LEMON DROP | Kerry Gordy on Sunday's Best & How Ed Sullivan Elevated Black Artists

The Don Lemon Show

18Hundred LLC.

Society & Culture, News

3.8 • 659 Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Don sits down with Kerry Gordy, music executive, producer, and son of Motown founder Berry Gordy, for an in-depth conversation about his life, career, and the legacy of Motown. Kerry shares stories from behind the scenes of the music industry, the lessons he’s carried from his legendary family, and his perspective on where music and culture are headed today. They also dive into Kerry’s new documentary, Sunday’s Best, which explores the groundbreaking role of The Ed Sullivan Show in bringing Black artists into America’s living rooms and changing the course of music history. Gordy also gives us a break down of the six degrees of separation between Ed Sullivan and Barack Obama. It’s a candid, insightful conversation you won’t want to miss. This episode is brought to you by ZBiotics. Go to https://zbiotics.com/LEMONDROPS and use LEMONDROPS at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome, everyone to a very special edition of the Don Lemon show.
0:17.0	Carrie Gordy is a legendary entertainment executive and music producer.
0:22.4	He's also the executive producer of Sunday Best,
0:25.2	which is a new Netflix documentary about how the Ed Sullivan show
0:29.8	rewrote the rules of television by championing black entertainers
0:32.9	when it wasn't yet cool to do so.
0:38.8	Mr. Ed Sullivan. Mr. Ed Sullivan.
0:43.7	Ed Sullivan.
0:44.9	Ed Sullivan.
0:46.9	Yes, it's all.
0:49.6	I big rock and roll music, yeah.
0:52.8	I can twine and jerk.
0:54.0	Yes, I can. If you had to pick one person roll music, yeah, I can twine and jerk, yes, I can.
0:55.2	If you had to pick one person in the whole industry to represent us, it would be Ed Sullivan.
1:00.2	The greatest finger pointed in the history of television.
1:03.9	A man who pointed his finger at the biggest stars in the business.
1:17.6	We think about Ed Sullivan. We think about Ed Sullivan, one of the most famous shows in television history. Now, ladies and gentlemen, Elvis Franklin.
1:22.6	How old were you when you saw this, the Ed Sullivan Theater?
1:26.6	Seven years old. It was a tremendous impact ladies and
1:30.2	gentlemen the beetles on ed solven people remember where they were they remember what was
1:36.7	happened where they were sitting what they're doing i don't know like what were you saying
1:40.4	ed solomon do we have anybody like him today? I grew up off Ed Sullivan. Ed Sullivan
	...

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