DETROIT (AP) — Esther Gordy Edwards,
who helped build Motown Records alongside her brother Berry Gordy Jr. and led
efforts to turn its original Detroit headquarters into a museum, has died. She
was 91.
Edwards died Wednesday surrounded by
family and friends in Detroit, the Motown Historical Museum said in a
statement.
Edwards was a Motown executive for
nearly three decades, holding numerous leadership positions within the music
company whose artists included Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles,
The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations and The Four Tops. Motown Records,
which Berry Gordy started with a family loan in 1959, churned out scores of
global hits from the building it dubbed "Hitsville, U.S.A." in
Detroit. The company moved to Los Angeles in 1972.
Edwards served as senior vice
president, corporate secretary and director of Motown International Operations,
where she was charged with exposing the famed "Motown sound" to
international audiences.
Wonder has praised Edwards for being
like a mother to him when he joined the label as a child. She is credited with
helping Wonder enroll in the Michigan School for the Blind, as well as managing
and guiding the careers of Robinson, Gaye, Diana Ross and others.
"She believed in me — when I was
14 years old and many other people didn't or could only see what they could at
the time, she championed me being in Motown," Wonder said in a statement.
"I shared with her many of my songs first before anyone else."
When Motown and most of her family
moved to California, Edwards stayed behind. She amassed what would become
Motown memorabilia and set to work on preserving the old headquarters,
including the label's famed Studio A. The large stately former house on West
Grand Boulevard opened as a museum in 1985.
"I always thought I was the
visionary in the family but I missed the biggest thing of all when Esther
turned the so-called trash left behind after I sold the company in 1988 into a
phenomenal world-class monument at the spot where Hitsville started — the
Motown museum," Berry Gordy said in a statement Thursday.
"She nurtured it and held it
together, all through the years, to protect the Motown legacy for generations
to come — which is only one of the reasons people all over the world will
remember and celebrate Esther Gordy Edwards," he said.
Gordy also said Edwards gave him
"the hardest time" when he sought to get the family loan to start
what would become Motown Records. She became, he said, "one of my biggest
assets at Motown."
According to an official biography
released by the museum, Edwards was born in 1920 in Oconee, Ga., and moved to
Detroit as a toddler. She was the eldest daughter in a family of eight
children.
She first married Robert Bullock,
with whom she had a son, Robert Berry Bullock. She later married state Rep.
George Edwards and became a step-mother to his son, Harry.
One of her sisters, Anna Gordy Gaye,
was Marvin Gaye's first wife.
In a statement, Robinson said Edwards
was "one of the most important people to come into my life both personally
and professionally." He said it's because of Edwards' "wisdom and
foresight" that the museum exists, allowing "people now and for
generations to come to have a firsthand look at our legacy."
"Thank you, Esther, and I know
you are in the hands of God," he said.
A public viewing is scheduled from 9
a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the James H. Cole Northwest Chapel in Detroit.
A funeral service will be held at 11
a.m. Wednesday at Bethel AME Church in Detroit.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
(APPhoto/Detroit Free Press, Gabriel B. Tait)
