American popular music in the 1960s was not one national style. Detroit, Memphis, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the South all produced different sounds that together made the decade extraordinarily diverse.
Detroit and Motown
Motown created a polished crossover system built around songwriting teams, the Funk Brothers and artists such as The Supremes, Temptations, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder.
Memphis and Southern soul
Stax and Southern studios developed a more live, church-rooted sound through Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett and others.
New York folk and songwriting
Greenwich Village, Brill Building pop and the singer-songwriter tradition all grew from different New York networks.
California
The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and many others showed how widely the West Coast could range—from harmony pop to psychedelic counterculture.