Motown Trivia
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100 free Motown trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Motown trivia questions with answers. Motown started in 1959 with an $800 family loan and a converted photographers' studio on West Grand Boulevard, and within a decade it was the most successful independent label in America. This quiz covers the whole story: how a former boxer and assembly-line worker built the company, the session players in the Snake Pit, the Friday quality-control meetings, the finishing school for artists, and the hits that came out of that little house in Detroit. Easy questions cover the Supremes, the Temptations, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder and the moonwalk on Motown 25; harder ones get into Holland-Dozier-Holland's lawsuit, the Motortown Revue, Mary Wells' walkout, the move to Los Angeles, the 1988 sale and the Broadway musical. Every answer was checked against a published primary source such as Wikipedia or an official page, and the citation sits under each question, so you can settle a Motown argument on the spot. Good for soul fans, Detroiters, pub-quiz teams and anyone who grew up with these records.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Motown began operating on January 12, 1959 under which label name?
Tamla
Tamla was a second choice: Gordy wanted to call the label Tammy, after the Debbie Reynolds hit, but found that the name was already taken.
Q 02How much did Berry Gordy borrow from his family's savings fund to start the label that became Motown?
$800
$800 came from the Ber-Berry Co-op, the Gordy family's shared savings fund, and covered his side of the deal to release Marv Johnson's Come to Me.
Q 03Hitsville U.S.A., the house Gordy bought in 1959, sits at number 2648 on which Detroit street?
West Grand Boulevard
West Grand Boulevard turned into a Motown campus, as the growing company took over a row of neighbouring houses on the street for its offices.
Q 04What was the Hitsville building used for before Gordy bought it in 1959?
A photographers' studio
A photographers' studio at the back of the house was converted into the recording room, while Gordy moved his family into the flat upstairs.
Q 05Under which slogan did Motown market its acts during the 1960s?
The Sound of Young America
The Sound of Young America pitched the records at every teenager rather than one market, and the label's acts duly won Black and white audiences alike.
Q 06Which Barrett Strong single, later covered by the Beatles, gave Berry Gordy's company its first hit?
Money (That's What I Want)
Money (That's What I Want), credited to Gordy and Janie Bradford, reached the national charts only once it was leased to a label with nationwide distribution.
Q 07Before music, what did the future Motown founder do professionally after dropping out of high school?
Boxer
Boxer was the plan when Gordy quit school in the eleventh grade, and he fought professionally for a few years before trying record retail, a car plant and songwriting.
Q 08What kind of music did Berry Gordy's failed 1950s Detroit record shop specialise in?
Jazz
Jazz was Gordy's own passion, and he stocked it over what his customers actually asked for, so the 3-D Record Mart soon went bankrupt.
Q 09Before starting his label, Berry Gordy co-wrote 'Reet Petite' and 'Lonely Teardrops' for which singer?
Jackie Wilson
Jackie Wilson had the hits, but Gordy saw how little the writer earned beside the record company, which pushed him to produce and own records himself.
Q 10On which day of the week did Motown hold its weekly quality-control meetings?
Friday
Friday morning was judgment day: staff voted on the week's recordings, but Gordy kept a veto and sometimes overruled a song that had won the vote.
Q 11Who taught Motown's artists grooming, poise and social graces at the label's in-house finishing school?
Maxine Powell
Maxine Powell said her aim was to make the young Detroit singers fit to perform for kings and queens, so she drilled them to walk, talk and carry themselves like royalty.
Q 12Motown's Studio A at Hitsville, where the house band cut the hits, went by which nickname?
The Snake Pit
The Snake Pit hardly ever rested, with the house players backing the label's singers down there at nearly all hours of the day and night.
Q 13Which group of Detroit session musicians backed most Motown records from 1959 to 1972?
The Funk Brothers
Q 21Whose 1964 hit 'My Guy', written by Smokey Robinson, was her only Hot 100 No. 1?
Mary Wells
Mary Wells walked away at her peak: she turned 21 as the record topped the chart, quit Motown for a rival label, and never had a hit on that scale again.
Q 22Under what name did the Supremes form in Detroit in 1959?
The Primettes
The Primettes were put together as a sister act to the Primes, a male group whose singers Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams later went into the Temptations.
Q 23The original Supremes all grew up in which Detroit public housing project?
Brewster-Douglass
Brewster-Douglass made neighbours of the future stars: Mary Wilson was living there when she befriended Florence Ballard at a school talent show, and Diana Ross spent her teens in the same projects.
The Funk Brothers stayed all but unknown to the public until a 2002 documentary, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, finally put the players in the spotlight.
Q 14How did Motown session bassist James Jamerson famously pluck the strings of his bass?
Only his index finger
Only his index finger did the plucking, a habit carried over from his years on upright bass, and the hard-working digit earned a nickname of its own: The Hook.
Q 15Motown's studio musicians went uncredited on records until which 1971 Marvin Gaye album?
What's Going On
What's Going On put that right: Gaye had the players' names printed on the cover, the first public credit for a band that had powered the label's hits since 1959.
Q 16The first Motortown Revue live album was recorded during a December 1962 week-long stand at which venue?
The Apollo Theater
The early package tours mostly worked the 'Chitlin' Circuit', and in the South audiences were sometimes split by a police-guarded rope.
Q 17Which 1961 Marvelettes single was the first Motown record to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100?
Please Mr. Postman
Please Mr. Postman had a working postman, Freddie Gorman, among its writers, and a 22-year-old Marvin Gaye, still a jobbing session hand, on drums.
Q 18Which 1960 Miracles single became Motown's first million-selling record?
Shop Around
Shop Around was remade at about 3 a.m. because Gordy wanted a faster, poppier take, and he played the piano part on the hit version himself.
Q 19Which 1970 record was the Miracles' only Hot 100 No. 1 during Smokey Robinson's years with the group?
The Tears of a Clown
The Tears of a Clown began as a Stevie Wonder instrumental and sat on a 1967 album for three years, until Motown's UK office picked it out as a single.
Q 20What executive title did Smokey Robinson hold at Motown from the early 1960s until after the 1988 sale?
Vice president
Vice president was a working job, not an honour: when Robinson left the Miracles he came off the road to concentrate on his executive duties at the label.
Q 24Which 1964 single gave the Supremes their first Hot 100 No. 1?
Where Did Our Love Go
Where Did Our Love Go had been turned down by the Marvelettes, and the trio, known around the office as the no-hit Supremes, disliked it too before it topped the chart.
Q 25Which songwriting and production team was behind most of the Supremes' Hot 100 No. 1 singles?
Holland-Dozier-Holland
Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown in 1968 in a dispute over royalties, set up their own Invictus and Hot Wax labels, and spent years fighting the company in court.
Q 26Which 1965 single written by Smokey Robinson and Ronnie White was the Temptations' first No. 1 pop hit?
My Girl
My Girl was meant for Robinson's own group, the Miracles, until the Temptations heard it and talked him into letting them record it instead.
Q 27Which Temptations record won Motown its very first Grammy Award?
Cloud Nine
Cloud Nine swapped the group's smooth soul for wah-wah guitars in the style of Sly and the Family Stone, a sound producer Norman Whitfield had at first dismissed as a passing fancy.
Q 28Which Temptations lead singer was formally fired by the other four members in June 1968?
David Ruffin
David Ruffin had wanted the act rebilled with his own name out front, and when he skipped a show in Cleveland the other four handed him his walking papers.
Q 29As of 2024, which co-founder of the Temptations was the only surviving original member?
Otis Williams
Otis Williams turned the group's story into its own afterlife: his 1988 memoir Temptations became a TV miniseries and then the Broadway musical Ain't Too Proud.
Q 30The Four Tops started out in Detroit in the 1950s under what original name?
The Four Aims
The Four Aims became the Four Tops in 1956 to avoid being mistaken for the Ames Brothers, and the same four men then sang together for over forty years.