Me, the Mob, and the Music by Tommy James

Author:Tommy James [James, Tommy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2010-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Mony Mony

After the incredible year we had in ’67, by almost every standard we were an astonishing success. In fewer than two years we had nine hit singles, five smash albums including our first Greatest Hits album, plus Billboard’s coveted Artist of the Year award. We were playing dream gigs all over the country to packed arenas and baseball stadiums, and we had a constant barrage of radio airplay. But as usual, being Roulette artists meant not being paid, and it was becoming a tormenting issue. It wasn’t just me, everybody connected with the Shondells was trapped in Morris’s demented financial black hole. And yet, in a way, the whole Roulette payment debacle started to become my responsibility. Everyone would come to me because they were too afraid to confront Morris. I was becoming the shop steward for most of our team—the band, photographers, publicity people, art designers, sometimes even the studio. The joke about “the quietest place on the planet” being accounts payable at Roulette was no longer very funny. I would get reasonable pleas from our crew for payment that I would pass on to Morris. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it.” But nothing would happen and the demands would eventually grow into fury and frustration because Morris would parade around Roulette as if nothing was wrong. What made matters worse was that Red and Karin were always clueing me in about Morris’s stately living; his luxury Manhattan penthouse, his condominium in Florida, his mansion in New Jersey where he lived with his fourth wife, Nome, plus a newly acquired dairy farm in Ghent, New York. Then there was Morris’s endless supply of special girlfriends and his passion for gambling and prostitutes. He had plenty of money for all that but never a dime for all the people who made it happen, especially me.

It wasn’t that I was living in poverty. We were making great money from radio airplay and concerts. Lately we were doing commercials for product lines like Real Girl Cosmetics and HIS clothes. We also had an arrangement with Philco doing “hip-pocket records,” miniature 45s about as big as a modern-day CD, which needed a special player, also made by Philco. But there were always lean periods and those were the times I had to ask Morris for an advance. I never made an appointment for these encounters so I could catch him off guard. But I seldom fooled him for long. He knew what I was there for.

I can still see him puffing on his Pall Malls, no smile, waiting for me to make my move. It was almost like we were stalking each other. He would grunt, “How ya doin’?” and I would start out very cheery, tell him some news about what record we planned to put out next. Usually I had a tape of the next single and then I would pounce. “Morris, can I get an advance?” But Morris could play this game better than anybody and any threat to his power was immediately squashed.

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