Miss Motown: Little Iva (Raynoma Gordy) & Her Band "When I Needed You" Miracle MIR2 Feb 1961
Raynoma Liles Gordy Singleton – ‘Mother Motown‘
Berry Gordy’s second wife and member of the RAYBER Singers, a backing group that sang on the first record Label that Berry Gordy formed with Raynoma in the late 1950’s. As well as being a singer, she wrote and produced songs in her career.
RAYBER was put together from their respective names. Raynoma’s first marriage was to Charles Liles in 1955 which was short.
Raynoma Liles Mayberry then married Berry Gordy and after the marriage failed she met Eddie Singleton, married him and became Raynoma Gordy Singleton. Her name before her first marriage was Mayberry, hence her full name was Raynoma Liles Mayberry Gordy Singleton.
Berry Gordy and Miss ‘RAY’ got together and she not only assisted in forming RAYBER Music helped with the formation of Motown of which she was a joint half partner.
Rayber Music was Gordy’s first attempt at setting up a record company before founding Motown. You can read the full story here :
The Rayber singers included Raynoma and performed as backing singers on many early Motown recordings and they also backed The Satintones.
After Berry Gordy was just a memory, Raynoma Singleton formed SHRINE Records in Washington with Eddie Singleton. To launch the new label she had pressed 5000 copies of My Guy by Mary Wells and sold them to raise finance. She felt entitled to do this being half owner of Motown – hmm, asking for trouble but gives you an insight into Raynoma’s mindset. It all backfired and ended up with Shrine in trouble and that’s why the label is so rare. Many releases never came out of the can. After Shrine folded, Raynoma went back to work for Motown – there was obviously enough friendship left with Berry Gordy for this to be an option.
For more on this story see SOULDIRECTIONS and Raynoma’s book that Berry tried allegedly to suppress:
BERRY ME AND MOTOWN which is out of print but available on Ebay and many other pre-owned book sites. It should be stated that much of the book has been disputed by Berry Gordy but Raynoma swears every word is true.
Raynoma Gordy Singleton
Born: March 8, 1937
Died: November 11, 2016
Pre-Motown History – Motown Junkies