Aurora Days and Nights

‘ONE LEAN GREEN TO MAKE THE SCENE’

The most disturbing of Mel Kanar’s memories is almost certainly the one involving Mary Wells.

      The teenage singer’s first 45, “Bye Bye Baby,” was occupying the airwaves of Detroit’s R&B radio stations during the closing weeks of 1960, and Motown Records’ local distributor was putting her to work. “I used to pick her up at Northwestern High,” says Kanar, “and I was taking her to some record hop or other. My friend, Mike Beltzman, was in the back seat of the car, and we’re stopped at a light. Some guy next to us rolls down his window and says, ‘Hey, nigger lovers!’

Ernie Durham: ‘the most wonderful guy’

      “Well,” Kanar continues, “that was common. I had eggs thrown at me in the car. You had to watch out for those things, it’s the way it was. And Mary wasn’t even 18 years of age.”

      At that point, Mel Kanar was a recruit at newly-formed Aurora Distributing, which had taken on the Tamla and Motown labels in Michigan and northern Ohio after another Detroit firm, black-owned B&H, had gone out of business. Only a couple of years older than Wells, he worked at Aurora in shipping and receiving, but was occasionally drafted into record promotion.

      “Mel, do you have a sports jacket, a shirt and tie, and a nice pair of shoes?” The questioner was Barney Ales, soon to become a central figure in Motown history, but at that point, he was Aurora’s sales manager – and in need of smart-looking help when visiting radio stations to turn his client’s new releases into hits.

      Evidently, the result was positive: Wells’ “Bye Bye Baby” travelled from popularity in Detroit to a Top 10 berth on the nation’s rhythm & blues charts early in 1961, as did another Aurora-handled Motown release of the period: “Shop Around” by the Miracles.

      Kanar also remembers how area DJs regularly augmented their income. “Every disc jockey was doing record hops, every Friday and Saturday night,” he says. “They were my dates, going with some group or other to one of these sock hops, or maybe two or three, driving like a madman.” On such occasions, record companies – including Motown – provided the acts free of charge to the disc jockeys. “The hops would charge the kids a dollar to get in,” recalled Barney Ales, when he and I were working on Motown: The Sound of Young America, “and this was extra money for the DJs.”

      A radio favourite of Kanar’s was “Frantic” Ernie Durham at WJLB Detroit. “He was the most wonderful guy, and he had an office the size of one of my walk-in closets, with a chair and a record player. I used to say to Ernie, ‘What do you think of this one?’ He’d say, ‘If this record takes off, let’s bring the group in.’ Because every Friday night, he had a big dance at the 20 Grand. It had a huge hall, you could get about 500 kids in there. He also had this show every Sunday afternoon, you had to be 17 or older to get in.” In Durham’s words, it was “one lean green to make the scene.”

FAVOUROLA, NOT PAYOLA

      “We would bring the acts in,” Kanar elaborates. “It was part of the extended payola, or the new payola. They would pantomime their song, and Ernie, for one, would play the hell out of it. We were the correlators between the record companies, the artists and the disc jockeys. Every manufacturer probably came in at least once a month to visit us, because they knew if we could get a record played on a Detroit station – even if it were R&B – the chances were good that it would be a hit everywhere.”

      In retrospect, Kanar calls it “favourola.”

      Aurora Distributing’s president and general manager was Harvey Kahn, a fixture of the Motor City’s music business. He had worked at an earlier record distributor, Pan American, which was co-owned by Johnny Kaplan, another Detroit veteran. In 1959, Kaplan formed Aurora, appointing Kahn and hiring Ales. In turn, Kahn recruited Kanar.

Marvin ‘n’ Mel: bouncy and good-natured

      “I never finished high school,” says Kanar. “I worked in a beer and wine liquor store in the middle of skid row. That was my education, in the ’hood. Then I met Harvey and Barney at Aurora. We had a bookkeeper, and a girl who was married to Ronnie White of the Miracles.”

      Indeed, she was: Earlyn (Lyn) Stephenson, who was further connected to Motown by way of her sister, Thelma Leverett. (The latter’s husband, Chico, was a member of the Satintones, the first all-male group signed by Berry Gordy.) “Everybody talked to Lyn,” recalls Kanar. “She was a cross between an American Indian – Cherokee, I think – and black. She was warm, sweet, with a million-dollar smile. Beautiful on the outside and beautiful on the inside.”

      While at Aurora, Kanar met Berry Gordy. “I knew he had written all those hits for Jackie Wilson. I told him, ‘I’m dancing to that music.’ But he didn’t have any money, he was living over the studio on West Grand.” Kanar also knew Motown recording engineer Mike McLean. “He was there for the love of the music. He had another job, and came there in the nighttime. Berry bought him a sports car, because he never paid him.”

      Still another Detroit figure of Kanar’s acquaintance was Aaron Harris, whose State Song Shop on Hastings Street was a vital one-stop for the city’s record retailers (as profiled here in WGB). “Aaron would call me up and say, ‘Hey, Mel, when’s the new Marvin Gaye coming out?’ I said, ‘I know [Motown] sent the master to the plant, I should be getting my disc jockey copies very soon. How many copies do you want to buy?’ He said, ‘I just got them.’ Somebody had bootlegged them, and sent them to him. He had more connections than anyone else. He was a character-and-a-half.”

BLACK CADILLACS AND BUICKS

      Aurora’s own character-and-a-half was Barney Ales, who had joined in 1960 after gaining music industry experience – and, in particular, developing radio relationships – when working at the Detroit branches of Capitol Records and Warner Bros. Records. “It was a fantastic time,” Ales said, “and what was great was that it marked a complete re-channelling of radio into rhythm & blues. Of the top ten records that were being played in Detroit, three or four of them were through Aurora, they were mine.” The firm gained from B&H’s closure, acquiring local distribution for VeeJay, Scepter, Sue, Fire and Fury, among others, plus Tamla and Motown.

      “Barney was a very charismatic guy,” says Kanar. “Everybody loved him, he was very warm. His father was a barber. At the barber shop, I remember, there were all these black Cadillacs and Buick 225s out front, and the Mafia guys in the back.” He adds, controversially, “If it wasn’t for the Mafia, there never would have been a Motown Records. Blacks couldn’t go to banks to borrow money, and let me tell you, when you ordered records from the pressing plant, you had to pay the money upfront. There was no 30-day, 60-day, 90-day billing. Where did you get this cashflow? Who had more money than the boys?”

An epic connection: Orlando and Kanar

      For all its effectiveness, Aurora only stayed in business for little more than two years, a situation compounded by Harvey Kahn’s poor health. He and Ales each owned 10 percent of the company, with the balance held by Johnny Kaplan and his business partner, Henry Droz; the latter pair had other local distribution interests which prospered. A couple of decades ago, Ales told me that he suggested to Kahn that they should start their own label. When Kahn turned that idea down, Ales shared his frustration with Berry Gordy, as the two men had become good friends – and then he accepted Gordy’s offer to join Motown full-time.

      Some nine months later, Kaplan and Droz dissolved Aurora, and Motown went elsewhere. So did Mel Kanar, working for a while with Harvey Fuqua’s Tri-Phi label. His relationships with R&B disc jockeys meant that he was a good source of advice about prospective hit records and artists, and could help shape the creative process.

      Two Tri-Phi releases featured songs identified as Kanar co-writes: “Honey, Honey, Honey” by the Challengers, and “Whistling About You” by Fuqua himself, backed by the Spinners. The first was a soulful femme ballad, with Ann Bogan (a future Marvelette) out front. “Lark team’s lead is a sincere vehicle for the tender blues affectionate,” read the review in trade paper Cash Box. Fuqua's single was a midtempo, semi-instrumental (given its title), with Harvey sounding rather like Kanar’s credited co-writer: a certain Marvin Gaye. “Bouncy, good-natured blues-styled go,” declared Cash Box. Today, unfortunately, Kanar can remember nothing about either record.

      What he does recall from the Aurora days came into sharp relief recently, when Kanar spent time in the company of Tony Orlando, who appreciated his early career role. Epic Records, Orlando’s label then, went through independent distribution, and Aurora helped to turn “Halfway To Paradise” and “Bless You” into national hits in 1961. Just last month, Kanar was invited to spend time with the singer in Michigan, where he was performing. Moreover, he was also asked to appear in an Orlando documentary being produced for Netflix.

      Such occasions make for better memories than that of the Detroit traffic stop and its racist moment.

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