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Author: Tommy James
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439142645
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Now in paperback, after five hardcover printings, Tommy James’s wild and entertaining true story of his career—part rock & roll fairytale, part valentine to a bygone era, and part mob epic—that “reads like a music-industry version of Goodfellas” (The Denver Post). Everyone knows the hits: “Hanky Panky,” “Mony Mony,” “I Think We’re Alone Now,” “Crimson and Clover,” “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” All of these songs, which epitomize great pop music of the late 1960s, are now widely used in television and film and have been covered by a diverse group of artists from Billy Idol to Tiffany to R.E.M. Just as compelling as the music itself is the life Tommy James lived while making it. James tells the incredible story, revealing his complex and sometimes terrifying relationship with Roulette Records and Morris Levy, the legendary Godfather of the music business. Me, the Mob, and the Music is a fascinating portrait of this swaggering, wildly creative era of rock ’n’ roll, when the hits kept coming and payola and the strong-arm tactics of the Mob were the norm, and what it was like, for better or worse, to be in the middle of it.
Author: Tommy James
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439142645
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Get Book Here
Book Description
Now in paperback, after five hardcover printings, Tommy James’s wild and entertaining true story of his career—part rock & roll fairytale, part valentine to a bygone era, and part mob epic—that “reads like a music-industry version of Goodfellas” (The Denver Post). Everyone knows the hits: “Hanky Panky,” “Mony Mony,” “I Think We’re Alone Now,” “Crimson and Clover,” “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” All of these songs, which epitomize great pop music of the late 1960s, are now widely used in television and film and have been covered by a diverse group of artists from Billy Idol to Tiffany to R.E.M. Just as compelling as the music itself is the life Tommy James lived while making it. James tells the incredible story, revealing his complex and sometimes terrifying relationship with Roulette Records and Morris Levy, the legendary Godfather of the music business. Me, the Mob, and the Music is a fascinating portrait of this swaggering, wildly creative era of rock ’n’ roll, when the hits kept coming and payola and the strong-arm tactics of the Mob were the norm, and what it was like, for better or worse, to be in the middle of it.
Author: John Johnson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312581785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Traces the story of The Peppermint Lounge, the influential 1960s Manhattan nightspot and mobster hangout, detailing how the club's introduction of rock-and-roll music attracted rebel youths and celebrity patrons.
Author: Karen Gravano
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250015200
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 217
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Book Description
From Karen Gravano, a star of the hit VH1 reality show Mob Wives, comes a revealing memoir of a mafia childhood, where love and family come hand-in-hand with murder and betrayal. Karen Gravano is the daughter of Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, once one of the mafia's most feared hit men. With nineteen confessed murders, the former Gambino Crime Family underboss—and John Gotti's right-hand man—is the highest ranking gangster ever to turn State's evidence and testify against members of his high-profile crime family. But to Karen, Sammy Gravano was a sometimes elusive but always loving father figure. He was ever-present at the head of the dinner table. He made a living running a construction firm and several nightclubs. He stayed out late, and sometimes he didn't come home at all. He hosted "secret" meetings at their house, and had countless whispered conversations with "business associates." By the age of twelve, Karen knew he was a gangster. And as she grew up, while her peers worried about clothes and schoolwork, she was coming face-to-face with crime and murder. Gravano was nineteen years old when her father turned his back on the mob and cooperated with the Feds. The fabric of her family was ripped apart, and they were instantly rejected by the communities they grew up in. This is the story of a daughter's struggle to reconcile the image of her loving father with that of a murdering Mafioso, and how, in healing the rift between the two, she was able to forge a new life.
Author: Richard Carlin
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496805712
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 485
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Book Description
Association of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence Best Historical Research in Record Labels – Best History (2017) This biography tells the story of one of the most notorious figures in the history of popular music, Morris Levy (1927-1990). At age nineteen, he cofounded the nightclub Birdland in Hell's Kitchen, which became the home for a new musical style, bebop. Levy operated one of the first integrated clubs on Broadway and helped build the careers of Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell and most notably aided the reemergence of Count Basie. In 1957, he founded a record label, Roulette Records. Roulette featured many of the significant jazz artists who played Birdland but also scored top pop hits with acts like Buddy Knox, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Joey Dee and the Starliters, and, in the mid-1960s, Tommy James. Stories abound of Levy threatening artists, songwriters, and producers, sometimes just for the sport, other times so he could continue to build his empire. Along the way, Levy attracted "investors" with ties to the Mafia, including Dominic Ciaffone (a.k.a. "Swats" Mulligan), Tommy Eboli, and the most notorious of them all, Vincent Gigante. Gigante allegedly owned large pieces of Levy's recording and retail businesses. Starting in the late 1950s, the FBI and IRS investigated Levy but could not make anything stick until the early 1980s, when Levy foolishly got involved in a deal to sell remaindered records to a small-time reseller, John LaMonte. With partners in the mob, Levy tried to force LaMonte to pay for four million remaindered records. When the FBI secretly wiretapped LaMonte in an unrelated investigation and agents learned about the deal, investigators successfully prosecuted Levy in the extortion scheme. Convicted in 1988, Levy did not live to serve prison time. Stricken with cancer, he died just as his last appeals were exhausted. However, even if he had lived, Levy's brand of storied high life was effectively bust. Corporate ownership of record labels doomed most independents in the business, ending the days when a savvy if ruthless hustler could blaze a path to the top.
Author: Al Contrera
Publisher: Balboa Press
ISBN: 1982200286
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
An original founding member of the Mystics, author Al Contrera tells the true story of how five Brooklyn teenagers went from singing on street corners to fame in the fifties with their first hit song, “Hushabye.” Contrera, provides vivid and detailed accounts of the trials and adventures of forming a rock-‘n’-roll group in a neighborhood controlled by the mob. He narrates the story of the group’s formation, their recording and touring career, as well as their successes and heartbreaks, including the story of when the Mystics’ lead singer was arrested for being an innocent witness to a holdup and accidental shooting by a neighborhood gang and was mistakenly jailed for two years. Hushabye tells about walking the fine line between the music and the mob and how peer pressure and the temptations of fame changed their lives. Contrera offers keen insight and background into the sweet sound of the street corner doo-wop harmonies of the 1950s.
Author: William Knoedelseder
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Like that great bestseller Indecent Exposure, this shocking expose is an epic that began with a small incident--an income tax investigation--which exploded to show the pervasive corruption of an entire industry. The investigation grew and expanded to involve the FBI, the Justice Department, extortion, counterfeiting, bribery, even murder. 8 pages of photos.
Author: Gordon Korman
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 1423141253
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 135
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Book Description
Vince Luca is just like any other high school guy. His best friend, Alex, is trying to score vicariously through him; his brother is a giant pain; and his father keeps bugging him to get motivated. There is just one thing that really sets him apart for other kids-his father happens to be the head of a powerful crime organization. Needless to say, while Vince's family's connections can be handy for certain things (like when teachers are afraid to give him a bad grade), they can put a serious crimp in his dating life. How is he supposed to explain to a girl what his father does for a living? But when Vince meets a girl who finally seems to be worth the trouble, her family turns out to be the biggest problem of all. Because her father is an FBI agent-the one who wants to put his father away for good.
Author: Fredric Dannen
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307802086
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
Copiously researched and documented, Hit Men is the highly controversial portrait of the pop music industry in all its wild, ruthless glory: the insatiable greed and ambition; the enormous egos; the fierce struggles for profits and power; the vendettas, rivalries, shakedowns, and payoffs. Chronicling the evolution of America's largest music labels from the Tin Pan Alley days to the present day, Fredric Dannen examines in depth the often venal, sometimes illegal dealings among the assorted hustlers and kingpins who rule over this multi-billion-dollar business. Updated with a new last chapter by the author.
Author: Colin Meloy
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062342479
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 301
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Book Description
From the creators of the New York Times bestselling Wildwood Chronicles comes an original, humorous, and fast-paced middle grade novel about a band of child pickpockets—imagine The Invention of Hugo Cabret meets Oliver Twist. It is an ordinary Tuesday morning in April when bored, lonely Charlie Fisher witnesses something incredible. Right before his eyes, in a busy square in Marseille, a group of pickpockets pulls off an amazing robbery. As the young bandits appear to melt into the crowd, Charlie realizes with a start that he himself was one of their marks. Yet Charlie is less alarmed than intrigued. This is the most thrilling thing that’s happened to him since he came to France with his father, an American diplomat. So instead of reporting the thieves, Charlie defends one of their cannons, Amir, to the police, under one condition: he teach Charlie the tricks of the trade. What starts off as a lesson on pinches, kicks, and chumps soon turns into an invitation for Charlie to join the secret world of the whiz mob, an international band of child thieves who trained at the mysterious School of Seven Bells. The whiz mob are independent and incredibly skilled and make their own way in the world—they are everything Charlie yearns to be. But what at first seemed like a (relatively) harmless new pastime draws him into a dangerous adventure with global stakes greater than he could have ever imagined.
Author: Marc Bradley
Publisher: Marc Bradley
ISBN:
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 110
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Book Description
From the time I was old enough to form my first memory, my childhood was already headed down the inevitable path of dysfunction. With divorce in the books and a new man in the house, these events actually turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was absolutely everything else that followed. From the depths of addiction to the height of recovery. From a life-threatening diagnosis to the ultimate loss of a lifetime, my story will take you through a journey of one mother’s love for her two young boys and the relentless courage to protect us, at any cost, from the very danger that she unwittingly had a hand in creating. It was a danger that would force us to disappear without a trace, from the only home we ever knew to a small town that no one could even pronounce. And as our lives were so quickly being turned upside down, all reasons for this upheaval could only point to one thing: the new man in the house. As the secrets began to pile up, there seemed to be far more questions than answers. The pressure to keep these secrets from us would inevitably take its toll, and by the time the truth was finally revealed, the emotional damage had already been done. No matter what degree of dysfunction that was dealt us, as two innocent boys from Chicago, thanks to our mother’s unwavering love, we always had one thing to hold on to—hope. Hope of a second chance. Hope of a fresh start. The hope of a better ending to our story than the tragic beginning we were so unfairly given.
