The Impersonator

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1:09Writer Geoff Mache. They recalled she would take a speaker and run it outside and she would perform as Aretha and everyone in the neighbourhood would come and gather around the house and watch her perform. It was like going to a local Aretha Franklin concert. And they said that she was her happiest when she was singing, no matter what was going on in her personal life, in her private life, it seemed that whenever she was singing, she just seemed happy. Mary Jane Jones was a member of a church gospel choir called The Great Gate in her hometown of West Petersburg, Virginia. And they would tour around America performing in churches all across the country.

1:55In 1969, Mary Jones was 27 years old. She was a single mother and she had three young children at home. And she sang at church, but she also had a secret double life, performing in local nightclubs to earn some extra money. When Motown music emerged, it wasn't accepted by the church. They thought it was sinful. Some of the lyrics were a bit too risque. So she would have to perform under a different name. She performed under Vicki Jones. And these clubs were thought to be non-churchgoing places. Yes. Houses of sin, drinking, dancing, sometimes violence. You wouldn't want to be caught there by other members of the parish.

2:50Mary Jones wore costumes and a wig so no one would recognize her. She was paid$10 a night. And what was she like as a singer? I mean, was it clear that this woman had great talent? It was clear to everyone who heard her sing in church and in the clubs that she had incredible talent. And what people noticed most of all is that Mary Jones sounded just like Aretha Franklin. She'd modelled her voice on Aretha. She would listen to Aretha's records. She taught herself to sing by listening to Aretha. So she was so convincing as Aretha, she would get mistaken for the real Queen of Soul. I think Aretha Franklin was a role model for so many women in that culture because she'd made it.

3:45She was scouted in a church. She'd been spotted singing gospel and had gone on to become an incredible success. You know, gold, platinum records, Grammys. She had all the trappings of success, the limousines, the fancy frocks. She was a superstar on the front cover of all the magazines. And we know that Mary Jones would subscribe to Jet magazine, which was the huge magazine back then, a handbag-sized magazine, and Aretha was often on the cover. And I think Mary Jones aspired to be just like Aretha. Mary Jones would often perform in Motown tribute acts, performing Aretha Franklin's songs. She was doing this one night in January 1969 at a club called The Pink Garter in Richmond, Virginia.

4:43She was backed by the house band, The Rivernets. So she's in there doing her show. She's banging out respect. Everyone's going crazy. And there's another impersonator on the bill that night. So it's not just Aretha Franklin. There's another impersonator who is doing James Brown. And this guy is Lavelle Hardy. He's a 24-year-old hairdresser from New York. And when he's not cutting hair, he's performing as James Brown. across the country. He takes one look at Mary Jones and sees those dollar signs. He thinks she's incredible. And he was earning a lot more money than Mary Jones. He was earning 200 a night.

5:31She was probably earning, you know, 10 bucks. And so he thought, he had an idea, I'm going to take Mary Jones on the road, make some money. Take her on the road as Mary Jones? Well, he had a better idea than that. He thought he would take her on the road and tell everyone that she was the real Aretha. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

6:03What did she think of this idea? She didn't know.

6:11so Hardy tricked Mary Jones he told her that he was booking the opening act for the real Aretha Franklin and he promised her a thousand dollars for six shows in Florida she'd never been paid that amount of money in her life she'd never seen that amount of money in her life so she went for it she even had to borrow the bus fare she decided to take a risk and leave her sons at home and go and perform for these six shows and open for the real Aretha. That was how Hardy got her on board. I mean, this must have seemed, well, it was the first time she was, I think, travelling so far away from home, but this must have seemed like a very exciting opportunity.

6:59She must have been thrilled. And the money would have seemed to her like it was the answer to all of her problems. and the answer to all of her prayers. As soon as Mary Jones arrived in Florida, Lavelle Hardy told her the truth, that she was not going to be opening for Aretha Franklin. She was going to be performing as Aretha Franklin. Did they look similar? They looked similar enough, but what you've got to remember is that this is 1969. Not everyone had televisions. You only recognize your favorite performer by their voice. or if you'd gone to see them live. So many people would have listened to Aretha Franklin and only seen her in pictures in Jet magazine.

7:46And this wasn't just done, you know, here in the United States. I mean, this was at that time a rather common practice of passing off impersonators as the real thing because of this lack of television, lack of our ability to look up what this person actually looked like. There was a huge wave of impersonators at this time. It was this kind of magical moment just before everyone got television sets in their front rooms where there were dozens of fake acts on the road at any given time. You could go and see the fake temptations, for example. No one really knew what their heroes looked like. So, for example, back in 1955, James Brown and Little Richard had the same agent and sometimes when Little Richard was double booked they'd make James Brown fill in.

8:41They were interchangeable except for one night in Alabama when the crowd figured it out and James Brown reportedly had to do a lot of backflips to win them over. When Lavelle Hardy arrived in Florida he started calling local promoters. He told them that while Aretha Franklin normally got paid$20 ,000 a night, she was planning on doing a run of shows for$7 ,000 a night in cash. Um, and these people fell for it. Jeff Mache says that one promoter even offered to provide a detective for security and offered a car to use. But there is a problem. Mary Jones refused to go along with Lavelle Hardy's plan.

9:29And that caused a real problem, because Hardy told her that if she didn't cooperate, she'd be in a lot of trouble. And then he threatened to throw her in the bay. And whether he knew it or not, that was her greatest fear, was being thrown into water. She couldn't swim and she had this terrible fear of drowning. Reportedly, he said to her, your body can be easily disposed of in the water. And this must have been a shock to her because she thought that she was being brought to perform and make money and he had never shown himself to be angry or violent to her before or threatening. I think his entire personality changed as soon as they got to Florida and he became incredibly threatening.

10:19And he told her very firmly, you are Aretha Franklin. Was she dressed up as Aretha Franklin? What did they do to her appearance? so Lavelle Hardy brought with him this yellow floor length gown very typical of something that the real Aretha might have worn but I guess it was a lot cheaper and he brought a wig and he'd get her in really heavy stage makeup and um you know from from a distance in a nightclub from quite far away, you would be convinced it was the real Aretha. And her voice was that good? It was incredible. She blew the roof off, apparently.

11:18We'll be right back. Thank you.

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13:14Lavelle Hardy booked another show for Mary Jones as Aretha Franklin. People were really pleased. no one really suspected a thing. In fact, Lavelle Hardy thought, oh, this is going so well, we should probably think about booking some bigger gigs. What would happen when the show was over at night? Well, as soon as the show was over, Lavelle Hardy would spirit Mary away. He didn't want anyone to get a close-up look at her. He would bundle her into a car and drive her to a cheap motel. lock the door and as she told it he'd feed her a couple of hamburgers and they would get ready for the next gig. So he wasn't paying her after every show?

14:03He'd promised to pay her but at the end so she didn't have any cash and she had no way to get home. Remember she'd borrowed the bus fair to get down there. So she wouldn't have been able to get the bus home if she tried. She didn't have the money. And you've got to remember, this was an incredibly hostile time. 1969 in the South, this would not be the place for a young African-American woman to be out on her own looking for help. Lavelle Hardy booked a show at the Hi-Hat Club in Fort Myers, a 1 ,400-seat venue. Tickets sold for$5.50. They sold out. So, uh, this was... Things were getting out of control.

14:58This was, uh, this was a bigger crowd. I wonder what it must have been like for... for Mary Jones to be getting these standing ovations and to be getting people just on their feet who loved her so much. And it was for her voice, but they didn't think that they were... They thought that they were applauding for someone else. It must have been very conflicting because all this time she'd dreamed of leading the life that Aretha Franklin was leading, performing to sell out crowds, wearing these incredible dresses and getting standing ovations. And it must have been very hard to achieve all that, but know that really you were masquerading as someone else, that you didn't deserve it.

15:48And I think by then she realised that she wanted to be herself. She wanted to perform as Mary Jones or Vicky Jones, as she called herself. She wanted to have success on her own terms.

16:08And was he more confident about booking larger audiences because the reactions had been so great from the previous audiences, the smaller crowds had loved her? Yeah, the smaller crowds had fallen for it, and he'd earned a lot of money, and I think he got greedy and he wanted a big score. And Lavelle Hardy had booked the Southeastern Livestock Pavilion, which is a huge venue. 4 ,200 seats, normally reserved for cattle shows, cattle auctions. And this was going to be a big event. The promoters had printed up Aretha Franklin posters. They'd stuck the posters up all over town. DJs were talking about it in the local area.

16:56And it was going to be probably one of the biggest shows of the year. When word started to spread about Aretha Franklin's show, in Ocala, someone else found out about it. The real Aretha Franklin. Aretha Franklin had discovered that there was something going on in the South. She'd taken a trip down to Miami and heard that she was performing. And of course she knew she wasn't. She was actually on vacation. So her attorneys, Aretha Franklin's attorneys, started making calls and got through to a local prosecutor nearby, a guy called Gus Musley, who was a bit of a showman himself. And he was told that the shows were fake.

17:52This was a fake Aretha Franklin. And this was news to Musley because he had two tickets to the show. I mean, I guess that's the problem, right? If you're playing in little clubs, it's easier to pass off that you're Aretha Franklin, but if you're booking 4 ,000-seat theatres, someone's going to say, wait a second, who is it? I mean, that's the risk. That's the things with scams, though, isn't it? They always get out of control. That's how we come to hear about them. Scams usually start out small, and you make a little bit of money, and then you either take your money and go quietly away or most people get greedy and they will do it until they get caught.

18:38So what happened next? Well, then the police got involved and two local investigators, two local cops, decided to investigate and track down this fake Aretha Franklin and find out what was going on. The two investigators, Tolles Bigelow and Martin Stevens, were from the Marion County Sheriff's Office. They found out that Lavelle Hardy had booked nine shows with Mary Jones by this point. And these two cops tracked them down pretty easily. I spoke to one of them, Martin Stevens, who has his own incredible rock and roll stories, having guarded Elvis Presley. Martin Stevens told Jeff Mache that he arrested Mary Jones and Lavelle Hardy at Ocala's Club Valley Nightclub as they were getting ready for a show.

19:35Lavelle Hardy was charged with false advertising, and his bond was set at$500. Mary Jones said she wasn't trying to make people believe she was Aretha Franklin, saying, quote, quote, I'm not her, I don't look like her, I don't dress like her, and I sure don't have her money. They were both taken to the station, fingerprinted, thrown in the cells. One local paper published an article with the headline, Phony Soul Sister Found Out. The Hi-Hat Club owner said, quote, Some people who'd seen Aretha before said that that wasn't her, but nobody was real sure and nobody asked for their money back. They weren't angry.

20:20It was a pretty good show anyway. Mary Jones swore up and down that she'd been kidnapped. That it wasn't her fault. She was forced to perform. The prosecutor wanted to hear Mary Jones sing. he was curious to know if she was convincing this all takes place in the courthouse and Gus Musley the prosecutor calls Mary Jones into the courtroom and asks her to sing and she does, she performs and everyone's blown away he thought she was quote terrific and said she showed a distinctive style of her own And what did he decide to do? He let her off. He believed her. He said, quote, it was obvious she was a victim.

21:19So Lavelle Hardy's, he's still in jail. Lavelle Hardy's in jail. They find him with 7 ,000 bucks on him when he's arrested. His profits from the shows. It was quite a lot of money in 1969. That's about just under$50 ,000 today. And he gave most of that to an attorney, a local attorney. And the attorney convinced the prosecutor to let him go too. But he was told to beat it, you know, get out of Florida. She was still broke at this point, huh? I mean, she was still, she might have been let off, but she was still kind of stuck. She was stuck, but there was somebody waiting outside the courtroom for her that would change her life forever.

22:14So, as soon as she leaves the courthouse, there's a man waiting for her. He's a gentleman called Ray Green. He's a Jacksonville entrepreneur and a lawyer who'd been following her story, because of course it made the newspapers fake Aretha Franklin arrested. And he offered her a contract, and he gave her$500 as a cash advance, because he wanted to take her on tour. He wanted to be her agent and advisor. He wanted to take her on a nationwide tour, because he thought there was so much interest in her. This must have... I mean, I wonder at this point whether she was... happy about this news or whether all she could be at this point was sceptical about another man coming in saying, I'm going to make you a big star.

23:08I think Ray Green was incredibly impressive. He was a millionaire, very successful man, self-made. The$500 cash advance, I think, went some way to prove that he was real. And he was a good guy. I think his promises seemed realistic. He wanted to take her on the road as herself. He wanted her to perform as Mary Jones. And life would never be the same again.

23:51We'll be right back.

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25:00They are not worthy. And I will be there to help. Thank you, Indiana. Trump thinks he can gerrymander his way to victory in the 2026 midterm elections. But some Indiana Republicans aren't buying it. Trump and his MAGA movement have taken over the GOP, but in Indiana and beyond, there are some signs of cracks in the coalition. That's coming up on Today Explained from Vox. Mary Jones went back to West Petersburg. She found out that Duke Ellington had heard about her. And a few weeks later, she went back to Florida for one of his shows. Duke Ellington invited her onto stage at a show, introduced her as the woman who made headlines just two weeks earlier.

25:47And they performed together. She sang Every Day I Have the Blues. She wore the same yellow evening gown she had worn when she was performing as Aretha Franklin in Fort Myers. But this time, she didn't wear a wig. Was she accepted as herself? I mean, were people disappointed that she wasn't singing Respect anymore? Or was she able to be thought of as her own artist finally? This was the beginning of what Duke Ellington had planned for her. He told her, you know, you've got to be yourself now. And he even offered to write some songs specifically for her to record. She wanted to perform as herself now.

26:36This was a new chapter. She felt ready to write her own songs and her own music. She told a reporter, I want to do songs strictly about me, how I got started and how I love. Everything I write will be based on my life. I think people will be interested.

27:00And did she? I mean, tell me about some of the things that happened to her when she started to perform. So she went on the road. She flew in jets for the first time. She performed in Chicago and Las Vegas. And she gave interviews to the newspapers. She said she wanted to be famous, but she said, in my own style, I've got my own bag. The way I feel is that people can buy Aretha for Aretha and they can buy Vicky Jane for Vicky Jane. Did Aretha Franklin ever say anything about her? So there was a whole media spectacle caused by this So eventually Aretha Franklin heard the story And in an interview with Jet, she defended her She said that it was Lavelle Hardy who ought to be prosecuted Not that girl So she was pro-Mary Jones

28:03Mary Jones performing as Vicky Jones toured all over the country in bigger and bigger venues well of course when she's on these tours she's earning so much money more money than she's ever seen and she performs in all these awesome locations but of course people really only want her to sing Aretha songs because that's what made her famous. So, you know, they wanted her to sing Respect. They, you know, she wasn't given time to write her own songs or perform as herself. You know, people just wanted to see the Aretha Act. And I think for a time that was successful, but it was very limiting. And I think Duke Ellington said something like this.

28:51She needs to break out of the Aretha thing. and she just wasn't able to. And probably nor did she want to because she was earning up to$1 ,500 a night doing Aretha. So she just stopped performing?

29:12Well, she did a year of touring and then she went back to her hometown to do a show there and she was eating at a restaurant in West Petersburg and her two little sons ran into the dining room and this was an adults only restaurant so the waiters were trying to grab them but it was one of these moments where she realised that she'd lost sight of her role as a mother. Her sons had gone back to live with the ex-husband who told them that she was never coming back. Gregory, her son Gregory told me that he couldn't bear to listen to Aretha songs on the radio. When Aretha songs would come on, he'd change the channel.