Albert "Al" Green of the now defunct National Records), who owned the club and managed Atlantic Recording artist LaVern Baker, as well as singers Johnnie Ray and Little Willie John. At Tarnopol's insistence, Green signed a management contract with a young Jackie Wilson, who had decided to leave Billy Ward and the Dominoes for a solo career. By the time Decca Records was ready to sign Wilson, Green died, leaving the entire job of management to Tarnopol, who was only 25. Decca placed Wilson on their Brunswick label, which had become their depository for black recording artists as well as Buddy Holly's Crickets, who Decca first thought were black until they actually met them in person. The breakout hit for Wilson was “Lonely Teardrops” in 1958, which was written by fledgling songwriters Berry Gordy Jr., Gwendolyn Gordy and Roquel "Billy" Davis. According to Jackie Wilson, “Lonely Teardrops” was originally written and recorded as a blues ballad. After playing it back in the recording in the studio, it was Tarnopol who instructed Decca's staff producer Dick Jacobs to reconfigure the song as an up-tempo recording. “Lonely Teardrops” became a number one record which skyrocketed Jackie Wilson's singing career and helped provide Berry Gordy the funds used to establish his Hitsville USA recording studio, the foundation for his Tamla and Motown record labels. Jackie Wilson’s widow Harlean Wilson said the following in a 2019 interview published in the Chicago Defender: Jackie, she adds, owed much of his commercial success in the music business to his dedicated producer at Brunswick Records, Nat Tarnopol, who was also the head of the label and had originally brought Jackie to New York from their shared native city of Detroit. Unlike many other African-American entertainers of the day, Wilson was treated fairly by Brunswick and Tarnopol, says Harlean, but outside of the confines of the company, that wasn’t always so: The singer and his wife were often subjected to painful, vicious rumors and untruths, legal entanglements and other indignities, including women who claimed to be linked with Jackie romantically and, later, both men and women claiming to be his children. One crazy, completely fabricated story that persisted for some time had Jackie being held outside of an upper story of a building upside down by thugs until he agreed to sign a contract. (Another version of this story, told by Quincy Jones to Clarence Avant in the