ME, THE MOB & THE MUSIC: The Crimson & Clover Underbelly Of Classic Pop

Pop music has a lot of prob­lems today but the biggest and worst may be its utter pre­dictabil­ity.  Modern pop is just another cor­po­rate shell-game.  The show­biz con­glom­er­ates choose the stars, groom them and con­trol all phases of their careers and pub­lic­ity.  Even when scan­dals occur, the man­age­ment of these moments rolls out a yawn-inducing, thor­oughly pre­med­i­tated fash­ion.  The end result is pop-cultural pablum that sel­dom con­nects on any vis­ceral level because it has been pre-packaged and micro-managed within an inch of its life — and the pop-tarts spew­ing it out are even less interesting.

However, there was a time when the pop mar­ket­place was as wide-open and unpre­dictable as the Wild West.  Anyone will­ing to try hard enough could score a hit — and if they landed the right breaks, they could get a whole career out of it.  This was pos­si­ble because the music busi­ness had not yet become a cor­po­rate enter­prise — and as a result, many shady oper­a­tors were able to ply their nefar­i­ous trade while scor­ing a bun­dle off the country’s music-loving teen populace.

The career of Tommy James rep­re­sents an inter­est­ing  con­ver­gence of these two aspects of pre-corporate pop.  He rose from mid­west­ern obscu­rity to pro­duce a string of AM-radio ever­greens that made him one of the most suc­cess­ful pop stars of his time: “I Think We’re Alone Now,” “Mony Mony” and “Crimson & Clover” are just three of the biggest.  He was also the major act for Roulette Records, an infa­mously mobbed-up label run by the most noto­ri­ous of crooked record men, Morris Levy.

James tells the story of his career and rela­tion­ship with Levy in Me, The Mob & The Music and it’s a tale that any retro-pop maven will want to dive into.  With co-writer Martin Fitzpatrick, he chron­i­cles his career in a breezy, col­or­ful style that makes the pages flip by with ease.  His dues-paying days fol­low a clas­sic pro­gres­sion: a child­hood obses­sion with music leads to the for­ma­tion of high-school groups that lead into a semi-pro regional career.  It’s the kind of sce­nario famil­iar to any­one who’s ever read a garage band his­tory in Ugly Things mag­a­zine but it has a time­less charm that will fas­ci­nate any­one inter­ested in the forces that drive a would-be pop star — and James and Fitzpatrick tell it in a heart­felt, engag­ing style.

Things get more inter­est­ing when James’ obscure regional sin­gle “Hanky Panky” becomes a break­out hit in Pittsburgh and the record com­pa­nies get inter­ested.  This is where Levy comes into play, scar­ing off the major com­pa­nies so he can take the record.  James signs with him and enters into an agree­ment that becomes a double-edged sword.  With Roulette, he got 24–7 atten­tion from a gifted staff that pushed his records relent­lessly and gave him the room to develop his mate­r­ial the way he saw fit.  At the same time, Levy never paid him a cent of the amaz­ing roy­al­ties he racked up and treated him like an inden­tured ser­vant, to boot.  James copes with the unfair­ness (and occa­sional dan­ger) of this sit­u­a­tion via booze and pills as things build towards a show­down with his cor­rupt, Machiavellian mentor.

Simply put, Me, The Mob & The Music deliv­ers every­thing a music fan wants from a book like this.  James lays out the story behind the cre­ation of each of his pop clas­sics and dishes out eye-opening tales of life as a pop star, includ­ing a sad encounter with child­hood idol Buddy Rich and his unlikely friend­ship with Vice-President Hubert Humphrey (which includes him giv­ing Humphrey an upper one night so he can pull an all-nighter to write a speech!).  He also goes into the sneaky prac­tices that Levy uti­lized to make tons of off-the-ledger money and spins a few scary sto­ries about James’ brushes with Levy’s mob­ster pals (a story about a Christmas party at a night­club packed with Levy’s mob­ster bud­dies is like a scene from Goodfellas).

It’s also worth not­ing that Me, The Mob & The Music is a hon­est, well-written book.  James is crit­i­cal about his pro­fes­sional and per­sonal mis­takes, never mak­ing excuses for his own role in his music-biz trou­bles or his roman­tic prob­lems.  He and Fitzpatrick cap­ture the tale in a spare style that lays on detail where nec­es­sary but oth­er­wise main­tains a snappy pace.  As a result, it packs a lot of mate­r­ial into its 225 pages.

Word has it that James is devel­op­ing this book for big-screen and Broadway musi­cal treat­ments.  He’s def­i­nitely got the mate­r­ial to make either treat­ment work and Me, The Mob & The Music is a tale worth explor­ing for any­one inter­est in pop music’s Wild West days.