I love Motown, but I've obviously always been more of a Memphis soul fan. If it's Stax or Motown, I go Stax. -- Justin Townes Earle
With my music, I don't have to stay in one lane. One day I'm in Motown, and the next day I'm in reggae. -- Estelle
Growing up, I liked all the stuff that everyone else was listening to, like Motown, but the biggest group of all was The Beatles. -- Eddie Murphy
My parents had a huge pile of records - vinyl! - that I loved, especially the Motown stuff, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding. -- Jonny Lang
I don't ever balk at being considered a Motown person, because Motown is the greatest musical event that ever happened in the history of music -- Smokey Robinson
I know that's blasphemous when you are from Detroit, but I was never a fan of Motown stuff. I don't care for the production much. -- Jack White
I don't ever balk at being considered a Motown person, because Motown is the greatest musical event that ever happened in the history of music. -- Smokey Robinson
Growing up, I never listened to English music. I was more into Motown, as well as early rock n' roll like Chuck Berry and Little Richard. -- Alex Winston
I love to sing old Motown songs to myself, or some Patti Smith Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday. That gets me in the mood for singing. -- Siobhan Fahey
I was really fortunate growing up to have a broad musical education. My parents listened to all kinds of music, rock, soul, Motown, jazz, Frank Sinatra, everything. -- Mayer Hawthorne
My mom was a huge Adam and the Ants fan. My granddad listened to a lot of Motown and Elvis and Johnny Cash. So I was kind of well-rounded. -- Hayley Williams
I love Motown, that whole era. Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson. I just put on Pandora, and put it on Motown, and it makes me smile; makes me smile so much. -- Tika Sumpter
My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing - I thought they were genius in knowing that's as much as a listener can take. -- Meshell Ndegeocello
I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house. -- Jay-Z
Music has always been a big part of Cheech & Chong's career, so it's just natural. You know, I was a musician before I met Cheech and had a record with Motown, and so I've got the cred. -- Tommy Chong
The Beatles were huge. And the first thing they said when you interviewed them, 'Oh yeah, we grew up on Motown.'..They were the first white act to admit they grew up listening to black music. -- Smokey Robinson
One of my strongest memories is my father playing bongos in the living room in Detroit listening to Motown radio. He was this skinny white bald guy, but he was really moved by blues and Motown and funk. -- Sufjan Stevens
Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything. -- Quincy Jones
I don't think you can recreate anything from the past. You can not do it. If you're going to go out and imitate a Motown sound, you can't do it, it's impossible because of the studios and players involved and the atmosphere. -- Elton John
Remember Motown? Not just the driving music that swept the nation and the world, but the vibrant energy of the Motor City itself, symbolizing the heyday of America. Today, a derelict Detroit is testament to what America has squandered and what it has become. -- Gerald Celente
I grew up not far from where Motown was founded, maybe 300 miles from Detroit and I've always liked - I used to like the way they made records. I still do, I just haven't had a chance to hear as much. They used to entertain me. -- Rick Danko
We came from the '60s era, when we started and made so many hits. The song value from the '60s was so darn good, you've got The Beatles, The Beach Boys, all of Motown, and plenty of other people, too... amazing records, amazing songs. -- Mike Love
I grew up listening to oldies, like Motown. That's from my mom. -- Ryan Lochte
We call 'Ain't No Mountain' the golden egg that landed us at Motown. -- Nickolas Ashford
'Let's Get It On' is a classic Motown single, endlessly repeatable and always enjoyable. -- Jon Landau
Artist development is something that I've been passionate about from my days at Uptown and Motown Records. -- Laurieann Gibson
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Ron White was not one of the very first original members of the Motown staff, but eventually he was. -- Smokey Robinson
Even before coming into the industry, I was a big fan of Motown, the Jackson 5, Gladys Knight, the Temptations, Diana Ross and The Supremes. -- Stephanie Mills
I grew up when the whole Motown thing was huge. The charts in those days were dominated by groups more than solo artists at one point. -- Simon Cowell
I grew up in Ann Arbor, about 25 miles west of Detroit. And when you grow up in that area, you get a healthy dose of Motown automatically. -- Mayer Hawthorne
Motown was about music for all people â?? white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone. -- Berry Gordy
I went from elementary school to proper training, operatic training, and I went on to the Motown University and learned a lot of things from some wonderful people. -- Martha Reeves
I kind of grew up with hip hop and of course being from Detroit I'm a Motown man. Music is in our blood. When you're from Detroit, music is in your DNA. -- Eric Thomas
My dad was a soul fan and a singer himself, and he loved vocal harmony, stuff like the Beach Boys and Motown like the Four Tops, which was a big influence on me. -- Katy B
There were many stars in Motown's firmament - among them, Stevie, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves and Diana Ross - but I happen to have loved the Four Tops most of all. -- Jon Landau
A big part of the Motown formula was, they took music and turned it into this sort of automotive assembly line. They were cranking out 10 songs a day in that studio, or more. -- Mayer Hawthorne
When we were first started we were doing a lot of Motown stuff, but actually playing it more in a rock way. Everybody in the band sang and we did a lot of harmonies. -- Roy Wood
I made a good living for a teenager. And I had to learn all different kinds of music - jazz, swing, Motown, pop - and that inspired what kind of music I started to write. -- Idina Menzel
My parents brought me up on all different styles of music, like my Mum would listen to Motown R&B and my Dad was quite 80's driven, so I was always surrounded by music growing up. -- Ella Henderson
My main influences are pop and folk music - Bob Lind, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Motown collection, The Zombies, Elliott Smith, and a ton of 70's AM radio hits. I love powerpop too. -- Greta Salpeter
I never went to the Beatles' concerts to scream. I never screamed at anybody's show. I was on my feet with the entire, all of the crowned heads of Motown, and we were shrieking our guts out. -- Linda Ronstadt
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Rock and roll came in and changed my life and changed the whole music scene forever, and then I grew to love R&B and Motown and all black music, gospel music. But I never dismiss any form of music. I listen to everything. -- Elton John
And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up. -- Glen Hansard
For me, the highlight was meeting all the Motown acts, as I adore black soul music. I met Stevie Wonder who I love, and Diana Ross And The Supremes. I also met The Carpenters. I was actually there in the studio when they recorded We've Only Just Begun. -- Tony Blackburn
Music has always been in my family, but it was mainly keyboards. I learned to play classical piano, but when I first heard the amazing bass guitar of James Jamerson, who played on all the big Motown hits of the '60s and '70s, I knew bass guitar was my instrument. -- Suzi Quatro
My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl. -- Talib Kweli
I've bought clothes based on record covers. Particularly from the formative music that turned me onto it in the first place when I was a kid, with the Beatles and the Small Faces. A lot of those Sixties soul artists were in really sharp sharkskin or mohair suits, and Motown artists looked amazing. -- Paul Weller
I'd heard a lot of Motown and Stax when I was a kid, but the more well-known end of it. On Jam tours, we had a DJ called Ady Croasdell who ran a '60s club. He turned me on to underground stuff and what people call northern soul. It just blew my mind. -- Paul Weller
When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we'd start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That's the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record. -- Roy Wood
There are certain things that we take for granted that simply would not have existed without the great migration. Motown, for example, would not have existed - it simply would not, because Berry Gordy, the founder of it, his parents had migrated from Georgia to Detroit where he founded Motown, and where did he get his talent? -- Isabel Wilkerson
Definitely just growing up in general influenced me; Detroit happened to be where I was. I feel like the city definitely has made an impact on my life and made me who I am. Detroit has an unmistakable soul - nobody can duplicate the soul we bring to the game. From Motown to J Dilla to Eminem to anything. -- Big Sean

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