Read Online Here Comes the Night by Joel Selvin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Joel Selvin
Tags: music, History & Criticism
Ads: Link
given that he could lose $50,000 in a day at the track. Wherever Goldner operated, Levy was never far away.
The five fellows in the Cleftones took the subway train down from Jamaica in Queens to Goldner’s office. In December 1955, their single “You Baby You” had been the first release on Goldner’s new label, Gee Records, named after his Crows hit. The group and their manager—a white friend from Jamaica High School who sang poorly and decided instead to take a backstage role—were surprised to find two rough-looking gentlemen in the office with Goldner, who wasn’t sitting at his desk. Instead, sitting at Goldner’s desk was a man who introduced himself as Morris Levy and told the group these other two menacing fellows were their new managers. Informed that they already had a manager, Levy took the young man they identified out in the hall.When they returned, the Cleftones had new managers, Tommy Vastola and Johnny Roberts.
Gaetano “Tommy” Vastola had a number of nicknames—Corky, the Big Guy, the Galoot. He was a physically imposing man about Levy’s age who owned a nightclub in Coney Island near Nathan’s called the Riptide and ran with the Colombo gang. His uncle, Dominick Ciaffone, was known as Swats Mulligan, a big-time gangster with the Genovese family. Vastola was credited as coauthor of the Valentines’ hit “Lily Maebelle” and took a similar cowriting credit on “You Baby You.” In between loan sharking, grand larceny, and labor racketeering, Vastola liked to keep his hand in the music business. Johnny Roberts worked for him.
Morris Levy and Tommy Vastola did a lot of business together. With Levy a largely unseen power behind Goldner’s throne, he could hand off plums to his buddies like the Cleftones management or songwriting credits on Goldner productions (Vastola is doo-wop songwriting aristocracy, coauthor of the Wrens’ vocal group classic “Hey Girl,” the Valentines’ “I Love You Darling,” and another couple of dozen vintageera pieces). Levy had his hooks into Goldner but good. Levy owned a piece of Gee Records. He owned outright the publishing to Goldner’s biggest hit, the Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ 1956 Top Ten hit “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” He made more money off the record than Goldner did. Way more.
ALL THE NEW York–based labels were well aware of a growing network of rhythm and blues disc jockeys with popular radio shows popping up in every city in the country. Especially well known to them was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed, who, under the name Moondog, had been blasting their records on the airwaves since 1952. While underground currents were already streaming across the country, immutable forces no doubt already in motion, no one thing probably boosted the rock and roll revolt more than Alan Freed coming to New York Cityradio. Certainly no single event so empowered the men of the rough-and-tumble world of the New York independent record business. In greedy, arrogant, drunken Alan Freed, the father of rock and roll, they found a willing coconspirator in their grandest plans and ambitions, whom they treated like the patsy he was.
Freed’s Cleveland radio show had already hit New York from Newark, New Jersey radio station WNJR beginning in December 1953, running taped copies of his original broadcasts with the local commercials clumsily hacked off. Freed, who presented what was undoubtedly the first rock and roll concert, Moondog’s Coronation Ball, in Cleveland in 1952 (the first rock and roll riot took place outside the same night), brought a similar rhythm and blues program to the Newark National Guard Armory in May 1954, featuring New York–based vocal group the Harptones, the Clovers, Muddy Waters, Charles Brown, and others. More than eleven thousand screaming teens mobbed the place. Thousands more were turned away.
“Hi, everybody,” said Freed, opening his debut nighttime airshift on New York’s WINS in September 1954. “This is
The five fellows in the Cleftones took the subway train down from Jamaica in Queens to Goldner’s office. In December 1955, their single “You Baby You” had been the first release on Goldner’s new label, Gee Records, named after his Crows hit. The group and their manager—a white friend from Jamaica High School who sang poorly and decided instead to take a backstage role—were surprised to find two rough-looking gentlemen in the office with Goldner, who wasn’t sitting at his desk. Instead, sitting at Goldner’s desk was a man who introduced himself as Morris Levy and told the group these other two menacing fellows were their new managers. Informed that they already had a manager, Levy took the young man they identified out in the hall.When they returned, the Cleftones had new managers, Tommy Vastola and Johnny Roberts.
Gaetano “Tommy” Vastola had a number of nicknames—Corky, the Big Guy, the Galoot. He was a physically imposing man about Levy’s age who owned a nightclub in Coney Island near Nathan’s called the Riptide and ran with the Colombo gang. His uncle, Dominick Ciaffone, was known as Swats Mulligan, a big-time gangster with the Genovese family. Vastola was credited as coauthor of the Valentines’ hit “Lily Maebelle” and took a similar cowriting credit on “You Baby You.” In between loan sharking, grand larceny, and labor racketeering, Vastola liked to keep his hand in the music business. Johnny Roberts worked for him.
Morris Levy and Tommy Vastola did a lot of business together. With Levy a largely unseen power behind Goldner’s throne, he could hand off plums to his buddies like the Cleftones management or songwriting credits on Goldner productions (Vastola is doo-wop songwriting aristocracy, coauthor of the Wrens’ vocal group classic “Hey Girl,” the Valentines’ “I Love You Darling,” and another couple of dozen vintageera pieces). Levy had his hooks into Goldner but good. Levy owned a piece of Gee Records. He owned outright the publishing to Goldner’s biggest hit, the Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ 1956 Top Ten hit “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” He made more money off the record than Goldner did. Way more.
ALL THE NEW York–based labels were well aware of a growing network of rhythm and blues disc jockeys with popular radio shows popping up in every city in the country. Especially well known to them was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed, who, under the name Moondog, had been blasting their records on the airwaves since 1952. While underground currents were already streaming across the country, immutable forces no doubt already in motion, no one thing probably boosted the rock and roll revolt more than Alan Freed coming to New York Cityradio. Certainly no single event so empowered the men of the rough-and-tumble world of the New York independent record business. In greedy, arrogant, drunken Alan Freed, the father of rock and roll, they found a willing coconspirator in their grandest plans and ambitions, whom they treated like the patsy he was.
Freed’s Cleveland radio show had already hit New York from Newark, New Jersey radio station WNJR beginning in December 1953, running taped copies of his original broadcasts with the local commercials clumsily hacked off. Freed, who presented what was undoubtedly the first rock and roll concert, Moondog’s Coronation Ball, in Cleveland in 1952 (the first rock and roll riot took place outside the same night), brought a similar rhythm and blues program to the Newark National Guard Armory in May 1954, featuring New York–based vocal group the Harptones, the Clovers, Muddy Waters, Charles Brown, and others. More than eleven thousand screaming teens mobbed the place. Thousands more were turned away.
“Hi, everybody,” said Freed, opening his debut nighttime airshift on New York’s WINS in September 1954. “This is
Similar Books
