Tommy James' music success linked to Pittsburgh and gangsters
-
Tommy James and the Shondells -- Ron Rosman, left, George Magura, Tommy James, Vinnie Pietropoli, Mike Vale and Joe Kessler -- receive their first gold record for "Hanky Panky" from Morris Levy in 1966. -
Tommy James, center, signs his Roulette contract with his manager, Lenny Stogel, left, and Morris Levy, head of the record label. -
Share with others:
People sometimes mistake Tommy James for a Pittsburgh artist, and it's not an unreasonable assumption.
"Everything good that ever happened to me happened in Pittsburgh," the 63-year-old pop legend said in a phone interview last week.
That line also comes right out of his new provocatively titled autobiography "Me, the Mob, and the Music," a riveting portrayal of how his hit-filled career on Roulette Records became linked with one of New York City's most notorious organized crime families.
The autobiography, just out on Simon & Schuster, is a more blood-and-guts version of a book that Mr. James began writing a decade ago, originally intended to focus on how he recorded such hits as "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Crimson and Clover."
"It was going to be about the hits and the studio experiences," he said. "We got about halfway done and realized so much of this is incomplete because we gotta tell the whole Roulette story. We put the book on a shelf for a few years, and then when Vinnie 'The Chin' Gigante passed way in December of '05 in prison, I thought we could probably go ahead and name names and talk about what happened. I had been carrying this around with me for a long time. I was really nervous about talking about it."
YOUTUBE VIDEOMr. James' story begins in Dayton, Ohio, where he was born Thomas Gregory in 1947. Inspired by Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and the gang, he was playing rock 'n' roll in clubs by age 13. At 16, though, life was pressing down on him, as his girlfriend was pregnant, marriage was looming and he needed to make a living.
In 1964, he and his band the Shondells used a Niles, Ohio, radio station studio to cut a cover of a song he'd heard in a club. All they knew was the chorus, "My baby does the hanky-panky," so he made up the rest of the words. It was a smash hit in the South Bend, Ind., area. But nowhere else. Within months, the dejected singer had no Shondells, a job in the Spin-It Record Shop and a colicky baby. For extra money, he picked up gigs with a local band called the Spinners (not to be confused with the Detroit hitmakers).
First Published March 22, 2010 12:00 am
