From the recorded evidence, there is no reason to believe that Norman Jesse Whitfield (1940– 2008) arrived at Motown on a mission to become a creative insurgent, much less a generational change agent for R&B and popmusic. His father moved the family from Harlem to Detroit to pursue work in the in-laws’ family business, and the teenager soon developed a reputation for cleaning up at the pool table. By the late 1950s, he encountered future Motown artists and first-generation creatives at small labels on the periphery of Berry Gordy’s recently launched operation. Without formal training, he watched – and listened to – talented friends bound for careers in jazz and cultivated his own interest in songwriting, percussion, and brass.