WEBVTT 00:00:00.020 --> 00:00:03.520 Well, hey, welcome, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. 00:00:03.700 --> 00:00:06.860 This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit, 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:08.440 detective and later sergeant. 00:00:08.820 --> 00:00:14.320 And I have one of our friends, one of our repeat customers, if you will, 00:00:14.820 --> 00:00:20.680 our many friends from New York City, Jeffrey Sussman, who is a prolific mob author. 00:00:20.880 --> 00:00:24.960 Just go to Amazon. I've got a link before to his YouTube, I mean, 00:00:25.040 --> 00:00:28.940 his Amazon author's page, and you'll see all the books he's got. 00:00:28.940 --> 00:00:32.720 We'll talk about him a little bit here, but mainly we're going to talk about 00:00:32.720 --> 00:00:35.400 his most recent book, Backbeat Gangsters. 00:00:35.980 --> 00:00:41.040 Backbeat Gangsters. So, Jeffrey, welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you again, Gary. 00:00:41.300 --> 00:00:46.780 Well, Jeffrey, you have covered the waterfront in organized crime in the United 00:00:46.780 --> 00:00:51.360 States, Las Vegas and California and New York. 00:00:51.360 --> 00:00:56.580 You've really covered it with boxing. You've done the mob and boxing and you've 00:00:56.580 --> 00:00:59.400 done the mob in Hollywood, the mob in Vegas. 00:00:59.820 --> 00:01:04.180 Now you're doing mob in the music business, which I think is a fascinating topic. 00:01:04.380 --> 00:01:08.980 I did a bunch of research and made a bunch of notes on this about two or three 00:01:08.980 --> 00:01:11.300 years ago, and I just never got back to it. 00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:14.700 So, you know, we're going to do that show now that I've been wanting to do a 00:01:14.700 --> 00:01:18.460 long time. I learned a lot about Morks Levy and the jukebox business back then. 00:01:18.700 --> 00:01:22.340 And you know even more because you've written it out in this book. 00:01:22.340 --> 00:01:24.740 How did you get started with this? 00:01:24.940 --> 00:01:28.520 Was there some other thing, or you just thought it was interesting? 00:01:28.700 --> 00:01:33.660 Well, a couple of things. I did think it was interesting, but when I was in 00:01:33.660 --> 00:01:38.600 high school, at my high school graduation, there was a party afterwards. 00:01:39.180 --> 00:01:43.220 And Frankie Lyman, Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers, sang at my graduation. 00:01:43.220 --> 00:01:44.340 Right back over our shoulder here. 00:01:44.600 --> 00:01:49.160 Right, yeah, the little guy right over your shoulder. He had been a big star 00:01:49.160 --> 00:01:51.480 before this, and he sang for $50. 00:01:53.140 --> 00:01:59.520 And that was in 1960. He had two big hit records. 00:02:00.180 --> 00:02:05.980 The most popular one was called Why Do Fools Fall in Love? He worked for Morris 00:02:05.980 --> 00:02:07.940 Levy, who owned Roulette Record. 00:02:08.280 --> 00:02:16.200 Morris Levy stole 50% of the writing credit for this song from the two backup 00:02:16.200 --> 00:02:18.280 singers who actually composed the song. 00:02:18.280 --> 00:02:22.840 That one song produced over a million dollars in potential royalties for him, 00:02:22.920 --> 00:02:24.340 and he never got a penny of it. 00:02:25.020 --> 00:02:29.360 Morris Levy kept a good portion of it. Frankie Lyman got hooked on heroin. 00:02:30.190 --> 00:02:33.710 And whatever money he had was going to feed his habit. 00:02:34.090 --> 00:02:38.870 And by the time he sang at my high school graduation, he was absolutely broke 00:02:38.870 --> 00:02:41.790 and desperate for whatever money he could get. 00:02:41.970 --> 00:02:45.830 It was a very sad case. He became a big star at the age of 15. 00:02:46.090 --> 00:02:50.410 He really didn't know what he was doing. The policy at Roulette Records was, 00:02:50.550 --> 00:02:55.530 we'll attract these young kids who want to become a rock and roll star. 00:02:55.810 --> 00:02:59.110 We'll take advantage of them. You know, we'll give them, you know, 00:02:59.210 --> 00:03:00.990 a few thousand dollars to sign a contract. 00:03:01.330 --> 00:03:05.210 Maybe we'll give them a brand new car and then we never have to give them anything again. 00:03:05.490 --> 00:03:09.050 They'll just sing and we'll promote the records and collect all the money. 00:03:09.310 --> 00:03:12.710 So that was the first thing that got me interested. 00:03:13.190 --> 00:03:19.630 And then because I had written about the chin in my book, Big Apple Gangsters, 00:03:19.950 --> 00:03:25.770 I was fascinated when I learned he was partaking of the music industry. 00:03:25.770 --> 00:03:32.170 And what happened is that when rock and roll burst on the scene in the early 00:03:32.170 --> 00:03:37.370 to mid-1950s, none of the major record companies wanted to get involved in it. 00:03:37.590 --> 00:03:40.050 Capital didn't want to. Decca didn't want to. 00:03:40.290 --> 00:03:43.050 Columbia didn't want to. RCA didn't want to. 00:03:43.170 --> 00:03:46.950 They thought that rock and roll was just a passing trend. The mob, 00:03:47.050 --> 00:03:51.810 which controlled all the jukeboxes, they said, we'll take out all the old 78 00:03:51.810 --> 00:03:56.970 RPM records, we'll refit the jukeboxes to play 45 RPM records, 00:03:57.210 --> 00:04:01.270 we'll start record companies that just produce these 45 RPM records, 00:04:01.390 --> 00:04:05.610 and we'll sign all these kids who want to be rock and roll singers, 00:04:05.610 --> 00:04:07.630 we'll control the whole market. And they did. 00:04:08.370 --> 00:04:10.450 They absolutely controlled it, 00:04:10.510 --> 00:04:15.810 and they took advantage of all these young people who recorded for them. 00:04:15.970 --> 00:04:18.970 I can't imagine a mob taking advantage of anybody. Can you? 00:04:20.130 --> 00:04:25.110 Now, speaking of Vincent The Chin, over my other shoulder, that's him. 00:04:25.250 --> 00:04:27.430 But I didn't really recognize him at first. 00:04:27.630 --> 00:04:33.150 So you got a story about that. Tell us that story about why he looks so fat. 00:04:33.870 --> 00:04:40.150 Well, when he was working for Vito Genovese, who was head of the Genovese crime 00:04:40.150 --> 00:04:43.250 family, Genovese was at war with Frank Costello. 00:04:43.910 --> 00:04:48.910 Genovese wanted to get rid of Costello, so he gave the job to Vincent the Chin 00:04:48.910 --> 00:04:50.830 Gigante to assassinate him. 00:04:51.250 --> 00:04:57.090 Now, Gigante didn't want to get recognized as the assassin, so he gained a lot of weight. 00:04:57.230 --> 00:04:59.430 His weight went up to about 300 pounds. 00:05:00.030 --> 00:05:04.090 He shot Costello in the lobby of Costello's apartment building. 00:05:04.430 --> 00:05:10.290 As Costello was waiting for the elevator, Gigante ran into the lobby as well 00:05:10.290 --> 00:05:13.930 as a 300 pound man can run, sort of lumbering in there. 00:05:14.010 --> 00:05:16.630 And he looked at Costello and he said, this is for you, Frank, 00:05:17.130 --> 00:05:18.590 whereupon Frank turned his head. 00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:25.540 Just at the time that Gigante fired his gun and the bullet just creased Costello's 00:05:25.540 --> 00:05:29.280 head, Gigante ran out of the building after that, not succeeding in killing 00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:30.720 him, and jumped into a car. 00:05:31.140 --> 00:05:35.340 So when the police came, they asked the doorman, and he said, 00:05:35.460 --> 00:05:38.940 oh, yeah, this big fat guy with a gun. 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:44.740 And that's a picture of Gigante as a pretty overweight guy right there. 00:05:45.060 --> 00:05:49.620 He slimmed down later. You know, in his early career, he was a light heavyweight 00:05:49.620 --> 00:05:53.040 boxer and not a bad one, actually. 00:05:53.180 --> 00:05:57.100 And he had quite a number of wins, but he was in much better shape then than 00:05:57.100 --> 00:05:58.400 he looks in that picture there. 00:05:58.820 --> 00:06:03.440 A little side like that story. I just talked to another mob researcher the other day, 00:06:03.440 --> 00:06:08.180 and he said that actually Costello and Gigante became friendly over the next 00:06:08.180 --> 00:06:15.700 the rest of Costello's life because he got out of the crime business after that. like Genovese wanted. 00:06:15.980 --> 00:06:20.240 And he and Costello actually could be kind of friendly to each other. So go figure. 00:06:20.420 --> 00:06:24.100 It's not, it's not business. I mean, it's not personal. It's all business, right? 00:06:24.980 --> 00:06:28.640 Exactly. Nothing is personal in that business. Really? You know, 00:06:28.820 --> 00:06:32.360 Costello really wanted to get even with Gigante. 00:06:32.820 --> 00:06:35.400 You remember the Appalachian conference? Yeah. 00:06:36.720 --> 00:06:41.600 With Genovese, he wanted to get even with Genovese. Yeah. He wanted to get even with Genovese. 00:06:41.900 --> 00:06:45.800 Costello and And Luciano, who was then living in Italy, having been deported, 00:06:46.300 --> 00:06:51.620 and Meyer Lansky, they were the ones who notified the state troopers in upstate 00:06:51.620 --> 00:06:55.380 New York that this Appalachian conference was taking place. 00:06:55.520 --> 00:06:58.960 And so the police raided it. And it was a terrible embarrassment, 00:06:59.420 --> 00:07:03.060 Vito Genovese, because he was then going to sort of declare himself the boss 00:07:03.060 --> 00:07:05.540 of bosses. And now he was the fool of fools. 00:07:06.140 --> 00:07:10.580 All these guys are running through the woods in their silk Italian suits that 00:07:10.580 --> 00:07:12.740 are being torn up by the bushes and so forth. 00:07:12.880 --> 00:07:17.340 And it was all Genovese's fault to really put the nail in Genovese's coffin. 00:07:17.500 --> 00:07:19.440 What they did is they hired this guy. 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:22.980 His last name was Cantaloupe, who was a drug dealer. 00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:29.980 And they got him to sell drugs to Vito Genovese and to testify against him. 00:07:30.160 --> 00:07:33.260 The deal was that Meyer Lansky would pay him. 00:07:33.480 --> 00:07:38.440 And even though the guy, Cantaloupe, might go to prison, he would make sure 00:07:38.440 --> 00:07:42.420 that Cantaloupe had an annuity for the rest of his life for doing this favor. 00:07:42.420 --> 00:07:44.640 They arranged for Genovese to go to prison, 00:07:45.210 --> 00:07:47.890 And Genovese spent the rest of his life there. He got, you know, 00:07:47.990 --> 00:07:50.010 15 years and he died in prison. 00:07:50.150 --> 00:07:56.870 And it was all a setup by Costello, Lansky, and Luciano, who were angry at him, 00:07:57.050 --> 00:08:01.370 you know, for trying to take over what had been the Luciano family originally. 00:08:02.130 --> 00:08:05.770 Interesting. Interesting. Well, we digress. Let's go back to Morris Levy, 00:08:05.850 --> 00:08:08.810 who was partnered up with Gigante in the end. 00:08:08.950 --> 00:08:12.730 But tell us about Morris Levy. Tell us a little more. Who is this guy? 00:08:12.890 --> 00:08:17.610 What kind of guy was he? I've heard some stories that he could be a pretty brutal 00:08:17.610 --> 00:08:21.770 guy to these young teenage musicians. 00:08:22.410 --> 00:08:27.150 He was a very brutal guy. He grew up very poor in the Bronx, 00:08:27.290 --> 00:08:31.470 New York, and he met, actually, Gigante when he was a young man. 00:08:31.630 --> 00:08:37.270 Quit school at an early—well, he was kicked out of school because he was very good at math. 00:08:37.310 --> 00:08:41.750 He was only one of two students in the class that did well on a math test, 00:08:42.290 --> 00:08:47.330 And yet the teacher made everyone stay after school because they didn't do well on the math test. 00:08:47.450 --> 00:08:51.050 And he was annoyed that he had to stay after school because he did very well. 00:08:51.310 --> 00:08:54.890 So he went up to the teacher and he started yelling at her. And then he pulled 00:08:54.890 --> 00:08:59.870 out an ink bottle and poured the ink over her head and got thrown out of school for that. 00:09:00.350 --> 00:09:05.010 And basically he never went back to school again. And he worked down in Florida for a while. 00:09:05.530 --> 00:09:10.390 First he had, it was like a hat check concession in a nightclub. 00:09:10.390 --> 00:09:15.010 And then he got to do the photo concession and he learned a little bit about 00:09:15.010 --> 00:09:19.890 the nightclub business. He came back to New York and he worked in a jazz club 00:09:19.890 --> 00:09:22.750 on 52nd Street off of Broadway. 00:09:23.530 --> 00:09:29.710 And learned more about it and he understood uh how to operate and he got a number 00:09:29.710 --> 00:09:34.630 of mob guys to invest for him in opening a nightclub and the nightclub they 00:09:34.630 --> 00:09:36.370 they opened was a fairly famous one. 00:09:36.890 --> 00:09:41.670 And called called birdland still exists today but under you know entirely a 00:09:41.670 --> 00:09:46.070 different management there was a famous musician named george shearing and he 00:09:46.070 --> 00:09:52.090 got george shearing to write a a song for Because he also arranged for a regular 00:09:52.090 --> 00:09:55.730 radio program to be on that was broadcast from Birdland. 00:09:55.870 --> 00:10:00.670 And he got George Shearing to write a song that became a big hit called Lullaby of Birdland. 00:10:01.110 --> 00:10:05.070 Morris Levy stole the writing credit for that song. 00:10:05.170 --> 00:10:09.090 He let Shearing keep the composition, the musical composition part, 00:10:09.230 --> 00:10:14.470 but Levy stole the words for it and continued to get royalties. 00:10:14.470 --> 00:10:16.530 He did very, very well with that. 00:10:16.590 --> 00:10:19.910 And he was putting on jazz concerts and making a lot of money. 00:10:20.310 --> 00:10:26.190 And then when rock and roll started and Gigante opened Roulette Records, 00:10:26.450 --> 00:10:29.010 and they bought up a couple of small other record companies. 00:10:29.130 --> 00:10:30.750 I think one was called Dot. 00:10:31.030 --> 00:10:34.530 And I think another one was called I forgot. Actually, I forgot what the other 00:10:34.530 --> 00:10:39.850 one was called. But altogether, they had seven small rock and roll labels, 00:10:39.850 --> 00:10:44.650 and they hired young kids like Frankie Lyman and the teenagers. 00:10:44.950 --> 00:10:50.070 They would then bribe the local disc jockeys to play certain songs. 00:10:50.070 --> 00:10:54.890 One of those disc jockeys was a guy named Alan Freed, who became the biggest 00:10:54.890 --> 00:10:58.070 rock and roll disc jockey in the 1950s. 00:10:58.890 --> 00:11:01.630 And as a result of him, there was something called the Paola Scandal, 00:11:01.830 --> 00:11:08.150 where all these disc jockeys were arrested because they were taking bribes in order to play music. 00:11:08.150 --> 00:11:12.270 But the bribes, most of them would seem to be generated by Morris Levy and his 00:11:12.270 --> 00:11:17.290 companies, made their records into hits because Alan Freed would play whatever 00:11:17.290 --> 00:11:22.170 record Roulette wanted them to play almost every hour that he was on the air. 00:11:22.230 --> 00:11:27.270 And if he was on the air for five hours, he was playing a particular song every 00:11:27.270 --> 00:11:32.830 hour for five hours, and that would make it a hit. And then Alan Freed started 00:11:32.830 --> 00:11:34.210 having rock and roll concerts. 00:11:34.450 --> 00:11:38.970 He had the first rock and roll concerts in New York, first at the Brooklyn Paramount 00:11:38.970 --> 00:11:40.970 Theater and then at the New York Paramount Theater. 00:11:41.250 --> 00:11:47.190 And Morris Levy was an investor in those and was also taking probably 50% of 00:11:47.190 --> 00:11:52.150 the money that came in from those concerts. And then Morris Levy opened a chain 00:11:52.150 --> 00:11:55.510 of record stores, 70 of them, called Strawberries. 00:11:55.730 --> 00:12:02.750 To also get out of having to pay royalties, he made counterfeit copies of his 00:12:02.750 --> 00:12:08.210 own records and flooded his stores with the counterfeit copies of his own records. 00:12:08.210 --> 00:12:13.910 He collected the money from the sale of those records, but because they were 00:12:13.910 --> 00:12:18.230 all counterfeit, there was no record of the money having to go to a singer. 00:12:18.390 --> 00:12:20.890 So he kept all that money. It was royalty-free money for him. 00:12:21.420 --> 00:12:24.520 You know, he was just an incredible crook. 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:33.440 And when when people tried to to get their money from him, he had all these mobsters, 00:12:33.660 --> 00:12:40.120 either from the Genovese family or the New Jersey part of the Genovese family 00:12:40.120 --> 00:12:41.420 hanging out in his office. 00:12:41.420 --> 00:12:44.540 And they would threaten to beat up anyone who who 00:12:44.540 --> 00:12:47.340 demanded royalties and then occasionally they did 00:12:47.340 --> 00:12:51.500 and you'd see a guy you know leaving morris 00:12:51.500 --> 00:12:54.140 levy's office with a pair of black eyes and a 00:12:54.140 --> 00:12:57.000 bloody nose and getting kicked in the asses he was walking 00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:01.300 out the door i mean it was just terrible so there was this one singer jimmy 00:13:01.300 --> 00:13:07.400 rogers who uh had a song that became a number one hit called uh kisses sweeter 00:13:07.400 --> 00:13:14.600 than wine sweeter than wine oh i remember that one yeah he never got his royalties from Morris Levy. 00:13:14.760 --> 00:13:17.700 So he quit Rulet Records and he moved out west. 00:13:17.940 --> 00:13:21.880 And he figured, you know, I'll be, you know, on the other side of the country, they won't bother me. 00:13:22.200 --> 00:13:26.120 And I'll pursue my career out here. So one night he's coming home from a party 00:13:26.120 --> 00:13:28.700 and he gets stopped by a cop car. 00:13:29.040 --> 00:13:32.860 And he figures, you know, maybe, you know, my taillight is not working where 00:13:32.860 --> 00:13:34.240 they think I've been drinking or something. 00:13:34.920 --> 00:13:37.920 So the cop comes up to him and tells him to get out of the car. 00:13:38.100 --> 00:13:42.120 Then the cop takes a metal pipe and starts beating Jimmy Rogers over the head 00:13:42.120 --> 00:13:47.060 with a metal pipe and fractured his skull and sends him into a coma. 00:13:47.280 --> 00:13:51.540 The cop leaves and puts Jimmy's body back in the car, makes him look like a 00:13:51.540 --> 00:13:53.940 drunk who passed out in the car. 00:13:54.780 --> 00:13:59.220 Jimmy Rogers was in a coma for several weeks. When he got out of the coma, 00:13:59.380 --> 00:14:01.940 he suffered brain damage and he wasn't able to sing. 00:14:02.060 --> 00:14:06.360 For two years, he had to relearn how to use his voice and how to sing again. 00:14:06.640 --> 00:14:13.720 It wasn't until, I think it was Sony Music, perhaps, that eventually bought the rights to his song. 00:14:14.100 --> 00:14:18.840 And so many, many years later, his family started getting the royalties that 00:14:18.840 --> 00:14:21.900 had been withheld from him, from Morris Levy. 00:14:22.120 --> 00:14:28.440 But that was just an example of the kind of brutality that Morris Levy would 00:14:28.440 --> 00:14:30.800 indulge in. And you could never leave his label. 00:14:30.940 --> 00:14:33.080 It was like a commitment to the mafia. 00:14:33.660 --> 00:14:38.300 Once you're in, you're not out. And once you're signed up with Roulette Records, forget it. 00:14:38.820 --> 00:14:41.220 That's your label for the rest of your life. And if you don't like it, 00:14:41.320 --> 00:14:42.720 too bad. You can't get out. 00:14:43.220 --> 00:14:48.200 And then he did another thing. There was a guy named Sal the Swindler. 00:14:48.340 --> 00:14:50.520 Sal the Swindler was how he was known. 00:14:50.800 --> 00:14:54.460 And he got a job at MCA Records. They don't know how he got a job there, 00:14:54.500 --> 00:14:59.760 but he became a big deal at MCA Records, even though he never had any business 00:14:59.760 --> 00:15:00.660 and the record business. 00:15:00.940 --> 00:15:04.080 And he had been a convicted felon in the drug business. And there was something 00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:08.480 in the music business where you would sell a cutoff album, you know, 00:15:08.520 --> 00:15:13.260 they cut off the corner, which means that the album can no longer be sold in a record store. 00:15:13.700 --> 00:15:20.640 It's like a remaindered book. He arranged maybe $11 million worth of cutoff albums. 00:15:21.260 --> 00:15:26.940 To be sold to a distributor in Pennsylvania named John Lamont. 00:15:27.260 --> 00:15:30.560 And they promised him that, yeah, there would be a lot of records from unknowns 00:15:30.560 --> 00:15:32.560 and singers that didn't go anyplace. 00:15:32.640 --> 00:15:37.600 But we would also throw in a lot of albums of famous singers and famous groups 00:15:37.600 --> 00:15:40.340 that you'll be able to sell for top dollar. 00:15:40.760 --> 00:15:45.180 And the others, you know, you can go in these stores, we'll sell them the albums for $1.98. 00:15:45.460 --> 00:15:50.600 So 11 truckloads of albums arrived at John Lamont's warehouse. 00:15:51.260 --> 00:15:54.820 And when he went through the albums, the good stuff that they had promised him 00:15:54.820 --> 00:15:58.380 wasn't there. They had taken it off and sold it to somebody else. 00:15:59.680 --> 00:16:03.080 But they demanded that he pay the $11 million. 00:16:04.120 --> 00:16:09.320 And he refused to pay it. Morris Levy and a couple of his gangster cohorts went 00:16:09.320 --> 00:16:11.200 and they saw him. And they beat the crap out of him. 00:16:12.100 --> 00:16:16.680 And they sent him into the hospital for several days. And eventually, 00:16:16.860 --> 00:16:21.060 this guy wound up testifying against them and then had to go into the witness 00:16:21.060 --> 00:16:24.240 protection program to avoid any kind of retaliation. 00:16:24.720 --> 00:16:31.760 Eventually, Levy was convicted of extortion and bookmaking and shylocking. 00:16:31.920 --> 00:16:35.920 I think he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but he had cancer at the time. 00:16:36.020 --> 00:16:41.780 And he died shortly before he was able to begin to serve his prison sentence. 00:16:42.340 --> 00:16:48.220 Wow. That guy was crazy. Wasn't there some story about him and Tommy James and the Shandells? 00:16:48.520 --> 00:16:53.260 Yeah, Tommy James wrote a book about him because he was one of the people who 00:16:53.260 --> 00:16:55.180 made a lot of money, Morris Levy. 00:16:55.560 --> 00:16:59.540 And he was sort of like Morris Levy's favorite singer. 00:17:00.100 --> 00:17:02.140 And he would constantly talk him into... 00:17:02.960 --> 00:17:05.940 Continuing with the record company he he 00:17:05.940 --> 00:17:09.140 eventually got his money but they really 00:17:09.140 --> 00:17:11.760 put him through the ringer i mean and he he did not have an 00:17:11.760 --> 00:17:15.000 easy time with them you know that like all the other singers he was threatened 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:18.900 and and and money was kept from him like there's a famous story about him hanging 00:17:18.900 --> 00:17:23.560 some musician by his heels out he's out of uh high-rise window i don't know 00:17:23.560 --> 00:17:27.580 did you run into a story like that i've heard that yeah yeah yeah that that 00:17:27.580 --> 00:17:29.600 was one of the hip-hop record producers. 00:17:30.380 --> 00:17:32.660 Out in Los Angeles. Oh, okay. 00:17:33.100 --> 00:17:40.740 He wanted the rights to a hit song that this hip-hop singer had made into a 00:17:40.740 --> 00:17:44.800 hit, and the hip-hop singer wouldn't give it to him, and they were on the 14th 00:17:44.800 --> 00:17:46.400 floor of a hotel in Los Angeles. 00:17:46.600 --> 00:17:51.620 So he hung the guy out the window, and he said, you better give me the rights 00:17:51.620 --> 00:17:54.500 or we're going to drop you. So he gave him the rights. 00:17:54.980 --> 00:17:59.360 Okay. That probably doesn't have anything to do with the Genevieve's crime family, 00:17:59.360 --> 00:18:02.540 But it's a good story. And yeah, I'm glad to get that straightened out in my mind. 00:18:02.860 --> 00:18:09.120 So, you know, these jukeboxes, the mob has historically, they like these coin-operated machines. 00:18:09.420 --> 00:18:15.900 That's long history in every major city of the mafia and having a coin-operated machine, 00:18:16.540 --> 00:18:20.580 routes and businesses, you know, and, you know, cigarette machines, 00:18:20.760 --> 00:18:25.120 pinball machines, which are hand in hand. Next step is slot machines. 00:18:25.340 --> 00:18:28.720 Tell us a little bit more about their incursion into the jukebox. 00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:32.880 Because it seemed like in Chicago, the war ever in Worcestershire was somehow 00:18:32.880 --> 00:18:37.400 the outfit got some piece of that action. You know about that? 00:18:37.600 --> 00:18:42.860 Began with Meyer Lansky in the East. He had a company, I think it was called EMB. 00:18:43.400 --> 00:18:48.820 That had the exclusive rights to sell Wurlitzer jukeboxes throughout the entire 00:18:48.820 --> 00:18:50.600 eastern part of the United States. 00:18:51.420 --> 00:18:56.320 And eventually, the outfit got an exclusive deal also, and that was more for 00:18:56.320 --> 00:18:59.640 the Midwest and the Southwest of Wurlitzer. 00:19:00.120 --> 00:19:04.240 So, I mean, basically, the mob was controlling all the jukeboxes. 00:19:04.420 --> 00:19:10.100 They would go into restaurants, bars, even college fraternity houses, 00:19:10.560 --> 00:19:16.320 bowling alleys, social clubs, fraternal organizations, and say, 00:19:16.420 --> 00:19:18.260 you've got to take out jukebox. 00:19:18.780 --> 00:19:23.700 Initially, they would promise them 50% of the receipts that the jukebox would 00:19:23.700 --> 00:19:26.320 make, and eventually it went down to 25%. 00:19:26.320 --> 00:19:31.800 They started a union of servicemen who would service the jukeboxes, 00:19:31.900 --> 00:19:37.460 and the people who had the jukeboxes, they had to put a special label on their 00:19:37.460 --> 00:19:41.440 jukeboxes showing that they were serviced by this mob union. 00:19:41.640 --> 00:19:45.360 Otherwise, they couldn't keep the jukeboxes. And then they also had to pay a 00:19:45.360 --> 00:19:51.820 monthly service fee to the union to guarantee that their jukeboxes would be serviced properly. 00:19:52.080 --> 00:19:53.860 So they controlled the whole thing. 00:19:54.220 --> 00:19:58.200 And then when rock and roll came on the scene in the 1950s and they had all 00:19:58.200 --> 00:20:02.360 these jukeboxes lined up already, they said, hey, we We have the outlet for 00:20:02.360 --> 00:20:08.920 all these, uh, singers, you know, we'll take originally the jukeboxes had 78 RPM records in them. 00:20:08.980 --> 00:20:15.700 We'll take out the 78 RPMs, we fit them, retrofit them, put, uh, 45 RPM records. 00:20:15.920 --> 00:20:19.560 We own the 45 RPM records. So, you know, every time they're played, 00:20:19.700 --> 00:20:20.520 we're going to get a royalty. 00:20:20.960 --> 00:20:24.780 Yeah. They were, they were set. They were set already in, in, 00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:28.980 uh, in place for this all happened. It's just, uh, it's just amazing. 00:20:29.560 --> 00:20:34.500 What they did. That payola thing, I remember that when I was a kid. 00:20:34.660 --> 00:20:40.380 There was a big investigation. It was in Life Magazine or Reader's Digest or 00:20:40.380 --> 00:20:44.200 somebody printed a whole series of articles about the payola. 00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:47.600 Guys, if you're at a certain age, you'll remember this payola scandal. 00:20:47.900 --> 00:20:51.080 Yeah. And Alan Freed partnered with Morris Levy. 00:20:51.300 --> 00:20:55.760 He had the biggest rock and roll radio show in the country, in New York. 00:20:55.880 --> 00:21:01.300 It was originally in Cleveland, and then it moved to New York to a larger audience. 00:21:01.620 --> 00:21:06.580 And at that time in the 1950s, it was on a station called WINS Radio, 00:21:06.620 --> 00:21:10.200 which by the 1960s became an all-news radio station. 00:21:10.360 --> 00:21:13.440 He was on every evening. When I was a kid, I used to listen to it. 00:21:13.800 --> 00:21:17.820 Alan Freed had so much money coming in that he put it in his closet. 00:21:18.340 --> 00:21:21.900 And if you opened the closet door, the money just came falling out. 00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:25.900 It was in stacks and stacks and piles and piles. 00:21:26.140 --> 00:21:30.220 And some of it was from his rock and roll concerts. And a lot of it was from 00:21:30.220 --> 00:21:34.220 the bribery from the payola to play to play the records that he was told to prep. 00:21:34.220 --> 00:21:37.880 But what was interesting, even though these charges were brought against him 00:21:37.880 --> 00:21:42.380 for payola, technically payola was not illegal at that time. 00:21:44.420 --> 00:21:48.000 They made it retrospectively illegal because it wasn't until a couple of years 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:52.160 or a year later that a law was passed making payola illegal. 00:21:52.260 --> 00:21:55.560 But they were so upset by it that they passed the law. 00:21:56.170 --> 00:21:59.210 What they did is they kind of humiliated these disc jockeys. 00:21:59.390 --> 00:22:04.450 They publicized how corrupt they were and how corrupt the radio stations were. 00:22:04.610 --> 00:22:08.430 So the radio stations were forced to drop these disc jockeys and find these 00:22:08.430 --> 00:22:09.930 more clean cut disc jockeys. 00:22:10.150 --> 00:22:15.030 That's how Dick Clark from American Bandstand got started because he was like 00:22:15.030 --> 00:22:17.090 an all-American clean cut guy. 00:22:17.190 --> 00:22:21.950 And he was not the kind of guy who's going to take bribes in order to play records. 00:22:22.530 --> 00:22:26.930 Alan Freed turned into an alcoholic and went from one obscure radio station 00:22:26.930 --> 00:22:31.410 to another and then eventually died of alcoholism. 00:22:31.590 --> 00:22:36.230 He was broke. And I remember he tried to borrow some money from Morris Levy. 00:22:36.450 --> 00:22:39.910 I think Morris Levy sent him a check for $1,000 and then refused to ever have 00:22:39.910 --> 00:22:41.110 anything to do with him after that. 00:22:41.570 --> 00:22:45.650 But Morris Levy had made a ton of money from Alan Freed and for Alan Freed. 00:22:45.650 --> 00:22:49.610 And it was kind of sad in a way, because when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 00:22:49.610 --> 00:22:54.670 started, they had a special tribute there to Alan Freed. 00:22:54.770 --> 00:22:58.210 And eventually they even took that down and removed him from the Rock and Roll 00:22:58.210 --> 00:23:01.030 Hall of Fame. I guess they thought he was an embarrassment to them as well. 00:23:01.230 --> 00:23:04.950 Maybe that's where Dr. Johnny Fever came from. Maybe he was on the run from 00:23:04.950 --> 00:23:10.370 a Paola scandal from the WKRP in Cincinnati, you know? Could have been. Could have been. 00:23:12.170 --> 00:23:16.170 Well, it's really interesting. Some of those stories you've told, 00:23:16.210 --> 00:23:19.630 there's a lot more in this book. Trying to think, what about drugs? 00:23:19.810 --> 00:23:24.170 What about drugs and the music business all go hand in hand? 00:23:24.170 --> 00:23:28.550 I had one story about Jimi Hendrix, and it's probably not part of your book, 00:23:28.650 --> 00:23:34.010 but where he was being fed heroin by some kind of lower level mob guys that 00:23:34.010 --> 00:23:36.610 kind of like made him into their pal for a while. 00:23:37.810 --> 00:23:41.770 You've got a chapter on drugs and music. Yeah, I do have a chapter on drugs 00:23:41.770 --> 00:23:45.750 and music, and Jimi Hendrix is one of the people that I mentioned there. 00:23:46.050 --> 00:23:52.450 When I graduated from college, I got a job doing public relations for rock groups with a company. 00:23:52.690 --> 00:23:56.630 One of their clients at that time was Jimi Hendrix. He was up in the office there. 00:23:57.130 --> 00:24:01.750 And he fell asleep on the couch in my boss's office. 00:24:01.790 --> 00:24:05.910 He was just stoned out of his mind on drugs. I mean, you just couldn't wake him up. 00:24:07.350 --> 00:24:13.730 And he was a big star at that time. There were also a lot of producers who fed 00:24:13.730 --> 00:24:18.230 their singers drugs so they wouldn't have to give them royalties. 00:24:18.490 --> 00:24:23.690 You know, the drugs became a substitute for royalties. And the other thing is 00:24:23.690 --> 00:24:28.330 that a lot of these producers, then they took out life insurance policies, 00:24:28.970 --> 00:24:32.450 million dollar life insurance policies on their singers. 00:24:32.630 --> 00:24:36.830 And when their singers died of drug overdoses, the producers collected the money. 00:24:37.190 --> 00:24:41.770 A lot of the record companies found that once a singer died from a drug overdose, 00:24:41.970 --> 00:24:45.530 he actually became more popular in death than he was in life. 00:24:45.530 --> 00:24:49.030 And they sold more records afterwards than they did before. 00:24:49.230 --> 00:24:53.050 So it worked out to their advantage that the guy died of a drug overdose. 00:24:54.950 --> 00:24:59.030 Just look at Elvis Presley. That guy, that dude made a lot more money for his 00:24:59.030 --> 00:25:00.810 estate after he died of drugs. 00:25:00.970 --> 00:25:04.190 You know, his manager, the colonel, a gambling habit. 00:25:05.470 --> 00:25:10.530 And so he made a deal, I forgot which casino it was in Las Vegas, 00:25:10.730 --> 00:25:14.570 that they would give him carte blanche to gamble as much as he wanted. 00:25:14.570 --> 00:25:22.230 And they would cover all of his debts in exchange for which Elvis Presley would 00:25:22.230 --> 00:25:28.390 sing there and get paid $150,000 a week, which to us is a lot of money. 00:25:28.510 --> 00:25:33.070 But at the time, someone like Frank Sinatra was getting $400,000 a week. 00:25:33.170 --> 00:25:39.370 So they saved $350,000 by letting the colonel gamble and run up debts. 00:25:39.590 --> 00:25:42.930 Jesus, you got some stories in this book, my friend. 00:25:42.930 --> 00:25:45.690 And you got some really great stories, uh, kind of like, uh. 00:25:46.610 --> 00:25:52.010 Look across the, uh, a huge part of, of our lives and, and all this was going 00:25:52.010 --> 00:25:54.910 on in the background. I mean, you're talking, you're dropping all these things. 00:25:55.070 --> 00:25:59.730 I was, I was like 13 years old when you first start getting into rock and roll, 00:25:59.870 --> 00:26:04.490 you know, Frankie Lyman and teenagers and, and then Tommy James and the Shondells 00:26:04.490 --> 00:26:08.150 and, and those were, you know, such huge Jimmy Rogers and, uh, 00:26:08.250 --> 00:26:09.470 kisses sweeter than wine. 00:26:09.670 --> 00:26:11.650 I, you know, I can still, you're, you're, I'm like, 00:26:12.180 --> 00:26:15.880 Flashing back to those days of the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade when you 00:26:15.880 --> 00:26:21.560 first discover girls and go to dances and rock and roll and music. 00:26:21.740 --> 00:26:26.820 And you've got a radio in your car and it's just riding around, 00:26:26.940 --> 00:26:28.800 you know, and cranking that baby up. 00:26:28.960 --> 00:26:34.660 I mean, it's a real trip through the back streets of all of our lives. 00:26:34.780 --> 00:26:37.580 I'm really looking forward to actually sitting down and reading it. 00:26:37.660 --> 00:26:41.300 I haven't done it yet, but it's really American graffiti. 00:26:41.940 --> 00:26:48.060 American Graffiti, yeah, the backstory, the sewer that runs underneath American 00:26:48.060 --> 00:26:51.880 Graffiti, if you will, that we all are interested in. We're all drawn to this. 00:26:52.360 --> 00:26:56.480 Guys, I know you are out there, and so am I, and so is Jeff. 00:26:56.660 --> 00:27:01.040 So we're all drawn to this kind of seamy underbelly of life and to know what 00:27:01.040 --> 00:27:03.260 was really going on behind the scenes. 00:27:03.580 --> 00:27:07.200 And it was amazing how the effect that it had on American culture. 00:27:07.200 --> 00:27:13.260 I mean, you know, anyone who was coming of age at that time and was being influenced 00:27:13.260 --> 00:27:18.140 by rock and roll and that whole music was like a soundtrack for one's life. Yeah. 00:27:18.440 --> 00:27:22.120 We had no idea the dirt that was behind it. 00:27:22.420 --> 00:27:25.760 Yeah. What was really going on behind it and who was manipulating it. 00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:31.360 Jeffrey Sussman, the name of the book is Backbeat Gangsters. 00:27:31.800 --> 00:27:35.800 Is there a tagline to that, Jeff? Yeah, it's Backbeat Gangsters, 00:27:35.940 --> 00:27:38.340 The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Rock Music. 00:27:38.580 --> 00:27:42.720 Great. I'm really looking forward to this. Is it out right now? 00:27:43.080 --> 00:27:47.280 It comes out April 15th. But anyone who wants to, they can go to, 00:27:47.420 --> 00:27:50.260 for example, to Amazon and they can pre-order it. 00:27:50.680 --> 00:27:52.860 They can buy it now if they'd like to. 00:27:53.480 --> 00:27:57.380 All right. And actually, this probably won't get out until about April 15th 00:27:57.380 --> 00:28:00.980 anyhow. But it's always good to know and remind people that you can't do that. 00:28:01.360 --> 00:28:04.800 So I look forward to that. I don't know. Anything else, any other stories you 00:28:04.800 --> 00:28:08.720 remember out of that that you really want to impart to entice people to buy 00:28:08.720 --> 00:28:10.440 the whole book and read the rest of them? 00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:16.520 There was a theater in Westchester, New York called the Westchester Premier Theater. Oh, yeah. 00:28:17.140 --> 00:28:21.320 That was connected, really heavily connected. 00:28:22.140 --> 00:28:26.260 Connected to the Gambino crime family. They weren't doing well. 00:28:26.260 --> 00:28:33.880 And one of the capos in the Gambino crime family called Frank Sinatra, who was singing in... 00:28:34.860 --> 00:28:38.800 Chicago at the time, had a two-week engagement there. And he told Sinatra, 00:28:38.940 --> 00:28:42.480 we need you here in Westchester to sing, we need to beef up the audience. 00:28:42.940 --> 00:28:45.940 And Sinatra said, I can't have this two-week engagement here. 00:28:46.160 --> 00:28:50.720 And this guy from the Gambino crime family said, you better get your ass here and be here tomorrow. 00:28:51.080 --> 00:28:52.940 And Sinatra was there the next day. 00:28:54.820 --> 00:29:00.940 And the Gambino crime family, they were skimming money like you wouldn't believe from this theater. 00:29:01.480 --> 00:29:04.900 They had 400 seats in the theater. 00:29:05.140 --> 00:29:09.280 Well, they listed the theaters only having 250 seats. 00:29:09.460 --> 00:29:13.320 So they only declared income from 250 seats. 00:29:13.460 --> 00:29:19.320 And then they skimmed the money from another 250 seats that weren't listed as 00:29:19.320 --> 00:29:20.420 being part of the theater. 00:29:21.040 --> 00:29:26.280 Eventually, the theater went into bankruptcy, which is, I guess, what they wanted to do. 00:29:26.920 --> 00:29:33.580 And they also tried to go public. They actually sold investments in the theater 00:29:33.580 --> 00:29:37.520 to all the famous recording artists who sang at the theater. 00:29:37.780 --> 00:29:41.980 By the time they finished selling investments to these people, 00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:46.980 they had sold more than 100% of the theater. And when the theater went bankrupt. 00:29:47.880 --> 00:29:52.580 The investors were left with absolutely nothing. All right. Jeffrey Sussman, 00:29:52.820 --> 00:29:55.480 thanks a lot for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. 00:29:56.060 --> 00:29:59.880 It's my pleasure, and I enjoy being on the show. It's always wonderful to do 00:29:59.880 --> 00:30:02.200 your show. And please let me know when you're going to be in New York. 00:30:02.480 --> 00:30:05.520 I will. I will. Guys, that was... 00:30:06.360 --> 00:30:09.660 I always like having Jeff on. He's got a lot of my books out there. 00:30:09.780 --> 00:30:14.160 You'll see the links to find them down below, and he's a good friend. 00:30:14.560 --> 00:30:18.680 Oh, what do you think about the background? I did this. He sent me these pictures, 00:30:18.720 --> 00:30:23.180 so I thought, well, I'll figure out how to do a background. I'm going to start 00:30:23.180 --> 00:30:25.940 trying to do that. I think it's kind of interesting. I think it's kind of cool looking. 00:30:26.340 --> 00:30:29.820 Don't forget, I like to ride motorcycles, so look out for motorcycles when you're 00:30:29.820 --> 00:30:33.320 out there on the streets, especially when you're driving your big 10,000-ton 00:30:33.320 --> 00:30:36.740 SUVs and pick F-150s and all that. 00:30:36.840 --> 00:30:41.280 I feel like sometimes I'm on the highway, and I just feel like this little mouse 00:30:41.280 --> 00:30:44.840 running around between all these elephants, between that and the regular big trucks. 00:30:46.420 --> 00:30:49.420 You feel pretty vulnerable out there on those things, but I guess I wouldn't 00:30:49.420 --> 00:30:51.420 have any other way. I like that itch. 00:30:52.160 --> 00:30:56.420 If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol or you have a problem with PTSD, 00:30:57.080 --> 00:31:02.480 be sure, and if you're a veteran, be sure and go to the VA website and get that hotline number. 00:31:02.580 --> 00:31:06.340 And if it's drugs or alcohol and you're not a veteran, veteran VA will help 00:31:06.340 --> 00:31:07.800 you with the drugs and alcohol too. 00:31:08.240 --> 00:31:11.760 But if you're not a veteran, you might have some fun with our friend, 00:31:11.880 --> 00:31:16.620 Anthony Ruggiano, who is a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida now. 00:31:16.800 --> 00:31:19.740 And he has a hotline, which if you're on YouTube, you can see that. 00:31:19.940 --> 00:31:21.520 Otherwise, just go to his website. 00:31:21.820 --> 00:31:25.620 If you have a problem with gambling, you know, there's 1-800 bets off in Missouri. 00:31:25.820 --> 00:31:29.380 I don't know every state that's got gambling, I'm sure. And I think that's every 00:31:29.380 --> 00:31:32.000 state, which everybody used to go to jail for. 00:31:32.140 --> 00:31:35.160 Now it's totally legal. You know, go figure. Poor guy has spent, 00:31:35.870 --> 00:31:39.030 years and years in jail. You know, that was like, that was the, 00:31:39.030 --> 00:31:42.130 the, the way to get to a mob go on. 00:31:42.150 --> 00:31:45.770 I mean, gambling, if you think about it, you got to use telephones. 00:31:45.890 --> 00:31:49.490 You got to have relationships with people, with people not in the family. 00:31:49.690 --> 00:31:53.330 Many times the gamblers out there, they're all weak sisters. 00:31:53.330 --> 00:31:57.110 If you get a case on them or even get a DUI on them, you get anything on them, 00:31:57.210 --> 00:31:58.590 they're going to tell you something. 00:31:58.790 --> 00:32:01.370 They're going to tell you who their bookie is. And then you go to the bookie, 00:32:01.470 --> 00:32:05.530 the bookie's got to get on the phone or he's got to drive somewhere and contact, 00:32:05.730 --> 00:32:08.390 uh, whoever he turns his bets over to. 00:32:08.590 --> 00:32:12.370 And, and so it's, you know, it's a way to take down a whole crime family because 00:32:12.370 --> 00:32:16.890 that is the weak link, but that was also pretty darn good money for him for a long time. 00:32:17.050 --> 00:32:19.770 I guess the state gets all that money now. I don't know. 00:32:20.670 --> 00:32:24.590 Don't forget. I got to sell something here. Don't forget. I've got books out there. 00:32:24.770 --> 00:32:29.970 I've got links to my author page. Like I have links to Jeff's author page down below. 00:32:30.330 --> 00:32:36.390 Uh, I've got the book of, uh, podcast stories, the stories I've done in my podcast, 00:32:36.690 --> 00:32:39.090 one for Chicago, one for New York. 00:32:39.290 --> 00:32:45.550 I've got my book about the Kansas City view of the skimming from Las Vegas. 00:32:45.710 --> 00:32:52.070 Casino is the Las Vegas view and the kind of the romantic story of Lefty and 00:32:52.070 --> 00:32:59.130 his wife and the triangle between them and Tony Spolatro and those kinds of things. 00:32:59.310 --> 00:33:03.870 Well, this story is the real story and how it got started what started in the Tropicana. 00:33:04.170 --> 00:33:08.870 Uh, and, and that's how the Bureau got on that whole thing and took that whole thing down. 00:33:09.230 --> 00:33:12.650 So I, you know, I got a, I got a pretty good following in my, 00:33:12.650 --> 00:33:16.610 go to the YouTube channel, like, and subscribe and make comments. 00:33:16.750 --> 00:33:21.290 I like to answer those comments. If you notice, I, I answer a lot of comments. 00:33:21.390 --> 00:33:26.490 I read every one and click a like on it, but, uh, I also will answer a lot of comments. 00:33:26.590 --> 00:33:30.050 So if you've got any questions, I'm always happy to have questions and maybe, 00:33:30.050 --> 00:33:34.270 you know, suggestions for stories, those kinds of things. So thanks a lot, guys.