Uprising!

“To Be Loved”

“To Be Loved” was Jackie Wilson’s first hit, and it was also the song Jackie performed more than any other in his career. Backed with “Come Back to Me,” was released in February 1957 and eventually reached #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #7 on Billboard’s R&B chart. When Jackie introduced the song in one of his last performances in September 1975, he got the year wrong, saying “the year around nineteen hundred and fifty-eight—now don’t knock it, some of us know that was a pretty damned good year.”

Jackie then went on on to say that the song was written by “the great, incomparable Mr. Berry Gordy Jr, a young man who just so happens to own a small recording company . . . Motown.”

Berry Gordy the songwriter. When Jackie Wilson left Billy Ward and His Dominoes to begin a solo career, he went back to Detroit to organize his next moves. At the time, Gordy was embarking on a career as a songwriter. In his autobiography, Gordy dubs 1957-1959 “The Songwriting Years” and begins the chapter with a section entitled “Jackie Wilson.” A hint at how much Gordy cared about this particular song lies in the title of the book, “To Be Loved: The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown.” Of course, Motown was years away at the time “To Be Loved” was written.

Gordy made it part of Motown lore that he founded the company with an eight-hundred-dollar loan from his family. That was no doubt in part true. What is more accurate is that he started Motown with a loan and the royalties from writing five hit songs for Jackie Wilson, and those royalties were far more than eight hundred dollars. A lot of us would like to know what Gordy has made in royalties from Jackie’s recordings. He most likely made far more from them than Jackie Wilson ever did. Whatever that case may be, the section on Jackie Wilson in Gordy’s autobiography contains a detailed story (and “story” it may be) of the future head of Motown attempting to “sell” his song to Jackie.

Jackie was already a success, having been the lead tenor for Billy Ward and His Dominoes and also having charted a minor solo hit with “Reet Petite,” a song credited to Berry and his newly acquired songwriting partner, Billy Davis (see below), who was also at that time the lover of one of Berry’s sisters, Gwen. “Reet Petite” was most likely written by Davis, but Berry talks about “To Be Loved” as though no one else had any input in the song. This may be factual. On the other hand, the description that Gordy provides of introducing Jackie to the song sounds fictional, but who knows? Only Berry Gordy, and he has not talked about Jackie Wilson in many years.

Gordy says he had trouble getting in touch with Jackie (unlikely), but ultimately Jackie rang Berry’s doorbell, and Berry describes what followed that day :

I was still in the clouds about “Reet Petite” when I opened my front door a couple days later and there he was with his pretty-boy face and pretty-boy hair, a doo with an upswept pompadour in front, and a tight-fitting tailored suit. He walked in giving me a hug, but I could see he wanted to get right down to business.

“‘Reet Petite’” is a smash everywhere,” I shouted.

“I know, ” he said, “people love it. What cha got?”

Since he was already a star the song’s success wasn’t as big a deal to him as it was to me. Jackie really liked me but he just wanted to hear the new song and get out. He always made up his mind fast. Too fast for me. He had hastily rejected some of our other songs almost before we got started, so I had to nail him quickly.

I jumped into it, playing my usual simple chords on the piano, but singing with great soul and conviction. Even in my squeaky voice, it was easy to hear the deep passion I had for this song, singing for all I was worth, hoping he wouldn’t stop me before the first hook. He didn’t. I made it through the whole first verse. Great. But just as I was getting ready to start the second he said, “Okay. Okay, hold it! That’s enough.”

I hated it when he did that. One of my greatest performances—thwarted. Never opening my eyes, I stopped, frustrated.

“Gimme that paper,” he said, grabbing the lyric sheet off the piano. “I got it, I got it!” Circling his pointed finger at me, “Play, play” he said.

My emotions jumped from the square root of one to a hundred to the tenth power. Jackie had fallen in love with the song. And I fell in love with his dynamic golden voice all over again the minute he sang the first few words: “Someone to care, someone to share, lonely hours and moments of despair, to be loved, to be loved, oh what a feeling to be loved.”

I had never heard him do a ballad before. His voice was strong and deep and sincere. It was as if he had written it for himself. He brought up the entire range of emotions I had felt the night I wrote it. My tears came again and everything.

Jackie Wilson was the epitome of natural greatness. Unfortunately for some he set the standard I would be looking for in artists forever. I heard him sing many, many times and never a bad note. A bad song maybe, but never a bad note. Watching this man perform “To Be Loved” was always a thrill.

Never heard Jackie sing a ballad before? Ridiculous. “St. Therese of the Roses” had been a Top Twenty hit less than a year earlier. Well, it is a fun story, anyway.

Billy “Roquel” Davis (Tyran Carlo). Around 1956 or 1957, Berry Gordy formed a songwriting partnership with Billy Davis, who was sometimes called “Roquel” Davis, and who used the pen name “Tyran Carlo” for a number of compositions. Why all the names? “Billy Davis” was so common a name that there was even another Billy Davis among his set of companions in his hometown of Detroit.

The songwriting Billy Davis remained one of Jackie Wilson’s truest and most caring friends throughout the rest of Jackie’s life. As many readers know, there was a time when Jackie appeared to give up on life: he had experienced physical torture at the hands of Mob thugs, Harlean had betrayed him (with Nat Tarnopol, Jackie believed), and Jackie’s oldest son, Jack Jr (called “Sonny,” as Jackie himself had once been called) had been shot dead at age sixteen. Jackie believed this killing, attributed publicly to an accident occurring on a neighbor’s porch, was the work of Mafia hirelings.

These events occurred as federal agents were deep into their investigations of Mafia influence in the recording industry. Jackie was in the grasp of the Internal Revenue Service on one hand and the clutches of the Mob on the other. The IRS had the power to imprison Jackie for tax evasion. It could also overlook his tax problems if Jackie would testify against recording industry figures as they were brought to trial for various crimes. The recording industry figures under investigation were those with direct ties to the Mafia, which was the government’s real target.

Billy “Roquel” Davis (aka Tyran Carlo)

According to what Davis told Jackie’s biographer, Tony Douglas, Davis helped Jackie move after Jackie had it out with Harlean and Nat. Billy says Jackie took only a few possessions when he left his swank apartment for the last time, abandoning everything else and settling into a room in a residential hotel to drink and drug himself to death. In time, Billy coaxed Jackie outside for walks and chats with fans. Eventually, Billy was able to convince Jackie to perform again, and even went out on the road as Jackie’s guitarist for a while. (After getting back to work again, Jackie would fall in love with Lynn Crochet and again know the joys of family life. With With Lynn’s help, he got off drugs and alcohol.)

Billy Davis is a true friend. Billy Davis did not go on the road with Jackie as someone who needed a job. He went as a friend who cared about Jackie and respected his talent. In the 1970s, Billy was writing and producing some of his most famous work as senior vice president and music director for a top New York advertising agency, McCann Erickson. If you are old enough, you will remember jingles Davis wrote and/or produced for his top clients, Miller Beer (“If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer”) and Coca-Cola (“I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony” and others).

You can read an interesting compilation of information on Billy Davis and his many achievements here, but do not be fooled by the remark about “not knowing we [Berry and Billy] were supposed to be paid” for writing hits for Jackie Wilson. Davis was established as a songwriter even before Gordy got in the business, and both understood the business, and both received their royalties. Davis himself acknowledged this to Tony Douglas.

So who actually wrote “To Be Loved”? Well, one can read many claims and explanations. Michael Bublé has recorded a cover version of “To Be Loved” for his current album of the same title, and you can see the song listed as a Jackie Wilson composition on the track listings posted at Wikipedia, the international headquarters of conventional wisdom, shoddy amateur research, outright lies, and other popular forms of misinformation that the average college freshman (as in “C student”) thinks is a “solid source.” Jackie did not write the song and never claimed he did. He credited Berry Gordy.

As a matter of fact, there is no evidence that Nat Tarnopol ever even tried to misrepresent the songwriting credits on “To Be Loved” or any Gordy/Davis compositions. Berry and Billy were young, but they were already experienced professionals at the time, and Nat either knew he could not scam them or was afraid to try. This is most likely why Nat was so eager to end the working relationship with them, which he did in an argument with Berry alone: neither Billy nor Jackie got a voice in the matter.

Altogether, the Gordy/Davis team supplied eleven songs Jackie Wilson recorded. Five of these were among Jackie’s first hits (“Reet Petite,” “To Be Loved,” “That’s Why,” “Lonely Teardrops,” and “I’ll Be Satisfied”), and the others appeared on early Jackie Wilson EPs and LPs. At various points in time, both Berry and Billy acknowledged that they had received the royalties due to them from these songs.

All the copies of the 45 of “To Be Loved” that I have seen list “Berry Gordy Jr – Tyran Carlo” as the songwriters. Because they had formed a partnership at the time, any song written by either one of them would have been credited to both. However, Billy Davis’s story on how “To Be Loved” was written differed from Berry Gordy’s. Davis said that Berry had begun the song and brought it over to the apartment where Billy and Berry’s sister, Gwen, were living, so all three worked on it. And in his autobiography, Berry complained that the songwriting royalties from record sales were being split three ways for the songs they wrote for Jackie. And here’s a screen capture of a “performance rights” card for the song which lists all three as the songwriters:

Yes, the date on this card is interesting, isn’t it? My understanding of this could be wrong, so I welcome correction or clarification on the following: performance rights for the song would be paid to Tarnopol’s company, Pearl Music, and to the songwriters in accordance with the terms of their contract with Tarnopol at Pearl Music. However, performance rights are not the same as royalty payments on records sold.

Performance rights covered a range of things for which the artist was not remunerated, such as sheet music sales (or Eddie Murphy singing the song in a film decades later). Here the “recorded by” line simply identifies Jackie’s recording in case the music publisher licensed that particular version for something like use in a jukebox or inclusion in some crummy “teen flick.” In this era at least, the artist received royalties on record sales (theoretically) but did not receive any of the money collected for performance rights.

I am guessing that Berry Gordy has made plenty of money from this song over the last half century or so, and I assume he will make more on the Michael Bublé recording. I wonder how much “To Be Loved” will finally net him . . . and whether, in the end, it will be his most lucrative songwriting endeavor of all time?

Performance rights and the Jackie Wilson story. It’s important to note that “performance rights” are what prevent anyone making a feature film or even a documentary about Jackie Wilson. No one would attempt to produce a film of any kind about a singer unless they were able to secure the rights to use that artist’s music. Obviously, such rights are generally easy to acquire because the owner of the rights increases his or her profits without having to make a new investment or take on any risk.

So why is it that no one can secure performance rights for a film on Jackie Wilson? There is only one possible explanation: those who hold the performance rights for Jackie Wilson’s recorded music have a serious reason to suppress the facts of Jackie Wilson’s life and career.

Many people who knew Jackie Wilson assert that there was one project, a made-for-televison movie, that was granted rights to use Jackie’s music. This rumor, reported by Tony Douglas and spread among Jackie’s friends and fans, was that the highly fictional script Harlean Harris appear heroic and trashed not only Jackie Wilson but also Sam Cooke. Give that concept just a little thought, and it becomes obvious why certain power players would appreciate having both Wilson and Cooke discredited.

But what happened to that project? The project was scrapped, and the rumor has always been that the person who stopped it was Berry Gordy. Gordy has been repeatedly characterized as a man who loves money above all else, but few people really do love money ABOVE ALL ELSE, and if you take as a whole what Gordy says in his autobiography about Jackie Wilson, you have to conclude that Berry not only recognized the enormity of his friend’s talent, but also deeply empathized with Jackie, the man.

(standing) Billy Johnson, Al Abrams, Johnny (“JJ”) Jones, Berry Gordy Jr, Jackie Wilson, Robert Bateman, (kneeling) Willie John

The early hits would be crucial to any film about Jackie, and it is easy enough to imagine that any irregularities in the business transactions regarding those early hits (and there could have been many) would give Gordy the leverage to stop the “Harlean project.” It would also make sense that if Gordy did this, he would do this quietly, given the parties involved.

Here are the simple and perfect lyrics to this stunning and timeless ballad. Click on the title to reach Jackie’s original recording.

“To Be Loved“
B. Gordy/T. Carlo/G. Gordy

Someone to care
Someone to share
Lonely days, hours of despair
To be loved, to be loved
Oh, what a feeling
To be loved

Someone to kiss
Someone to miss
When you’re away
To hear from each day
To be loved, to be loved
Oh, what a feeling
To be loved

Some wish to be a king or a queen
Some wish for fortune and fame
But to be truly, truly loved
Is more than all of these things

Memorabilia Musings

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At one point you could get the original Pearl Music royalties contract for “You Better Know It” with Jackie Wilson’s signature for a mere $2000 (USD). And for an estimated $100-$200 (USD), you might have snared a photo of Jackie and his “mama,” suitably framed and autographed (please don’t laugh) “Jackie Wilson.”

[Note: These items are no longer listed for sale, so if you want to take a look at them, you had better click the URLs sooner than later, because they may come off the Web at any time.]

Not “Mama!” An advertisement for the photograph contains the following “item description”:

American soul and R&B singer (1934–1984) best known for such hits as ‘To Be Loved’ and ‘Lonely Teardrops.’ After suffering a heart attack while onstage in 1975, Wilson remained in a coma until his death nearly a decade later at the age of 49. Vintage glossy 6.5 x 4.5 photo of Wilson and his mother at Robert’s Show Club in Chicago, matted to a size of 8.75 x 7, signed and inscribed on the mat in blue ballpoint “To Mama! Forever & Always, Your son! Jackie Wilson.” Photo is matted and framed to an overall size of 12 x 10.25. Two staple holes around inscription, another staple hole to bottom of mat, and a spot of damp staining next to signature, otherwise fine condition. Accompanied by the photo’s original folder.

Even if a son were likely to inscribe a photo to his own mother using his surname, the folks insisting they have authenticated the photo might have noticed that Jackie wrote “To Moms,” not “To Mama.” His handwriting is quite clear. The woman in the photo with Jackie is not Jackie Wilson’s mother, but rather the very well-known x-rated comedienne Moms Mabley (shown without stage costume in the studio portrait to the left). Mabley’s face could be identified by almost any African American over age fifty who still has a pulse, and, of course, the “authenticating” team could have just asked the average Jackie Wilson fan if the woman in their picture could have possibly been Jackie’s mother.

One of the few photos of Jackie’s mama (and a major digression by the blogger). Jackie’s mother, Eliza Mae Wilson Lee, is on the left in this photo of Jackie exiting Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. The picture was taken six weeks after Our Hero had been accidentally shot twice in the abdomen while trying to confiscate a handgun wielded by Juanita Jones, a girlfriend who had shown up at Jackie’s front door, intending to threaten, maim, or kill her old chum and rival, Ebony cover girl Harlean Harris, (shown here and here), who was at the time Jackie’s live-in woman for New York City. (See Jackie Wilson Biography). The incident took place as Jackie and Harlean returned to his apartment in the early hours of February 15, 1961.

If Jackie looks a bit tired, remember that he had just lost a kidney, had nearly lost his life, and was still carrying a bullet in his back at the moment the picture was snapped. If he looks a bit apprehensive, it is probably because the woman on the right is Freda Hood Wilson, Jackie’s childhood sweetheart, first and current wife, and mother of four of his children (not pictured because they are in Detroit, where Freda, Mrs. Lee, and the kids normally live). Freda has spent much of the last six weeks in Jackie’s New York City apartment, tearing up compromising photos of Jackie and Harlean together and tossing Harlean’s clothing into the street—at least according to what Freda told Jackie’s biographer, Tony Douglas.

How soon was Jackie performing again? Here he is on The Ed Sullivan show on May 28, 1961, just a little more than fifteen weeks after the Valentine’s Day “Date from Hell”:

The hospital photo was staged to bolster the image of Jackie, the family man, as the American press continued to report Jackie’s progress after the shooting, which had been publicized as an accident that occurred when Jackie heroically attempted to disarm “a deranged fan” who was attempting suicide, presumably due to unrequited love for Jackie.

Hey, it seemed a plausible story to me, reading it as a teenager out in Ohio.

The “You Better Know It” contract. As Jackie Wilson memorabilia goes, this contract, offered at auction by Argosy Old & Rare Books Prints & Maps, is certainly worth more than ten times the suggested price for the Moms Mabley photograph. Although the contract has not been signed by the other listed songwriter (Norm Henry), it does appear to be Jackie’s signature on the document, along with that of Nat Tarnopol. Neither signature is witnessed.

Nat the Rat owned Pearl Music (named, according to various sources, for a Tarnopol aunt). The contract is dated January 26, 1959. “You Better Know It” would be released as a single the following August and make it to #1 on the Rhythm and Blues chart and #37 on the Hot 100.

The “You Better Know It” video clips. The film clip at the top of this post is from “Go Johnny Go,” the last of the Alan Freed teen flicks to be released before he became the target of the payola scandal that should have hit Morris Levy instead. The film was supposedly going to include a clip of Jackie singing “Lonely Teardrops” as well, and no one seems to know if it was ever even shot. It certainly did not appear in the movie. Jackie looks great in the film, beautifully coiffed and elegantly dressed.

Why is Jackie performing in front of a coffee cup graphic? At the time, it was important to keep this sort of film free of references to alcohol, so Jackie had to be performing in a coffee house, not a night club. I call this video the “the coffee cup (CC) version.” There is another video of this song, however, that has puzzled me for a long time. It is highly unlikely that this other video was shot for the movie.

In the no-coffee-cup (NCC) version, we see a younger-looking Jackie, almost baby-faced, with jet-black eyebrows and a less sophisticated hairstyle, looking much more like the Jackie Wilson in publicity shots for Billy Ward and His Dominoes. Jackie is nicely dressed here, but the style of the jacket is not close to the refined tailoring we see on the suit from the coffee-cup version. And his bow tie, of course, is actually a clip-on, something fans are not going to see anywhere else on the suave Mr. Wilson. In fact, it seems unlikely that Jackie would commit such a fashion faux pas once he had had a hit record and invested in a first-rate stage wardrobe.

The dance steps are virtually the same and the vocal is the same, albeit a bit shorter on the CC version, however, the NCC version (the video of the younger Jackie) is more engaging. There are no cuts to a faked audience, and this clip features close-ups of Jackie’s dancing feet and dimpled cheek. His eyebrows are coal black and rounded. It builds up to a wonderful few seconds focused on Jackie’s boyish-looking features, catching a series of winks and smiles as he tells his lady friend, “You can love me, come on. You can hug me, come on. You can squeeze me, come on. Just come on . . . Love me, honey. Love me long. Love me right. Love me strong . . .”

NRRArchives has posted a clear copy of the video on YouTube:

Back to the songwriting contract. Given the date on the royalties contract that was offered at auction, the NCC video becomes more intriguing than ever.

Below are some screen grabs of Jackie performing (lip synching) “Lonely Teardrops” on Dick Clark’s Beechnut Show on March 21, 1959, three months after the contract and five months before the release of “You Better Know It.” (A memorable weekend for me: I had just turned twelve the day before, and I was already in love with Jackie Wilson from listening to the Top Forty every night on my bedside radio.):

Notice that Jackie looks older and is much better dressed than in the NCC “You Better Know It” video. The hair looks professionally groomed, and his stage makeup is more sophisticated: the ultra-dark eyebrows have been scaled back and arched slightly, possibly even plucked.

The front page of the songwriters’ agreement with the publisher shows the Detroit address crossed out, with no substitution. The Detroit address is intact on the inside page, where the contract itself appears. I believe Pearl Music was housed in the Brill Building after the move to New York (someone correct me, please, if I am wrong.), but I don’t know at what date this occurred.

By January 1959, Nat and Jackie were already established in New York City. “Lonely Teardrops” was already a major hit. Taking the artifacts all together, the evidence is strong that the NCC video of “You Better Know It” existed before this contract with the song’s writers, one of whom, Norm Henry, never signed the contract. Given Tarnopol’s business practices, that writer may never have existed anyway. I’d bet the “Norm Henry” half of the paltry royalties due the songwriters went back to Nat’s pocket along with the publisher’s royalty. (Given that the publisher did so much better than the actual songwriters, I have never understood why Nat and others of that era were so reluctant to allow those songwriters have their names on the recordings and collect their legal shares, which were less than those of the artist, who also bore all the expenses. But I digress . . .)

The mystery about the video remains. NRRArchives describes the NCC video as a product of Brunswick Records’ promotional work and dates it in 1959. This writer just does not buy that. I cannot picture Nat the Rat spending the few bucks it would cost to make the video at the point when it was clear that a performance of the song would be shot for “Go Johnny Go.” If Nat were funding a video in 1959, surely it would be of “Lonely Teardrops”?

My personal guess is that this NCC version of “You Better Know It” was put together by Al Green in Detroit in 1957, when Jackie had returned to his hometown to put together a solo career. Green, who already managed rhythm and blues queen LaVern Baker, employed Jackie to sing in his Detroit clubs and became Jackie’s manager at the time. I think the video clip may have been made to use in the process of selling a record company on the stage presence of Green’s client.

The other possibility is that Nat Tarnopol did make the video, but made it in 1958, before he and Jackie relocated to NYC. But why he would have made it is hard to imagine.

At any rate, I have to believe that the NCC video, and therefore the recording, of “You Better Know It” predates the songwriting contract. The song was to be the first non-Berry Gordy single, and Nat may have thought or at least hoped it would be a major hit. If he didn’t actually own the publishing rights for the song, a video of Jackie lip-synching it might have been problematic. Perhaps that is why Brunswick insisted that both film clips are from 1959.

If anyone reading this has reached other conclusions, I would love to hear from you, because this has been puzzling me for a long time.

“Love Train” lyrics

Jackie’s death (4): “Think about me”

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There is a bootleg recording, reputedly from Jackie Wilson’s last complete concert, captured just days before he collapsed. The audio file may be his last recorded spoken words and the last recorded notes he sang.

If so, it testifies to how great Jackie was at the end, because the medley surrounding “Lonely Teardrops” is outstanding, the ethereal performance of “Doggin’ Around” is one of his most memorable, and the few lines he sings from “My Way” contain some of the sweetest notes you will ever hear.

However, his words just before singing that bit of “My Way” are chilling for listeners who know what happened:

You know, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a pleasure to be back, like I said, and God knows I hope to be back in the near future, very soon. Thank you very much. In the meanwhile, may I say . . . whatever goes up . . . has a tendency . . . most time . . . to come down. Now we all know that. We also know that what goes around eventually comes around. But I’d like to say that nobody . . . but nobody . . . does anything wrong . . . unless . . . they want to do it. By the same token, no one does anything right . . . unless . . . they want to do it. Think about me, and I’ll be damned if I won’t think about you. Listen . . .

You know, I planned each charted course,
And, oh Lord, I traveled each and every highway and byway,
Ah, but more, much more, much more, much more, oh, oh, oh Lord, much more than this
[spoken: Ha, ha, ha, ha]
I did it my . . . [spoken: I love you] . . . wa-ay.

Powerful people wanted Jackie Wilson forgotten, but we have the power to preserve his memory. Let’s think about Jackie and love him as he loved us, his fans.

Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke: 1964

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Blurry images of two impossibly handsome, incredibly talented young men . . . at the top of their game . . . just having a great time together. Possibly in 1960, maybe in 1964. If the latter, only a few months before Sam’s hideous death.

Sam Cooke was the first Black recording artist to figure it all out. He saw where the money was.
He understood why his fellow stars, such as his friend Jackie Wilson, made hit after hit without seeing the money they should be collecting.

Sam Cooke was one of the few not in the grip of the Mob because he was with the cleanest available outfit, RCA, was West-Coast based, and looked after his own interests from the point he left the gospel circuit to explode onto the pop music scene.

He wrote and published his own songs, so the Morris Levy types couldn’t take that huge chunk
of the profits from him. He began buying back his own masters from RCA, insuring he would eventually take in a healthy return on compilation albums. And in the early 1960s, he started his
own record company, SAR Records.

In 1964, Jackie Wilson was tortured (literally) into re-signing a contract with Brunswick/Tarnopol.
It’s a popular notion that Jackie wanted to go work at Motown, but I have never bought into that idea. I cannot see Jackie wanting to be under Berry Gordy’s thumb. My guess would be that he wanted to sign with his buddy Sam Cooke’s company.

And I think both the widely circulated story about Jackie’s torture (he was held outside an upper-story window) and the murder of Sam Cooke in December of that same year were acts meant to keep other entertainers in line.

The “official” story of Cooke’s death was obviously bunk. Killing Sam Cooke was a no-brainer for the Mob: they weren’t making any money off Sam anyway, and they needed to stop him before others got ideas about walking off the “plantation.”

Each time I watch the video of Jackie and Sam, I thank the Almighty for letting the good times roll that day for these fabulous talents . . . these great friends.

Jackie Wilson’s death (3): Brunswick and Tarnopol

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Jackie Wilson collapsed September 29,1975,
deep in debt to his record company, Brunswick, for
“recoupments” on the many recordings he had made
for them. [Note: Check here for an introduction to
how recording contracts work for contemporary
artists—and remember that things were much worse
from the artist's standpoint in Jackie's day.] Jackie also
owed a staggering sum in back taxes to the Internal
Revenue Service, taxes he believed his manager,
Nat Tarnopol, had filed and paid on his behalf.

Off to Chicago. At the time of Jackie’s collapse
he had not had a major hit record in eight years.
He was trapped recording with Carl Davis in Chicago
and unhappy with the material he had to record. Furthermore, he had had an adversarial
relationship with Nat Tarnopol for many years, and by some accounts, Nat was no longer
technically Jackie’s manager.

Those accounts hold that Gaetano Vastola, a New Jersey mobster of the DeCavalcante
crime family and the gangster most closely associated with the recording industry, had
terminated Jackie’s management contract with Nat but left Jackie under contract to record
for Brunswick. If so, this was a distinction without a difference, as by now Nat Tarnopol
owned Brunswick.

Whether Tarnopol or Vastola made the decision to have Jackie record in Chicago is not known,
but it was necessary. Each time Jackie tried to enter New York City, Harlean Harris (tipped off to Jackie’s whereabouts by Nat Tarnopol) had Jackie picked up by the police for non-payment of support. Jackie was chronically short of funds at this point and at the mercy of Nat for what were termed “advancements,” although what was owed to Jackie and what Jackie owed were
dubious concepts, as pointed out in the ABC 20/20 story referenced below.

The “feds” take interest in the record business. Jackie’s heart attack (or stroke) occurred
as federal law enforcement agents were breathing down the necks of Nat Tarnopol and other
Brunswick executives for a variety of violations of the law. This video of an ABC 20/20 episode displays some of the legal documents at roughly the 6:00 mark as their reporter relates
the following:

Shortly before Wilson’s collapse in 1975, Nat Tarnopol and other Brunswick record executives were indicted for tax evasion and mail fraud in a bribery and payola scandal. Among other things, it was charged that Brunswick record artists, and Jackie Wilson was far and away the most popular, were defrauded of royalties, the money they were supposed to earn from sales of their records.

According to the indictment, Brunswick made hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of record shipments that were never put on the books, so the artists were never paid royalties on them. In essence, it was alleged that the same company that had run up debts in Wilson’s name was also cheating him out of the money he could have used to help pay them back.

Nat Tarnopol was convicted in 1976. A federal appeals court overturned the conviction eighteen months later, but the judges took pains to add in their opinion that they were satisfied there was evidence from which a jury could find that Brunswick artists had been defrauded.

A jury never got the chance to evaluate that evidence because a second trial never took place. And even if one had, Jackie Wilson would have been incapable of taking action or testifying because he lay in a nursing home, brain damaged from his collapse.

Specifically, there was no one who could have testified at either trial with anything close to
Jackie’s experience with and knowledge of Brunswick. There were not many artists on the
Brunswick label to begin with, and many of those had been associated with the label for only
short amounts of time. LaVern Baker was in the midst of her nearly two-decade stay in The Philippines, where many believed she was hiding to keep out of reach of underworld figures.
Once Jackie was eliminated, only Eugene Record of The Chi-Lites, associated with the Chicago
office of Brunswick (run by Carl Davis), was available.

How serious was the indictment of Brunswick’s executives? A successful prosecution of Brunswick’s executives could have opened the door to convicting Vastola himself as well as
his close friend and business associate, Morris Levy (“the godfather of the record industry”).
You will find Levy described elsewhere on this blog in the context of Tommy James’s book.
Levy was the head of Roulette Records, and Tarnopol was a Levy associate as well as being
a friend of Vastola.

Levy and Vastola were under investigation by federal authorities for many, many years before
they were ultimately charged as a result of an investigation into “cutout” deals (selling records
off the books without paying artist royalties—the very thing the judges noted in Tarnopol’s
appeal). In his memoir, Tommy James stated that Morris Levy was so contemptuous of the
Internal Revenue Service that he gave them their own office space at Roulette Records in
the late 1960s and had his accountant hand the IRS boys “some set of books” on an almost
daily basis.

In short, not only did the Brunswick executives have reason to worry about their impending
indictments: so did a number of others.

Nat had Jackie insured for a million dollars. Although Jackie Wilson no longer made hit
records, he had some value to Nat Tarnopol. Carl Davis told Tony Douglas, Jackie’s biographer,
that shortly after Jackie’s collapse, he (Carl) requested that Nat provide funds for equipment
for the Chicago office. Nat told him to hold off on the request a bit until Jackie died. At that time,
Nat assured Carl, “Our pockets will get the mumps.”

[Note: At some point I will post on Carl Davis's memoir. Davis felt that Nat Tarnopol wanted to make him the "fall guy," and he quickly protected himself by getting separate legal representation from the others listed in the indictment. There is a letter from Davis on the Internet that is very supportive of Tarnopol. The material in the letter was repudiated in the memoir, which Davis published as he reached the terminal stages of lung disease.]

Would Jackie have testified? The longstanding rumor relating Jackie to the legal proceedings stems from Jackie’s tax debt, reported to have been anything up to a quarter million dollars. Many believe Jackie agreed to testify against Brunswick in exchange for avoiding prosecution and years in prison for tax evasion.

Tony Douglas wrote that Jackie’s wife, Lynn, said that at the time of his collapse, Jackie had been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury.

Next: Jackie Wilson’s death (4): Natural causes

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