Eine Passage aus James Gavins Liner Notes im Booklet von „The Complete Roulette Sarah Vaughan Studio Sessions“ (Mosaic MD8-214, 2002):
Joe Williams, the urbane blues singer who worked with Count Basie, had signed his first solo album deal with Roulette, which lured other Birdland stars — Basie, Dinah Washington, Billy Eckstine, trumpeter Maynard Ferguson — away from bigger companies. „They did that with money,“ said Phoebe Jacobs. „They made offers that nobody could refuse.“
The label reeked of Mafia. Its president, Morris Levy, looked like a thug out of a Jimmy Cagney movie, with his gravel voice and bull neck. Many knew him as the co-owner of Birdland, but his bond with the Genovese crime family was no secret either. Fredric Dannen, a young business and crime reporter, interviewed Levy for his 1990 book Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business. Levy bragged of having masterminded „the best payola system in the United States,“ referring to that era’s rampant bribing of DJs to plug certain singles on the air.
Phoebe Jacobs recalled him as „a very ambitious control freak,“ and a shrewd one. Weeks after its inception in late 1956, Roulette had its first number-one hit, Buddy Knox’s PARTY DOLL. Levy had also started a music publishing empire. In a common corruption of the day, pioneered by an earlier publishing mogul, Irving Mills, and the major swing band-leaders, Levy added his name to the composer credits of many of the songs he handled, thereby upping his share of the profits. Soon, this once-poor boy from the Bronx had made millions.
Phil Leshin, a bebop bassist who became the publicist for Birdland, knew him slightly. „My impression of him was he was a hoodlum,“ Leshin said. They had met years before, when Levy ran the coatcheck-hatcheck concession at a popular spot on 52nd Street. „Little by little he got involved in every damned club in New York, especially jazz clubs. They’d be running short of money, and he would loan them money, and that’s how he got a piece of the action. And he often wound up owning the places because of his ties to organized crime, which also controlled the tablecloths, the linens, the napkins, the garbage removal, all the stuff that you need to run a successful restaurant or club.“
For all his criminal activity, Levy escaped arrest until 1988, when he and a Genovese boss were nailed on a co-extortion charge. Levy got a 10-year sentence, but stayed free on bail pending an appeal. In 1990, he died of cancer — but rumors circulated for years that he was still alive, hiding out to avoid jail.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #165: Johnny Dyani (1945–1986) - 9.9., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba