Maxine Powell, 1915–2013

last updated 8 January 2015

Shortly after she closed her Detroit modeling agency to head Motown Records’ in-house charm school, Maxine Powell turned a critical eye to the way upcoming star Diana Ross sang. “Why do you make those faces?” Powell asked. “I’m feeling the song,” said Ross. “I’m souling.” Powell was not impressed. “Go home and ‘soul,’” she said. “Knock yourself out in front of a mirror so you can see how unpleasant you look.”

With straight talk like that, Powell “infused Motown’s young stars with elegance and poise,” said the Detroit Free Press. Born in Texas and raised in Chicago by an aunt who taught etiquette, she was hired in 1964 by Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. to polish what she called her “diamonds in the rough,” including Ross, Smokey Robinson, and Marvin Gaye. “Primly attired and delicately mannered, she radiated a natural dignity and grace” that made a lasting impression on her charges. Powell, Ross said, “showed me that there was the possibility of beauty, grace, integrity, and meaning to my life.”

During Motown’s late-1960s heyday, Powell spent two hours a day with the label’s “luminaries-to-be,” said the Los Angeles Times. She taught them “proper sitting, standing, eating, dressing, chatting with fans, responding to reporters, and every other act of public deportment that might make or break a Motown star.” Those matters took on an outsize importance as Motown artists crossed over from black radio to mainstream pop stations and television. “She gave us more than just the tools for the movements and the gowns,” the Supremes’ Mary Wilson said. “These were tools for us as human beings.”