Ed's business concerns were now successful enough to provide him with some spare capital and the music industry was beginning to look like a good place to invest it.

In the early part of 1961, Ed decided to pay Berry Gordy a visit to find out some more.

JoAnne recalls "It was still early days for Berry and he was looking for some additional funding. He asked Ed if he would like to become a partner. 

However, my own advice to Ed was to forget it. They both had extremely powerful personalities, and I just could not see it working out. To this day, we have no regrets on that front."

In Berry's book, he talks of cash flow problems emerging from his first million seller "Shop Around", which was issued in October 1960. The more copies he pressed, the bigger his debt. 

The distributors held the key, but unless you could string a couple of million sellers together, it would always be a struggle.