NEW YORK 1969

ABDRIGED FROM MY BOOK ‘SOUR MOUTH, SWEET BOTTOM’, FROM ALL GOOD BOOKSTORES, AND AMAZON TOO.

Towards the end of the 60s I was getting tired of being a manager so I switched to record production. It seemed a better way of being in the music business. You still had to deal with grumbling artists but only when they were in the studio with you, not day and night till death do us part. So I teamed up with record producer Ray Singer and we went off to America, looking for record companies to commission our talents.

In New York, we popped in to see Ahmet Ertegun. His brother Nesuhi was there too, and they gave us tea – unusual in New York where people only ever suggest coffee, but they were Turkish. And different.

While we were there the door opened. It was Solomon Burke. ‘Hey, Ahmet, man, I was wondering if you could loan me ten bucks.’

‘You want ten bucks,’ Ahmet told him. ‘Go downstairs to the studio, find a track you like and put your voice on it.’

An hour later we were just saying goodbye when Solomon came back. Ahmet buzzed downstairs and asked the engineer if Solomon had done a good vocal. When the engineer said he had, Ahmet fished $10 out of his pocket and gave it to him.

Ray and I didn’t comment though we both felt it was a bit patronising. But compared with the majors it was generosity itself. There, they’d have probably got no royalties at all and certainly wouldn’t be able to barge into the managing director’s office unannounced. But that’s how Atlantic was – a sort of club, which is why the artists liked it. It was somewhere they could go when they were in town and get a cup of coffee and a joint. Paradise in comparison to Roulette Records, which is where Ray and I went next. 

We’d already picked up production deals with ABC and RCA, but we were looking for more. Quite a few friends had told us, ‘Don’t go to Roulette.’ But we thought, ‘Why not? If they’ll give us a deal and pay us, why not take it?’

The girl in reception seemed nice enough. She pressed a buzzer, which brought a young man in a charcoal suit who led us to a place to wait, a bit like a dentist’s waiting room, stiff and uncomfortable, with out-of-date magazines on the coffee table − not music business ones but the Jewish Chronicle, House & Garden and a Macy’s catalogue.

We were ten minutes early and after a minute or two Ray wanted a pee. But when he walked across to the door he found it had no handle on the inside. We were trapped until someone came back for us.

After five minutes they did. The besuited young man took us to meet the CEO, Morris Levy, the owner and boss of Roulette, as famous as any of the heads of the majors, the only Jew in the music business to ensconce himself with the mafia. He was famous too for not paying royalties. When one of his artists had enquired whether some might be forthcoming, he’d exploded in fury, shouting, “Royalties? Try Buckingham Palace”.

But we didn’t care. If the advances were good we could turn a profit just from making the records.

His office was long, with his desk at one end on a dais and a white line drawn across the room at the halfway point beyond which, the young man in the suit had warned us, visitors must wait for permission to cross.

We appeared to have arrived before Morris had finished with his previous guest, or perhaps we’d been brought in deliberately to observe what was happening.

Morris was standing dead centre of the room, on the white line. His hands were grasping the collar of a thin slightly built black guy and Morris was lifting him off the floor, shaking him furiously.

‘You fucking little black cocksucker. You promised me a hit record and you screwed up.’

The little black guy was shuddering from top to toe of his shaken body. Then Ray recognised him. ‘That’s Mickey Stevenson, for Christ’s sake,’ he whispered.

Mickey Stevenson?

He was one of the top producers in the world; he’d produced ‘Dancing in the Street’ for Martha and the Vandellas and ‘What Becomes of the Brokenhearted’ for Jimmy Ruffin. Now he was being shaken to death.

When Morris realised we’d come into the room he let go of Mickey who fell to the floor like a half-empty sack of potatoes. And while Morris motioned us towards chairs by his desk, Mickey crawled to the door and fled.

‘So you want to make some records for me, do you?’ Morris boomed.

Ray and I eyed each other awkwardly. We’d gone there thinking we might get ourselves a good deal, produce a couple of tracks and make a quick thousand bucks.

Now we weren’t so sure.

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