Janie Bradford, the Motown songwriter who co-wrote “Money (That’s What I Want)”, died on Friday, 21 August 2026 at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles after an extended illness. She was 87.
Bradford was one of the earliest names on the Motown payroll and one of the most quietly consequential, as reported by NME.
She started there in 1958 as the label’s first receptionist, then went on to write songs that helped turn Berry Gordy’s Detroit operation into a music industry powerhouse.
Janie Bradford dies at 87 in Los Angeles
Bradford died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital following an extended illness. Gordy, who founded Motown and worked alongside her from the label’s earliest days, paid tribute to a woman he had known long before the company became a household name anywhere outside a few streets in Detroit.
Gordy said in his tribute:
“Janie was there with me from the very beginning, before there was even a Motown.”
Bradford was born in Charleston, Missouri, in 1939, and later moved to Detroit. Her neighbour there happened to be singer Jackie Wilson, who made the introduction that changed everything by putting her in front of Gordy.
How Janie Bradford went from the front desk to the hits
Her first job title was receptionist, answering the phone in 1958 at an operation so young it had not yet been formally launched as Motown. Like plenty of early staffers, she did not stay in her lane. She got pulled into the creative process, and she stayed there.
Gordy added:
“Janie was smart, clever, witty and fun. She was also talented and determined. In those early days, everybody did what was needed to be done, and Janie was no exception. She became Motown’s first receptionist, but her talents quickly took her far beyond the desk.”
The desk job turned into a writing job, and that writing produced Money (That’s What I Want), the song she co-wrote and the one that carried her name furthest from Detroit. She also co-wrote Too Busy Thinking About My Baby, another title that settled into the Motown canon and never really left it.
What Janie Bradford left behind
Her catalogue reached well past her two best-known credits. She picked up writing credits on records by Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Diana Ross and The Marvelettes, a fair chunk of the Motown roster at its commercial peak and a decent shorthand for how much the label trusted her ear.
Away from the label she built something of her own. Bradford founded the Heroes and Legends Awards, which set up a scholarship fund in the 1990s to honour music industry figures and back young people heading into the performing arts.
She was inducted into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2026.
She is survived by her husband Wardean Hobbs, her daughter Nicole Hobbs, her son Lance Finney and two grandsons. Money (That’s What I Want) is still recorded by artists with no connection to Detroit, and the scholarship fund she started keeps putting her name in front of people who never met her.
