Longtime Motown Exec Suzanne de Passe Talks Launching the Jackson 5, and Being One of the Music Industry’s First Top Female Executives
variety.comJem Aswad Senior Music EditorMotown founder Berry Gordy had a galaxy of star executives helping him build the company into the powerhouse it became, but not many of them shone as brightly as Suzanne de Passe.Joining the company relatively late in its heyday, de Passe moved from her native Harlem to Detroit in 1968 and soon convinced a skeptical Berry to sign a group of kids calling themselves the Jackson 5.
She quickly took charge of developing the group into the pop-culture juggernaut they immediately became — their first four singles went to No.
1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — developing their live show, imaging, choreography, television appearances and much more. Her next signing?
An R&B combo called the Commodores featuring a young singer named Lionel Richie. After being named the company’s West Coast head of A&R she went on to work with Rick James and others, while gradually transitioning into her main career: as a TV and film executive, first working on Jackson 5 and Diana Ross specials and even earning an Academy Awards nomination for her role in co-writing the screenplay of “Lady Sings the Blues,” the 1972 Billie Holiday biopic starring Ross, Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor.Named president of Motown Productions in 1982, de Passe started her new role with a bang: the Emmy-winning “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever,” where the Supremes reunited and Michael Jackson premiered his “Moonwalk” to an astonished television audience.
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