Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Inkwell is proud to welcome Joel Selvin and John Johnson to talk about
their wacky history of the Mob, the music business, and the place
where an obscure black dance craze hit the pop mainstream for the first
time. So get ready to do the pep-pep-pep-peppermint twist, ladies and
gentlemen!

San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin started covering
rock shows for the paper shortly after the end of the Civil War. His
writing has appeared in a surprising number of other publications that
you would think should have known better. People all over the world are
still pissed off about pieces he wrote while he still had his job.
Since leaving his staff post at The Chronicle in 2009, Selvin has sat
still for as-told-to autobiographies by Sammy Hagar and tattoo artist
Ed Hardy. His epic biography of songwriter Bert Berns, "Here Comes the
Night" -- 16 years in the making -- will be published Spring 2014 by
Counterpoint Press.
  

    
Hm. Looks like John's going to be a bit late to this, so let's start
off now. 

Your book deals with the interface of organized crime and the music
business. How long has the Mob been a factor in American popular music?
I don't just mean people like Armstrong and Ellington playing clubs
owned by mobsters, but actual involvement in the record industry and so
on. I know that the jukebox business -- and pinball and the like --
has always been a good place to launder money because of all the cash
involved, but what abut the records played on those jukeboxes?
  

    
Hi Ed. Good to be here. Longtime listener; first-time caller.
I would think it would be impossible to trace back to the beginning
the complicated relationship between the Mob and the music business.
Certainly in NYC during the '40s and '50s, as the whole record business
was getting going, people involved in vending machines (ie, jukeboxes)
and one-stop record distrubutors that serviced jukebox accounts were
largely Mob-controlled (the Mafia has always gravitated toward all-cash
businesses). "Peppermit Twist" details one Genovese family capo,
Johnny Biello, and his chance encounters with rock and roll history.
The Bert Berns biography coming out next year goes into considerable
detail about the activites of known Mobsters in the record business
such as Tommy Vastola, Sonny Franceze and Tommy Eboli.
  

    
The whole Peppermint Lounge thing seems to have been a mobster's
nightmare: a quiet little money laundry you've got going suddenly has
the eyes of the world on it, which is the last thing they wanted. Or
was it? Was it ever intended to bring in some coin?
  

    
It was a joint that Johnny had "on the arm," as they said, kept the
cops away, ran numbers and other small time chisels out of the back
room. They cared so little about it, they let the club book rock and
roll bands and become, at the time, the only rock and roll club in
Manhattan. That's where things went wrong.
  

    
Hi guys.  First, I hate to gush, but I will.  I'm really picky about
books, and this was one of the best history books I've read in the last
several years.  I might gush more later, but I'll leave it at that for
now!

Joel, why do you think the first half of the 1960s is now so little
known and so poorly understood?
  

    
Hi Mark - That's an interesting question. I'm not sure I thought the
first half of the 60s was under-represented in histories until you
asked. I had a gas digging back into old magazines and newspapers from
the early days of the Kennedy administration. The best-seller lists
were amazing. The new movies were great. Broadway was at its peak. I'm
also old enough to remember the excitement around the Twist, even going
to a party where all us teens taight the dance to ourselves that
night. But I'm not sure anybody will ever understand the 60s. Thanks
for the good words on the book.
  

    
Hi Joel!
  

    
Hi David. I see your footprints all over this place. You are a prince
in this domain (see also: Jon Carroll).
  

    
I loved your description of the people on line waiting to get into the
Peppermint Lounge and the traffic jam created by the sheer number of
people going there. You quote Newsweek describing the Peppermint Lounge
as "a melting pot for socialites, sailors, and salesmen" - is there a
column/blog/TV spot now that could create the kind of interest that a
mention of the twist in "Cholly Knickerbocker's" column did?
  

    
Thanks, Ned. Now that you mention it, I suppose the mob scene at the
Peppermint Lounge was a kind of pre-Internet "flash mob." 
  

    
I think one reason the early '60s aren't as well-known as they should
be is that people associate it with terrible pop music, and that wasn't
the case at all -- particularly if you were paying attention to black
music back then, which wasn't too hard, because Top 40 radio mixed it
up pretty good back then. 
  

    
Right, the old standard story was something like "Elvis went into the
Army and everyone else died in that plane crash, and then things sucked
until the Beatles showed up."
  

    
So right, Ed. Peppermint Twist was written and produced by Henry
Glover, who as artist & repertoire for King Records cut all the Hank
Ballard records, along with other great r&b records. The track cooks
and the full-length version is one of the rockingest records of its
day.
  

    
What I think is hard for anyone to imagine if they weren't around at
the time is how huge the twist was (I was a little kid, but I
remember).

It wasn't just a "dance craze," it was huge.

I loved the story about Ahmet Ertegun briefly starting a twist label!
  

    
It had better legs (arr) than most of the short lived memes we see
today.
  

    
Ahmet LOVED the Peppermint Lounge. Everybody went a little soft in the
head for the Twist, so he is forgiven, yet Twistime Records? Not high
up on his resume.
  

    
There are party buses in Manhattan now, but I think they're mostly an
excuse for people to get hammered. Ertegun packing friends on a bus,
ferrying them around Manhattan to dinner and ending up at the
Peppermint Lounge took it to a different level. 
  

    
Dylan gave us all permission to sing.  The twist gave us all permission to 
dance.
  

    
And I love the way it cut across all social lines.  Greta Garbo came
to the Peppermint Lounge!
  

    

Just the other night I was watching my bootleg of Louis Prima's
cash in on the Twist crazy movie, TWIST ALL NIGHT. Man, horrible
film, but great footage.
  

    
There was also a film that was actually shot at the Peppermint Lounge,
Twist All Night. Joel, did you see that? Did you catch Ronnie Spector
(Veronica Bennett as she was at the time) in any of the scenes? 
  

    
A friend of mine took a date to the Peppermint Lounge and remembers
seeing Ronnie Spector - but of course she wasn't then famous.

One thing I enjoyed about the book was that it brought back the memory
of how crazy and optimistic things were during those years.  I was
really young (my kindergarten teacher taught us all the Twist!), but
for a few years there, it seemed like everything was just going to keep
getting better forever and ever.  All the adults were excited,
including (and maybe even especially) the straight people.
  

    
My cousin got to play a gig at the Peppermint Lounge when we were 17.
I was a little jealous, but he went up a few notches in my estimation.

Joel, I haven't read the book but will get a copy.  My question is
that since the club was mobbed up to start with and the music was a
surprise development, did Morris Levy show up in your story?
  

    
And how in the world did you find Dick Cami (or how did he find you
guys)?
  

    
Was thinking I would like to read this and found that the USPS
redirected my mail while I was in jail. Joining shortly.