Siren Song_My Life in Music

by Gareth Murphy

  Syd and Paul even placed a bulletin in Billboard announcing that “Seymour Steinbigle, known as ‘The Beagle’ in the trade,” would be working in King’s A&R and publicity. What the fuck was this?

  “St-ein-big-le?” He’d squirm like he’d bitten into a rotten apple. “You want people to associate you with this … name?”

  “But, Syd, I’m the last male to carry it.”

  “What, you mean there are no others anywhere?”

  “My father’s two brothers changed their name to Steinberg.”

  “Your uncles were right. Look, kid, do yourself a favor and put Steinbigle out of its misery.”

  “But what about my father?”

  “If you’re serious about the music business, you need a name. We’re all just names. Hello, I’m Syd Nathan, who are you?”

  Syd was no bullshitter. The only place for misplaced sentimentalism was between the grooves of a tear-jerking hit record. When it came to the pursuit of happiness, you had to be ruthless. His own father had dispensed with the ancestral Galician name Kriviansky and adopted Nathan. It was a courageous choice considering the old man’s first name was Nat. Nat Nathan—beat that for punchy. Syd, whose full name was Sydney, made name chopping a company ritual. Any time a hillbilly singer or a Jewish lawyer walked in the door with a mouthful of a name, Syd would take out his butcher’s knife and chop away, whether they liked it or not.

  I just ignored Syd’s bitching until one afternoon he snapped. In the main office, there was a loudspeaker to page staffers who didn’t have their own telephone. The operator announced “Seymour Steinbigle” eight or nine times, but when Syd could hear the word no more, his unmistakable voice wheezed over the same loudspeaker: “It’s Stein or Beagle or back to New York!” You’ve heard of baptism by fire; this was my baptism by threat of being fired. Everyone in the office looked at me horrified as I sulked to the telephone. Humiliated and holding back my tears, I did what I was told. A beagle was a small English hound, which of course meant that anybody picking up a secretary’s note with SEEMORE BEAGLE scrawled beside a number was going to assume I was a charity urging volunteers to walk impounded dogs. So, I picked the simplicity of Seymour Stein, and sure enough, I never had to spell my name out again.

  After equipping me with my new persona, Syd sent me out on the road for ten days with James Brown. This wasn’t the first time I’d met a star, but it was probably the first time I got to see what it takes to build a world-class legend. James Brown was an obsessive worker watching his rivals like a hawk. He had his favorite singers and songwriters, but when it came to stage performing, his number-one envy at the time was Jackie Wilson, a former boxer and by far the most athletic dancer on the R&B scene. James had his own little moves and electrifying stage presence, but he badly wanted to do the splits like Jackie Wilson. My God, I watched poor James Brown try so hard he almost tore himself a birth canal.

  My main job at King was listening to tapes with the A&R staff and sending out records to Syd’s promotions men, a nationwide network of radio pluggers who, along with the names I picked up at Billboard, laid the foundations of my rapidly growing address book. It was an education, but after two years in Cincinnati, my itchy feet became unbearable. I missed the big city and wasn’t earning enough to live and eat comfortably. Syd’s attitude to trainees was like that old African proverb: “I won’t give you any of my fish, but I will teach you how to fish.” I knew he wasn’t going to crane-lift me into a managerial post; he had plenty of talent and experience to choose from. I didn’t cost much, so he’d let me watch and help out until I was ready to make my own road. Syd had become my godfather, and I knew he’d always be a phone number away for advice, contacts, and interesting news. My success or failure was up to nobody but myself.

  I also had long-overdue family business to clear up. Syd had set me up in a small apartment in Cincinnati, but my stuff was still back in Brooklyn. I sensed my folks were waiting for me to move out of Dahill Road so that they could prepare for their own retirement. Dad was sixty, and I knew he and my mother were already scouting around for a nicer apartment and thumbing through vacation brochures. They’d reached that vantage point toward the end of a long and arduous journey when they badly wanted to enjoy what time and health they had left. So, I left Cincinnati and moved into a place of my own on Ocean Parkway, which is where I got an unexpected call from Syd, this time about a job in New York.

  It was a promotions job with Herb Abramson, the mad dentist who had cofounded Atlantic Records with Ahmet Ertegun. It was common knowledge, just when Atlantic was taking off, that Herb had been drafted to West Germany to take care of Uncle Sam’s teeth. There, he’d developed a taste for cocaine, which he was able to order on prescription, supposedly as a gum-numbing agent for dental work. Coked out his mind and filling GI cavities, Herb started screwing an American servicewoman even though his wife back in New York was Miriam, Atlantic’s ballbuster manager who ran the whole back line—the accounts, the contracts, the office. Fortunately for Atlantic, Ahmet sought the advice of Paul Ackerman for a replacement, and he recommended his star reporter, Jerry Wexler, so things worked out fine.

  Talk about the show business rule “Never stick your dick in the cash register,” or in this instance, its sub-clause, “If you do, don’t try anything stupid.” When Herb returned to New York with his new sweetheart, Miriam filed for divorce and wouldn’t let him into his own office. The other problem was that Ahmet Ertegun had turned into a nocturnal creature who’d go out to clubs almost every night in search of talent. Ahmet had left the whole nine-to-five running of the company to Miriam for so long, he couldn’t fire her or even take sides without endangering the whole company. On Paul Ackerman’s wise advice, Ahmet eventually set up a sister label for Herb. Called Atco, it was a neat compromise in theory; unfortunately, Herb was too fucked up by then. He lost faith and cashed out of Atlantic—a terrible mistake.

  Syd felt sorry for Herb’s predicament, however self-inflicted, and agreed to help him start a new production company plugged into King’s distribution. As a favor back, Herb was going to offer me a job. I of course jumped down the telephone because it was in New York. “I’m not going to stop you,” warned Syd. “You know I think of you as a son, but Seymour, you gotta know this man is crazy. He’s a genius, but he’s crazy. You’ll be out of work in six months.” Actually, I was out of work in three; Herb ran straight out of money. It all went up his nose.

  I continued living frugally on my savings while calling around for jobs. I’d made an impression on a promotions man in Ohio, Dave Segel, who offered to throw my name around his network. Plugging was the music business rank above errand boy, and in this period of rapid growth, there were hundreds of tiny record labels in need of cheap, enthusiastic kids to push product down the throats of deejays and journalists. Not only did I personally know just about every writer in Billboard, I had access to some influential disc jockeys like Murray Kaufman and Jack Lacy. With the King and Hot 100 references, my résumé was pretty good for a twenty-one-year-old.

  Dave Segel hooked me up with a character in Philadelphia by the name of Harold Robinson. He owned one of the world’s biggest Chrysler and Plymouth dealerships, but his true passion was music. On WIBG, a major Philadelphia pop station, he bought his own show on which he somehow mixed his favorite R&B records with car selling. He’d also set up an imprint of his own, Newtown Records, through which he released a few singles from his big discovery, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. I suggested he pitch a Patti LaBelle live album to Syd Nathan, because I knew Live at the Apollo by James Brown was one of King’s best sellers. Without batting an eyelid, Harold paid for me to escort him down to Cincinnati accompanied by one of his loyal minions.

  I left Syd a message to book two hotel rooms for me, Harold Robinson, and his assistant, Larry Riley, with details of when we were arriving. I was to stay at Syd’s house. It was like old times. When Syd saw Harold Robinson and me with this black guy, he couldn’t resist launching str
aight into one of his routines. “So, where’s Larry Riley?”

  “That’s me, sir,” replied Harold’s driver.

  “With a name like that, I thought you’d be Irish.”

  “I’m sorry if that disappoints you, sir,” mumbled poor Larry.

  “Of course not, Larry. You’re more than welcome in my home. Hank Ballard stays there regularly,” said Syd, trying to put my road companion at ease. Syd’s problem, however, was that he couldn’t stay serious for too long. He then pulled out his pocketknife and twirled it around. “Don’t worry, Larry, we’ll make a Jew out of you in no time!”

  “I’m already circumcised,” said Larry, dead serious. “And I’m a proud and devoted Christian.” Jesus Christ, I wanted to crawl into whatever hole Larry was digging for himself.

  “Already circumcised?” said Syd, whose smile could seem menacing if you weren’t used to the freaky goggles. “Well, then, the next cut will have to be your nuts!”

  Larry Riley had failed Syd’s personality test in two sentences flat. He looked relieved to be dropped off at his hotel while Syd made no excuses about driving me and Harold onward to the Nathan house for dinner. It was the only time I ever saw Syd snub a black man, but it wasn’t his color; Syd had no patience for humorless bores—it didn’t matter if they were black, Jewish, or Martian. It all worked out fine, of course. Syd and his staff agreed to pick up the Patti LaBelle live album, which sat snugly in King’s catalog beside the James Brown classic. Needless to say, Harold Robinson was, excuse the pun, happy as Larry to secure his group such a perfect deal. Although I’d only earned a plugger’s fee, it was technically my first scalp, complete with a trip, hotel, and expenses. I remember thinking, You could get used to a life like this.

  That live album, Live at the Apollo, contained a Top 40 hit, “Down the Aisle (The Wedding Song),” which broke Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles nationally. Unfortunately, by then I was back in New York for another rough few months. I ended up having to do some extraordinary record promotions, sending records to a rack jobber named Danny Gittleman, of U.S. Records, in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’d known him from my Billboard days, because his sales reports were high among the samples used for the charts. I struck a relationship with Danny to report on my clients’ records, which of course improved their chart position. I’m not very proud of this lost period, but I was young, unemployed, and needed to make a living.

  Luckily, I’d befriended Teddy Troob, a young guy whose father, Warren, was a lawyer for various top music business players like the Chess brothers, disc jockey Alan Freed, and record producer George Goldner, who I had met several times while working at Billboard. Teddy knew my situation and got word of a new label being set up by the songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. They’d just hired George Goldner to run the show, so Teddy’s father secured me an interview with George, who instantly hired me as his assistant.

  Their new label was called Red Bird, and this time, I got seriously lucky. Working out of the eighth floor of the Brill Building, our very first release in May 1964 was “Chapel of Love” by the Dixie Cups. Just weeks after the Beatles invaded, the record took off like a Sputnik on steroids and hit number one in June, eventually selling over a million copies. Home runs this spectacular do not happen often, but this was to be my education in major-league pop promotion under the watchful eye of a champ slugger.

  The legendary George Goldner had been around since the forties, when he made his name breaking Tito Puente, Joe Loco, Machito, and other Latin stars. Although he’d always be synonymous with Cuban rhythm, George possessed a golden ear for any genre and scored a string of doo-wop hits throughout the fifties, including “Gee” by the Crows, widely considered as the first rock-and-roll hit. The man was both an incredible dancer and an A&R genius who could have picked a winning tune out of ten-ton dump of demos. I don’t know if his talent was an ear for melody, an eye for lyrics, a feel for rhythm, or some kind of extrasensory smell for success. Whatever it was, George Goldner had the thing.

  He lived fast and worked me hard. My job was to deliver records to stations, call program directors, organize business trips, and do whatever it took to get our records into the right channels. We enjoyed more hits with the Dixie Cups, like “People Say” and “Iko, Iko” as well as one other global smash hit number one, “Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las. From the word go, Red Bird was a bona fide hit factory, meaning George had to go to London and around Europe to set up license deals, hire local promoters, and get balls rolling in all directions. But because he was pathologically terrified of planes, he’d take ships and trains and send me on ahead to set up his meetings, book hotels, deliver records, and take care of whatever groundwork had to be done. Talk about doing more than I was unqualified to do, aged twenty-two, I had to go to the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy or walk into London’s major labels like Pye and Decca and not fuck up until George’s ship docked.

  I can’t overemphasize the privilege it was for a kid like me to get sent to Europe. Transatlantic flights cost the equivalent of about three grand in today’s money; it was a luxury reserved for rich men. Beatlemania was in full swing, which made London’s music business feel like the center of the world, but it wasn’t just their pop music; from the moment I first stepped off the plane at Heathrow, everything about England grabbed me by the senses. Since the late fifties, I’d been prepped and converted by Paul Ackerman, who loved reminding Billboard writers that our former masters, the British, hadn’t colonized the globe with ships and muskets alone. There was something about their schools and attitude to public life that bred such high standards in writing, music, theater, and broadcasting. If you wrote reviews for Billboard, you were not allowed to dismiss England’s quirky fashions without incurring the wrath of the editor.

  As I explored the streets of London for the first time, I thought a lot about Paul Ackerman. Although I didn’t know my way around, I could sense what he’d always promised. This was no ordinary city or island nation.

  The “special relationship” between Britain and America had taken on a musical dimension, making New York–London a busy route for music business characters, including a growing number of people my age, like two English guys who dropped into Red Bird one afternoon looking for songs. The taller one introduced himself as Andrew Oldham, the manager of the Rolling Stones. I’d heard the name, but at that point, the Stones were only stirring in England and were still so underripe they’d barely written any material of their own. The second guy was Keith Richards, no more than twenty-one, very shy and letting Andrew do the talking. I picked them out a stack of Red Bird releases containing one tune they’d later cover, “Down Home Girl,” performed by Alvin Robinson. We chatted for a while, and Andrew and I exchanged numbers and promised to stay in touch. To get ahead, you had to pick up phones, knock on people’s doors, and get yourself around, but the important part was making friends and keeping them.

  The Brill Building was a great place for meeting people, and believe it or not, I clocked up a total of three girlfriends in those Red Bird years in the midsixties, a personal record. One was Roberta Goldstein, Neil Sedaka’s cousin by marriage, and a rich kid whose grandmother owned Esther Manor, a hotel in the Catskills, where Neil Sedaka played and was first discovered. I always felt that Roberta was envious of her famous cousin and threw herself at the music business as an act of inter-cousin rivalry. She wasn’t particularly skilled at anything except hosting great parties where there always seemed to be grass and other substances. At one of her parties, Bob Dylan showed up and plopped himself next to me on a crowded sofa. He wasn’t a star yet, but he was well on his way and already hard currency among people like us. I don’t know if he was spaced out or bored senseless, but as the evening wore on, he started burning a houseplant with his cigarette end. Not very nice, I thought. I guess true genius has a way of being truly weird.

  My innocent father somehow detected Roberta’s wild streak and put it to me bluntly. “Please don’t think of ev
er marrying that girl.” Even though Roberta was Jewish, Dad much preferred the third young lady in my Red Bird trilogy, Sarah Smithers, a knockout beauty. “Now, Seymour,” said my father this time, “we won’t be upset at all if you were to marry this girl, even if she’s a gentile.” Sarah’s mother, DoJean Sayman, was an heiress to one of the great St. Louis families, and Sarah’s father, Sir Peter Otway Smithers, was a British ambassador, lawyer, horticulturist, photographer, and all-round adventurer. He’d been a spy during the war, taking orders from Ian Fleming, who apparently based aspects of the James Bond character—the good looks and multiple talents, on his former boss, Peter Smithers. Coming from a family like this, Sarah was quite the princess who had class to match her traffic-stopping looks. I really did love her.

  It was a period of late-night parties and long-playing albums. We were licensing Red Bird product to Pye Records in the UK, so we received advance copies of all their releases for consideration. One little gem I took home in early 1965 was the album What’s Bin Did and What’s Bin Hid, which had Donovan’s debut single, “Catch the Wind.” He was obviously listening to Bob Dylan, but he had some finely written songs that evoked their own style of English folk. I played it to George Goldner, who allowed me make inquiries with our usual contacts in Pye. Alas, Donovan’s North American rights had already been grabbed by Hickory Records, but the speed and closeness of Donovan’s success marked a point on my own personal learning curve. “Catch the Wind” became a U.S. top-twenty hit that summer, and within a year, Donovan topped the Hot 100 with “Sunshine Superman.” It was like seeing a prize salmon swim right under my nose.

  Musically, I still preferred King’s gutsy rhythm and blues to the girl pop we fired out at Red Bird, but the excitement of scoring global hits in the center of New York City more than made up the difference. The Brill Building was a cross between a casino and a summer camp for grown men. You didn’t even need to be enrolled or have money; the door was wide open to any player, big or small. There were stars in the elevators, future hits being whistled in the toilet stalls, funny characters bumping around from floor to floor hustling their dreck—like Johnny, a singing, suntanned bodybuilder who was introduced to us by Ellie Greenwich, the female songwriter behind “Be My Baby” and “Da Doo Ron Ron.” Johnny kept dropping into Red Bird to play his latest creations and must have seen in my eyes that I was gay. He began calling me privately until I eventually offered to show him my new apartment overlooking the river on the Lower East Side. He was my second gay experience.