When Suzanne de Passe is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame later this month, she’ll join a select group of men — and a handful of women — that the Cleveland-based museum has honored for careers outside the musical spotlight.
Ms. de Passe has been named this year’s recipient of the Ahmet Ertegun Award, which recognizes producers, songwriters and others who have made their mark on the music world from behind the scenes. Past inductees include Beatles producer George Martin, media mogul David Geffen and Sugarhill Records chief executive Sylvia Robinson, the only other woman who has been honored in this category without a male songwriting partner.
“I’m blown away. Absolutely blown away,” Ms. de Passe said, during an interview at her family’s Oak Bluffs cottage overlooking Waban Park. “I burst into tears — projectile ones.”
The Ahmet Ertegun Award, named for the late founder of both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Atlantic Records, is the latest in a long string of trophies and honors Ms. de Passe has earned over her nearly 60 years in television, music and film.
An Academy Award screenwriting nominee for her work on the 1972 Diana Ross film Lady Sings the Blues, Ms. de Passe also has won multiple Emmy and NAACP Image awards for producing television specials and miniseries, and was executive producer for the Golden Globe and Peabody award-winning miniseries Lonesome Dove.
Her career has even been studied at Harvard Business School as an example of leadership in a complex industry, in a case called Suzanne de Passe at Motown Productions.
A two-time college drop-out, Ms. de Passe was barely 20 years old when Berry Gordy Jr., trailblazing founder of the Motown record label, hired her as his assistant. She quickly proved her worth by bringing the Jackson 5 to Motown, where they notched an epic string of hits.
Ms. de Passe later convinced the label to sign the Commodores, a group from Tuskegee University whose lead singer was Lionel Ritchie — and whose manager, Benny Ashburn, had brought them to Martha’s Vineyard to perform at South Beach and the A&P (now Stop & Shop), though Ms. de Passe first saw them in New York.
“All through the ’70s, I was working, working, working . . . in rooms where, if it was a prize fight, I’d have been punching way above my weight,” she said. “I got to be in rooms that were phenomenal, in terms of learning and hearing what was going on.”
After Mr. Gordy named her president of Motown Productions, his television company, Ms. de Passe worked with countless artists on programs ranging from the Jackson Five’s Saturday morning cartoon show to star-studded TV specials and a string of feature films, beginning with Lady Sings the Blues.
Mr. Gordy sold Motown Productions to Ms. de Passe in the late 1980s. She now runs it as de Passe Jones Entertainment in partnership with producer and graphic novelist Madison Jones.
“I work every day,” said Ms. de Passe, who has a Motown Christmas special coming up and is starting a new division creating anime (Japanese-style animation) content.
“A lot of the [projects] that I do have nothing to do with music. They’re scored afterwards, but it’s not music driven. Let’s not limit ourselves, right?” she said.
Although she has lived in Los Angeles since the late 1960s and now makes her home in Beverly Hills, Ms. de Passe always comes back to the Oak Bluffs cottage on Nantucket avenue that her grandfather purchased before she was born.
“I arrived in a laundry basket when I was 16 days old,” she said.
Over the next 18 years, Ms. de Passe spent every summer in Oak Bluffs, surrounded by family, friends and the freedom to roam a welcoming community.
“I have just the most amazing memories of the Island before it became destination central,” she said.
“I was really given a wonderful, wonderful, extraordinary childhood,” she continued. “Martha’s Vineyard played a large part in that, [and] so did my family and my education.”
As a result, Ms. de Passe said, she developed a sense of independence early on in life, though with conventional goals at first.
“I was headed to be an English lit major and get married,” she said.
A freshman-year engagement to a fellow student at Syracuse University did not last, and Ms. de Passe left upstate New York for Manhattan Community College. Things began happening quickly after that move, starting with what she called “a very odd job out of nowhere” booking bands at a dance club called Cheetah.
At the club, Ms. de Passe became friendly with singer Cindy Birdsong, who performed with Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles before being tapped to replace Florence Ballard in the Supremes in 1967. When the new line-up performed in New York, Ms. de Passe wanted to take her friend to dinner, but didn’t want to risk the struggle of hailing a cab as a Black person in Manhattan.
“So I rented a limousine. That I could not afford, by the way,” she said.
It was a decision she’d never regret.
“I’m sitting outside the stage door, dying to go inside, and Cindy came out and said the words that changed my life forever,” Ms. de Passe recalled. “She leaned in the car and she said, ‘Suzanne, Mr. Gordy’s car . . . has gone on an errand and he needs a ride to an appointment.’
“So the first time I met the person who would become my mentor . . . . I gave a ride in the limo I couldn’t afford,” Ms. de Passe said.
Mr. Gordy, who was involved with Ms. Ross, returned the favor by inviting Ms. de Passe to dinner with their entourage that night. On the group’s subsequent New York visits, Ms. de Passe became their local contact for events and activities.
At Ms. Birdsong’s invitation, she also joined them for an engagement in Miami, where Mr. Gordy — a hit-making songwriter as well as head of a record label — offered her the job that would change both of their lives.
“The more successful Motown became, the less he had time to write songs. So I was his creative assistant,” Ms. de Passe said.
With an assistant of her own for typing and filing, Ms. de Passe ran interference for Mr. Gordy by handling audition requests from bands. Mr. Gordy wasn’t initially interested in the Jackson 5, whose youngest member Michael Jackson was just nine years old, because Motown already had child star Little Stevie Wonder.
But Ms. de Passe persisted, until Mr. Gordy heard a tape of the group and recognized their undeniable talent.
“One of my traits, if you will, is that I really find it hard to take no for an answer,” she said.
Last Friday, as an Island celebration before the Oct. 19 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, Harbor View Hotel owner Bernard Chiu hosted a reception for Ms. de Passe that brought together more than 50 friends, family members and admirers.
Journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, historian Jessica B. Harris, Hollywood executive Stacey Snider, former Bermuda premier Ewart Brown and Ms. de Passe’s cousin Alexandra Clancy, widow of author Tom Clancy, were among the guests.
Longtime admirer and friend James Hester co-curated the event, which included a live interview with Ms. de Passe by reporter Carlos Greer, of the New York Post’s Page Six celebrity and entertainment section.
While she played a role making many hit records, she told the audience, it was always as part of a group effort.
“All of those songs were created by wonderful producers and writers and artists themselves, and I was sort of a cog in the wheel of getting them out, getting them recorded out to the public,” she said.
“But I think . . . the responsibility to shepherd talented people and facilitate those people reaching their potential is vital, because we were on fire at Motown,” Ms. de Passe said.
Editor's note: a previous version of this article misstated the name of the Commodores manager. It is Benny Ashburn.
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