Barney Ales, R.I.P. — Adam White

A SILVER STREAK, AN IRON HAND – AND A CHESS CHAMP

Baldassare (Barney) Ales had a name which matched that of Baldassare Castiglione, the Renaissance diplomat and author of The Book of the Courtier. “The ideal courtier,” Castiglione explained in his 16th century best-seller, “must put every effort and diligence into outstripping others a little, so that he may always be recognised as better than the rest.”

The phrase “hatchet man” may come from another era, but Castiglione would have understood its meaning. Barney Ales was known as Berry Gordy’s. “That didn’t bother me as long as I had a hatchet,” he once told me.

If such a recollection seems inappropriate – disrespectful, even – upon the sad news of Ales’ death last week, I know it wouldn’t have bothered him a bit. He was confident and commanding, aggressive and engaging, charming and charismatic, with a professional skillset which helped to power Motown to its glory days in music and the music business. Or as the Wall Street Journal wrote in his obituary, he “steamrolled disc jockeys of all colours into playing the latest Motown hit and intimidated deadbeat distributors into paying their bills.” Quite simply, Ales was the man who got the records played and the company paid. He was, indeed, better than the rest.

But don’t take only my word for it.

“The day Barney was introduced to us,” said Mickey Stevenson, “he became like a foundation, the rock of the company. Before he got there, things were moving, but not in a powerful way. To get past that wall of prejudice was a job for us. Barney came in and that wall started crumbling down. But that meant we had to be not just good with our product, we had to be great with our product.”

Stevenson joined Motown as head of A&R in 1961, the year in which Ales came on board as national sales manager and promotion director – and the same year in which Eddie Holland gained his first and only substantial hit, “Jamie,” as a recording artist. “When I first saw Barney,” said Holland, “I saw this handsome guy with this grey silver streak going through his hair. He was very charismatic, very handsome.

“But when I really saw him was when Barney took me with him to this disk jockey, one of the top DJs. I was a young kid.” At first, Holland wasn’t paying attention to the conversation between the two men. “Then the DJ turned to me and said, ‘Listen, I’m going to play this record, but I’m telling you now, I’m not playing this record because of Berry Gordy, I’m playing it because of Barney Ales.’ It was almost as if he didn’t want to play it, being an R&B record on a black artist, but because Barney told him he needed to play the record, that’s what he did. That was my first experience.”

Like Holland, Smokey Robinson was just out of his teens when he first met Ales. “I liked Barney right off the bat,” he remembered. “He was a very straightforward kind of guy, not a bullshitter or anything like that. Especially for me, being a kid, he seemed to know what he was going to do. I was amazed how he knew everybody, and everybody knew him. He was so strong: he dealt with an iron hand, with the disc jockeys and people like that.”

CAPITOL CONNECTIONS

These were the type of insights into Barney’s professional life that people shared as he and I began working on what became our book together, Motown: The Sound of Young America. Learning about his early experiences in Detroit at Capitol Records helped me to understand why he was such an asset to Berry Gordy’s business. The breadth of Capitol’s roster – Frank Sinatra, Nat “King” Cole, the Four Freshmen, Gene Vincent, Sonny James, Judy Garland – meant that his advance there in sales and promotion connected him to a variety of radio and retail influencers, who proved invaluable when he was pitching Motown’s music, years later.

Similarly, Barney’s time running the Detroit branch of Warner Bros. Records introduced him to key figures at the label who would play an important part in his future, such as Hal Cook and Bobby Weiss. Cook later became publisher of Billboard, whose charts would help to elevate Motown’s records onto pop radio playlists nationwide. Weiss’ international contacts enabled Barney to understand the record business outside America, equipping him well when he, Gordy and Esther Edwards travelled to Europe for the first time in 1963.

But what provided deeper insights into Motown’s integrated family were the small, personal stories: that the cover photograph of Christmas With The Miracles was taken at the Livonia home of Barney and Mitzi Ales because theirs was the only house in the Motown circle with a fireplace. And that it was Mitzi’s dog, Suzette, which Claudette Robinson held on her knee for the picture.

Or the time that Barney and songwriter/producer Robert Bateman were in a canoe race during a Motown summer party on Detroit’s Belle Isle park, competing vigorously against Berry and his brother, Robert. Because Bateman had one short arm, Barney seemed to be doing all the paddling. They lost to the Gordy brothers, but worse, their canoe overturned at the finish line and Barney cut himself badly on the broken bottles thrown by others into the river. A hospital trip was required, right away.

Then there was the occasion that Barney took the Marvelettes to Philadelphia to appear on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. The girls were in high school in their Inkster hometown; it was basically a black school, he told me, but the principal was white. To secure permission for the youngsters to be taken out of class for the trip, it had to be Barney, in person, who asked the headmaster.

I also learned much more about his early relationship with Berry. Sure, the Motown founder recognised Barney’s assets and experience, and how important these were for his ambitious, upwardly mobile young company. But clearly the two men also were kindred spirits in fun, regularly hanging out at Detroit’s brightest nightspots, including the Flame Showbar and the 20 Grand. It was little wonder that Raynoma Gordy disliked that relationship, and the hours her husband spent away from her with Barney.

COMPETITION AND COMBAT

The pair were intensely competitive, too, constantly betting against each other. Both remembered for me the $1,000 that Gordy lost at chess in London once, despite the fact that Ales could barely play the game. Both recalled the intensity of negotiations whenever Barney wanted a raise – and both seemed to enjoy the combat. Once or twice, it came with artificial stimulants. “We never smoked anything together,” Barney said, but there were occasional pills “that I used to take before we had meetings with people, because they were uppers.” At first, Gordy was curious. “ ‘Why are you so up? What are you doing?’ When I told him, he said, ‘You’re not doing that again without me having them.’ ”

“Barney was one of the boys,” agreed Mickey Stevenson, remembering how his friend would visit him at home at one o’clock in the morning to drink and celebrate. Asked about Ales’ recollection of smoking pot with him and Clarence Paul at the Apollo Theatre, Stevenson said, “That particular time doesn’t ring a bell, but we enjoyed ourselves, we had fun.” It only strengthened their camaraderie, as it did with others. “It was wonderful, with Berry and Barney and Smokey and myself. It was never a job. I guess when you love what you do, it’s not a job anymore.”

If that almost seems like an epitaph, it certainly captures the spirit of every conversation of mine with Barney, as he submitted to countless days, weeks and months of questions about almost every aspect of his life and his work. He fielded them all with candour, humour, a remarkably sharp memory – and trust. (Only once or twice would he insist on the recording device being switched off.) And when we weren’t doing all this in person, Barney would happily spend a couple of hours every Saturday on Skype, taking me to Michigan in the 1960s, recalling the people and the places, the gossip and the generosity, the challenges and the victories, of those exciting times.

And that hatchet? Well, Barney certainly remembered invoking it at least once, when an Oakland, California retailer (with connections to the Black Panthers) advertised that the Supremes would be signing autographs at the opening of his new store. There was no such promise, as Ales and Gordy made clear in an aggravated visit to the individual concerned. “He said, ‘Can’t we bury the hatchet?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’d like to bury it in your head.’ ” Perhaps not as diplomatic as Baldassare Castiglione, but certainly tougher.

Still, the last word should go to Berry, spoken for Motown: The Sound of Young America. “I just thought Barney was the greatest in the world, and he had like the United Nations in his sales department. When he came in, he said he would build me a great team. I wanted to sell all music to all people: whites, blacks, Jews, gentiles, cops and robbers.”

Mission accomplished.

Music notes: Barney Ales had a “good creative streak” in him, according to Mickey Stevenson, “and he could talk about any one of the songs we were dealing with.” That way with words also found Ales occasionally suggesting lyric ideas or turns of phrase – which is why his name appears on the writing credits of several copyrights in the Jobete Music catalogue. This week’s West Grand Blog playlist features a selection of these, as well as an instrumental or two where the credit was for adapting an old piece of music: for example, Ralph Sharon’s “Black Mountain Rag,” attributed to Barney and Al Klein, a former indie label owner and Motown’s southwest area promotion man. Rounding out the playlist is “An Important Message From Barney Ales” about a promotion priority. You are advised to take notice.