Gentleman Jones
STRAIGHT-TALKING, FOOT-STOMPING, ALBUM-SELLING
Phil Jones’ name is hard to find in the many books about Motown, but it’s clear and present in the one where it matters.
In To Be Loved, Berry Gordy remembers his mother’s proud visits with friends to the company, when she would ask the occupants of the upper floor of 2644-46 West Grand – Barney Ales’ sales team – to explain their jobs. “My name is Phil Jones, and I sell LPs, the big records with the small holes,” said the first of them, standing to his full, six-foot-two height. Gordy continues, “Then Irv Biegel would stand up and say, ‘I’m Irv Biegel and I sell 45s, the small records with the big holes.’”
Bertha Gordy would go through the whole department, explains the Motown founder, “and each would oblige her, reciting their particular duties.” He writes, “As she was leaving, she was sometimes heard to say, ‘And my son owns it all.’” (Ales also told me about those visits, albeit mentioning a different parting line from Mother Gordy: “Aren’t these white boys nice?”)
Phil Jones (left) with the Supremes at Detroit’s Graystone Ballroom during Christmas 1964, with British visitor Clive Stone
Phil Jones figures elsewhere in To Be Loved, including its author’s recollections of his fierce argument with Marvin Gaye when the singer thoughtlessly berated the sales department for the disappointing chart progress of “Can I Get A Witness.” Years later, Jones was at the centre of events when Gaye had more hits in prospect – but first, some background on the man whom many Motown artists knew well and held in high regard, both for his personality and his salesmanship.
“Phil was a jovial guy,” agreed Mary Wilson. “I can see his smiling face now.”
Detroit-born Jones joined the music industry in 1952, at the age of 21, to work for the Michigan distributor of Wurlitzer jukeboxes, Angott, in its one-stop (wholesale) record operation. During that time, he became acquainted with a salesman for the local branch of Capitol Records: Barney Ales. When the latter joined Warner Bros. Records in 1959, he and Jones ran a business on the side, the Hi Ho Record Shop in Garden City. It was a new site. “When they were building it for us, they were putting plumbing in the walls,” recalled Joe Summers, a minority partner in the venture who also worked for Capitol. “The guy said, ‘When you guys go out of business, we’re going to turn it into a barber’s shop.’” Two years later, admitted Summers, it was a barber’s shop.
At Angott’s, Jones learned much, although his was not an employer without controversy. In 1958, a U.S. Senate probe into racketeering in the jukebox business cited the firm in at least one instance of improper pressure applied to coin-machine operators. In 1960, Jones moved over to Merchants Wholesale, a Detroit record rackjobber, and in late 1962, Ales recruited him to become Motown’s national album sales director.
‘POSTMAN’ DELIVERS 120K
At that point, singles were at least 80% of the company’s revenues. According to Ales, its first crossover Number One, the Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman,” sold 1.2 million singles and helped to move approximately 120,000 albums. Matters improved the following year, when Little Stevie Wonder’s Number One single, “Fingertips – Pt. 2,” leveraged its companion album, Recorded Live: The 12 Year Old Genius, to the top of the Billboard best-seller list.
The tempo quickened with the Supremes’ breakthrough, which ultimately led to a dozen Top 20 albums for the group (two with the Temptations) on the pop charts during the 1960s. Likewise, the Temps’ consistent flow of hit singles fuelled their LP action, delivering 11 Top 20 albums that decade. But Jones was not only about sales. “All the sales department were close to all the producers, writers, arrangers, artists,” he told trade press tipster Bill Gavin in 1996. “I remember doing some foot-stomping on Supremes records.” He also gave producer Mickey Stevenson the idea for “Motoring,” as recorded by Martha & the Vandellas in 1964, and was credited as one of the song’s writers.
Motown’s sales wizards: Barney Ales (seated) with (l-r) Phil Jones, Al Klein, Irv Biegel
In his primary job, Jones dealt with the network of independent record distributors on which Motown relied to supply the nation’s music retailers. The company’s sales programmes – incentives to order in quantity, returns privileges for releases which didn’t move – were crucial, as were the personal relationships with those distributors, feisty to a man. By all accounts, Jones took care of business.
He certainly did in August 1968 when Marvin Gaye’s In The Groove went to market, with “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” merely one of its tracks. “We put out the album,” Jones explained to me for The Billboard Book of Number One Rhythm & Blues Hits, “and Rodney Jones at WVON Chicago called. He told me, ‘I played the record at the hop, and they went crazy. I put it on the air here last night, and the phones lit up.’ I told Rodney, ‘But it’s only been a year since we did 1.7 million on Gladys.’” Jones immediately went to Quality Control, conveying the urgency, lobbying for the track’s release as a single. “Billie Jean [Brown] said, ‘Phil, I scraped the bottom of the can to get this.’ Yet within a couple of days, Ernie Leaner at United Record Distributors ordered 100,000 copies.”
“If the whole world was like Phil, we wouldn’t have a problem,” said Joe Summers, who joined Motown’s sales team in 1969. “He told you what he thought, and no bullshit.” Jones was the overall director of sales by then, but not restricted from serving the company in other respects. “If you wanted him to take care of a disc jockey when he was in town,” remarked Barney Ales, “there was no one better.”
‘I CAN HAVE YOUR ASS KILLED’
Such skill wasn’t limited to entertainment. Ales recalled a prominent DJ at KYOK Houston coming to Detroit, meeting Jones and demanding to be put on the payroll – at $1,000 a month – to keep playing Motown records on his station. “And Phil says, ‘Look, we’re already paying enough to our promotion man, we kinda like it the way it is.’ Well, the disc jockey says it ain’t gonna be that way anymore, and if we don’t pay him the $1,000 a month, there’s no more airplay for Motown on his station. Phil looks at him over the top of his glasses, doesn’t even smile, and says, ‘$1,000 a month? Don’t you realise I can have your ass killed for $2,500?’ Phil may have been quiet-spoken, but he was raised as tough as he needed to be.”
Phil Jones in London, 1969, with Stevie Wonder and Tamla Motown competition winner Bert Smart, taking delivery of his “Motown Mini”
He was chivalrous, too. One day, the hair of Quality Control’s Billie Jean Brown accidentally caught fire from her cigarette as she, Jones and Ales walked to lunch in downtown Detroit. “Phil took off his cashmere coat – it was damned cold out there on the street – and put it over her head to smother the burning,” said Ales.
Then there was “What’s Going On.” Jones recalled, “We had a meeting in L.A. once – Barney, Berry and a bunch of Motown people, and Berry was complaining about Marvin, not making his album, up in the mountains, talking to God. That October or November, I was put in charge of Marvin. When I got back to Detroit, [creative services director] Harry Balk asked me what I thought of the single Marvin was going to put out. I said, ‘Jesus, it sounds like two stations at the same time – it’s a terrible mix.’
“I told Marvin what I thought. ‘OK, Phil,’ he said, ‘if you think it needs a remix – I’ve only remixed it 83 times.’ Come the first of the year, still nothing from Marvin, so I called Harry. We listened to it again, and I said, ‘We’re going to release the damn thing as it is.’ I set it up for my 40th birthday – January 20, 1971 – and we shipped the record. Within a day, distributors were calling me back – it was a monster.”
Jones’ tenure at Motown lasted 12 years, including two in California after it moved from Detroit. But the new administration under Ewart Abner proved not to be a happy place for him. “Phil was never made a vice president, and he resented it tremendously,” said longtime colleague Gordon Prince. Fired by Abner in March 1974, Jones moved to New York to join Polydor/MGM Records – where former Motown songwriter/producer Johnny Bristol had signed – and then back to Los Angeles, starting up his own enterprise, Raintree Records.
LaVIGNI BECOMES VALENTI
The label’s prime act was singer/songwriter John LaVigni, who had previously fronted a six-piece band, Puzzle, with two albums to their credit – on Motown, of course – in 1973-74. After a couple of Raintree singles, Jones contracted LaVigni to Ariola America Records, where – as John Valenti – he scored a Top 10 R&B hit in 1976, “Anything You Want.” (The song was published by Minta Music, named after Jones’ wife.)
In 1978, Jones was appointed marketing director at San Francisco’s Fantasy Records, a company where he was to excel in the years which followed – and to be reunited with former Motown creative figures Harvey Fuqua and Hank Cosby, and artists Brenda Holloway and Martha Reeves. Fuqua’s big star at the time was Sylvester, who generated hits with “Dance (Disco Heat)” and “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” on both sides of the Atlantic.
Jam-packed with hits, but no Marvelettes in sight
This brought Jones in touch with Bob Fisher, Fantasy’s label manager at EMI Records in the U.K., who had previously served as press officer for Motown there. “We talked a lot about Motown,” recalled Fisher, “and he told me interesting stuff about sales. I got the impression, for example, that he was responsible for the early album releases not featuring pictures of the artists on the covers.”
Jones confirmed as much to Bill Gavin. “When we started, the Southern rackjobbers would not put [albums by] black people on the racks in the supermarkets,” he said. “We put out the greatest hits of Mary Wells and the Marvelettes and Marvin Gaye with big block type. We didn’t put any pictures on them.” That’s a contentious issue – Barney Ales assured me that it was never company policy – but there’s no question that Motown’s relationships with distributors in the South required particular dexterity, as another of its sales team, Miller London, would vouchsafe.
Fisher also recalled Jones talking about Motown’s production process. “Phil made it clear to me that most of its ’60s albums were the result of him or Barney calling someone in A&R and asking them for another album by an artist on a ‘see what tracks are on the shelf’ basis. This changed somewhat with Norman Whitfield, so Phil gave me the impression that he really flourished after Norman, Marvin and Stevie started producing albums.”
Motown’s first national album sales director died on May 16, 2002, a victim of lung cancer at the age of 71. “Berry loved Phil,” said Gordon Prince. “I called Esther [Edwards] and told her he was dying. The next day, I heard from Phil. He got a call from Berry and a call from Smokey. He was so thrilled.”
Clearly, they knew how important to Motown was the man who sold the big records with the small holes.
THE SIX OF ’63:
The first year that Motown scored on the main Billboard album chart, with these releases (including chart debut date and peak position):
MARY WELLS: Two Lovers And Other Great Hits (16/3/1963) #49
THE MIRACLES: The Fabulous Miracles (8/6/1963) #118
VARIOUS ARTISTS: The Motor-Town Revue/Recorded Live At The Apollo, Vol. 1 (8/6/1963) #47
LITTLE STEVIE WONDER: Recorded Live/The 12 Year Old Genius (13/7/1963) #1
THE MIRACLES: Recorded Live/On Stage (5/10/1963) #139
MARTHA & THE VANDELLAS: Heat Wave (23/11/1963) #125