7/21/2023 0 Comments Billy idol manager tommy![]() “If I’d been on a big, corporate label, they might well have treated me as a one-hit wonder,” he says. Yet James now considers himself lucky to have been signed to Roulette. He fled back to Pittsburgh, leaving a naive youth up against a mobster. He was slammed against the wall and told that, if he set foot in Roulette’s offices again, he would be killed. Rereleased on Roulette, Hanky Panky topped the US charts and James’s promoter-manager asked Levy for royalties. Photograph: Christopher Polk/Getty Images Tommy James and the Shondells at Stagecoach country music festival in California in 2017. Taken to Manhattan, James signed away his life. James, a teenage father who was providing for his family by singing R&B and Beatles covers in bars across the Midwest, did not know about his hit until the promoter tracked him down. Hanky Panky had sold well around Michigan, but achieved nothing more until, in 1966, a Pittsburgh promoter found a copy and got a strong enough response from dancers to bootleg it he sold 80,000 copies in 10 days. When James appeared with Hanky Panky, a single he recorded in 1964 for a tiny Michigan label, Levy sensed salvation. Thomas Eboli, the head of the “family”, was Levy’s business partner, while Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, another cohort, was the model for Tony Soprano in The Sopranos (in that series, Levy was portrayed as Hesh Rabkin, a ruthless Jewish record label executive).īy the mid-60s, Roulette had not had a major hit for several years. How Levy became so powerful has never been disclosed, but what is clear is his connection to the Genovese crime syndicate. From a hardscrabble Harlem upbringing, he came to own Birdland, Manhattan’s foremost jazz club, managed Alan Freed, the DJ who coined the term “rock’n’roll”, and took over several record labels and music publishers. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesĪnd then there was Morris. James signing a contract with Morris Levy (right), circa 1970. Others were hustlers, looking to exploit often semi-literate artists. ![]() Some, like the founders of Blue Note, Atlantic, Chess, Motown and Sun Records, were honourable aficionados who performed a remarkable service. Moishe “Morris” Levy was one of the fabled “record men” who set up independent labels in the US after the second world war to work in genres the majors ignored, such as jazz and R&B. “Without Morris, there’s no Tommy James,” he says matter-of-factly. But if Roulette’s unruly ethos ensured James never received his critical dues, this, as with the missing royalties, does not appear to upset him. ![]() All of this has distracted from how fabulous James’s best music is: his run of innovative hit singles and albums places him close behind the Beach Boys and the Beatles for 60s pop joy and unbridled creativity. In the US, Roulette’s reputation ensured the media kept a safe distance. This is partly due to Mony, Mony – a UK No 1 in 1968 – which ensured James was incorrectly labelled here as “bubblegum” and a one-hit wonder. Greatest hits compilations reduce him to a handful of very catchy tunes, while heritage magazines such as Mojo and Uncut eulogise his contemporaries yet ignore James. Beginning with garage rock in 1966 then spanning pop, R&B, psychedelia and hard rock before finishing in country in 1973, he has never been given the retrospective treatment before. James’s Roulette catalogue is being reissued on a six-CD box set this month, which should direct belated attention to a remarkable body of work.
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