Motown and Stax. The two great labels of American soul and R&B. There is really no good way to prove that one label was better than the other – but that won’t stop us from asking the question. After all, this is the fun part of being a fan. Sports fans, I have to admit, enjoy arguing about who has the best centerfielder or middle relief pitching or defensive front line as much as we do actually watching games. So Motown vs Stax may be the musical equivalent of Mickey Mantle vs Willie Mays – an argument you can never settle – but who cares?

As for me, I love the Stax Records roster of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T and the MGs. Sam and Dave can be added to that list, too, though they were part of the alliance with the major label Atlantic Records. It’s interesting to note that this legendary institution of black music was founded by white guys (actually, a guy and his sister); and the fact that they had a color-blind house band as early as the early 60s is pretty great. Also, the records had a grit and a sense of audio verite that was and is noticeably different from the slick, highly produced sound of Motown.

But Motown is what repeatedly topped the charts. Motown put its acts – the Jackson 5, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye – on national and international television. Motown made a generation of white kids listening to pop music come to expect that their favorite musicians could just as easily be black as white. Berry Gordy didn’t start Motown to improve race relations; he’s admitted he started it for the girls. And once he got the girls, he wanted money. And he got tons of that too. But Motown’s success meant it became the soundtrack of American pop culture for much of the 60s and 70s. As Duke Fakir, the last of the Four Tops, told USA Today, Motown forced white America “to begin to look at black America a little differently. It’s one of the steps that took us up that ladder.”