Autograph Music Business Proposal Made Easy

Autograph music business proposal

then my father looks in the middle of me and says norby you know where's my end i'm your partner when we formed this uh agency this management company i was your partner i've been your partner since way back when and nobody looks at my father and he says you know sonny i don't quite remember it that way he said i remember you know i was having a relationship but you weren't my partner and i remember my dad looking at him and said well if i put a bullet through your head and that pastrami sandwich lands up along with your head all over the table would that refresh your memory [Music] [Music] hello everybody welcome to another sit down with michael francis it is now tuesday september 29th i believe man this month is flying by hope everybody again had a good weekend a lot of great comments yesterday on the ten commandments of the mafia glad you all enjoyed that so i really appreciate it got a lot of nice comments and well wishes for my daughter amanda who you know has got some health issues we know she's going to be okay but we appreciate the prayers and really thank you so many of you have just wished us well and and are praying for her and we really appreciate that that's what you know this uh relationships are all about so thanks a lot what are we going to do today you know something that you may not be aware of many of you out there is that the role the mob played cause an oscar in this country in the music industry and i can tell you it was a very significant role we had a lot to do with the growth of the music industry here in america and uh you know i'm gonna go back to uh uh you know a story with my dad you know my dad used to take me when i was younger to a lot of places he had a lot of different uh business interests he um he owned a couple of auto body shops and that's where i first started working on cars in my dad's shop uh he also had a tailor shop in uh in brooklyn you know i didn't really enjoy visiting that with him but it was a teller shop but the most exciting the the the thing i enjoyed the most was visiting uh my dad's record company and when i say my dad's record company he was a silent partner in it but he certainly had a big big interest in it and how did that come about well i'm going to relay a story to you that was relayed to me by a person by the name of phil steinberg who is one of the founders of kamasutra buddha records and he and his partners hai mizrahi and neil bogart and artie rip they're all kids from brooklyn young kids and they had a talent for music and my father kind of liked them he met them somehow took a liking to them because they were kind of knock around kids and he just liked them well he used to go up and visit them they had an office on 1650 broadway in manhattan and he used to take me with him all the time and this was in the early 60s you know late 50s early 60s especially and phil steinberg related this story to me he said one day he was in his office of kamasutra buddha records and they represented a group called the shangri-las i don't know if you remember them young kids may not but those of you my age shangri-las remember walking in the sand was a big hit for the record company was their biggest hit really to start this independent label off and phil steinberg was in his office and he gets a visit from a person by the name of morris levy now who is morris levy he's somebody i'm going to spend a lot of time with because he was a major major force in the record business back in the in the early 60s 70s 80s and he was totally mobbed up at all mob relationships and i'm going to get into that because he deserves that much time put into his story and so mo levy comes up and and visits him and just to give you a little background on mo uh he at one time had copyrighted the phrase rock and roll it was his phrase and he ended up getting paid from major record companies to use the name rock and roll and he did that for quite a while until the federal government stepped in and said no that's a generic term and you can't be shaking down uh record companies to use that word but that's the kind of you know clout that he had early on in the business he kind of created or patented the word rock and roll so anyway uh mo levy happens to uh come up and visit phil steinberg in his office and uh he congratulates him on the big hit that he had with the shangri-las and he says to him he says uh uh by the way uh you owe me a cut of everything the shangri-las do all the money that comes in because i got an interest in that record in that uh artist in those artists and uh phil steinberg says well i wasn't aware of that but he knew of mo levy's uh connections he knew he was all mobbed up he was kind of a legend already at that point in time in the industry and he wasn't about to argue with him but he was upset he's saying look at this you know i just get started in this record company i got a big hit we put a lot of into this me and my partners and i got somebody shaking me down so levy leaves the office that day and says get back to me you know in a couple of days i'm sure when you check me out you're going to make the right decision steinberg immediately calls his partners in adi rip high mizrahi and i think neil bogart at the time and he tells him of this problem and obviously all these young kids are upset they're young they're 23 25 26 just got a major artist to group you know to have a big hit and here they are mo levy's shaking them down for a cut of it it just so happens that day my dad came up to visit them and he went in the office and he saw what was going on you know and he said hey you guys you're looking kind of down what's wrong and they said ah you know just a little bit depressed today and he said depressed you guys should be sitting on top of the world you got a big hit with this shangri-la record what's going on so phil steinberg initially didn't really want to tell this to my dad because he knew who my dad was and even though he liked him he knows when you start to get a favor from a mob guy well there's more to it more involvement but anyway my father's persistent he says hey tell me what's wrong so phil steinberg and the other guys they let him know that maurice levy came up there and that marvis lee believe he is basically shaking him down for a cut in all the shangri-la's royalties my father said really he did that to you he said let me handle it he said i know mo levy pretty well mo levy handles it you know i got to tell you my father told me later on he said you know what mike he says i like morris levy he's just too bad that i had to kill him i had to put a contract on him at one time uh but that didn't happen he obviously spoke to levy who at the time was uh you know was uh connected with a guy by the name of tommy vestola they called him corky he was a de cavalcante soldier he even got involved with the chin at one time uh tommy eberly who was the one-time voice of the genovese family was actually his partner in a label he had a label called roulette records and my father spoke to him and put an end to that and that was the end of mo levy's involvement with the shangri-la's as a result of all of this my father became a partner in kamasa kamasutra buddha records and they went on to have a list of hits i had some big artists i don't know if again my age uh you'll remember this but you younger kids you may not know it 19 1910 fruit gum company all those bubble gum uh artists uh the shangri-la's of course uh jay and the americans cut a record there the isley brothers i believe did um uh who else jay and the americans a whole bunch of artists so it turned out to be a big label buddha went on to be a very successful company and i got uh involved myself with uh artie rip and some of the other guys neil bogat you know became a big big guy in the record company so um you know initially the mob had a lot to do now you all know the name norby walters that's been brought up a couple of times norbie walters goes way back with my father and uh initially norby uh was partners with my dad he had a club called the norby walters very successful nightclub as a matter of fact it was uh it was close to the copacabana people used to empty out of the culpa and they would go to the norbi walters club and lounge walt and nobby had a brother named walter walters walter b walters they used to run the place my father had a silent interest in it he used to bring people there very successful club it lasted for a while but then somebody got shot and killed in that place and they closed it down but that kind of began the relationship uh with norby and my father and they went on to be according to my father partners in another enterprise when norby started to manage a lot of the top black talent dionne warwick marvin gr gay all the big black talent in the 60s norbi was their representative for all the tours and he would book them he was there actually their booking artist not really their manager and um you know i'll never forget there was a time when uh i'll never forget marvin gaye was came up to the office and norby used to manage his money and marvin asked him he said uh you know i need five thousand dollars and nobody didn't want to give it to him he said you know marvin what are you gonna do with the money he knew marvin had a drug problem so on and so forth at the end of the day he gives him the five thousand dollars i said nobody it's his money give it to him so he gives him the five grand we're up in the office i kid you not about an hour later marvin comes up and he's got boxes of shoes and he tells norby i just blew the money he bought five thousand dollars where the worth of shoes on his way to his car i mean that's that's marvin gaye good guy by the way i liked him a lot he's very sincere kind of guys shame what happened to him but norby and my dad were partners in that my dad goes off to prison i would manage an orbee during that time i think some of you know after the artist representation business he got involved with sports athletes um and he was uh representing them for their contracts with the nfl and their endorsements and so on and so forth that comes a little bit later but there was a time when corki vastola de cavalcante uh soldier later a couple in that family um he was trying to do some business with norby and obviously norby belonged to me my dad so that couldn't happen i think corki got a little bit upset about it he went to junior my boss persico at the time and told uh junior that hey nobody continues to use um uh the frenzies name but he's not paying his fair share anyway he put in a real beef on on norby junior called me up i went to see him he said hey mike what's this deal with norby he's been using your guy's name he's not paying up now what he didn't know is that norby was paying to my brother my brother was going up there collecting the money off of norby my brother had a drug problem at the time who knows what he did with the money it wasn't coming back to us but i didn't care i was making plenty of money i used to just use norby to have concert tickets i used to be ringside all the time because he represented everybody and i had a couple of clubs at that time and nobody would bring me the top artist of the day to work on my club i'd get them at the right price so it was a good relationship i didn't care about the money i didn't need it at that point in time but my father had a little different opinion when he came home he wanted to sit down with he came home from prison on one of his many paroles and he said set up a meeting with norby i want to talk to him and i said okay so i set up a meeting with norby and my father in the stage delicatessen in manhattan we're having lunch my dad and i are sitting together i was already you know my dad's acting captain at that time nobody's sitting across from us and we're having a nice conversation and then my father looks in the middle of me and says nobody you know where's my end i'm your partner when we formed this uh agency this management company i was your partner i've been your partner since way back when and norby looks at my father and he says you know sonny i i don't quite remember it that way he said i remember you know i was having a relationship but you weren't my partner and i remember my dad looking at him and said well if i put a bullet through your head and that pastrami sandwich lands up along with your head all over the table would that refresh your memory it a little bit and i got to tell you nobody turned white at that point and he was really upset my father was upset him he was really scared my father was upset and i jumped in at that point in time because i like norby and i said dad look you know i talked to norby i said we got a new gig going he's going to be paying up every week don't worry about it he acknowledges the partnership am i right nobody nobody said yes at that point he was scared and and so we were able to leave that day and my father said don't let this guy get away with anything i said dad don't worry about it he's okay well you know cut two you know what happened years later on norby was using my name my father's name he was shaken down professional athletes i'm in prison i get subpoenaed to to go and testify in the trial because i had given him you know a bunch of money and he was using my name and that turned out to be a whole fiasco nobody did not go to jail for that i'm not going to get into the details of why but let's just say uh that we knew what we were doing at that time nobody never did a day in prison but you know that was only part of the relationship that we had in the music industry that was my father's point now i'm going to get into it morris levy who was much more in depth he was a hands-on guy again he was involved with the chin he had a record label called roulette records he had a a chain of record stores and these record stores were called strawberry records i believe i think there were 60 70 80 of them across the country at that point in time he was extremely influential in the early days of the music business here in america he dealt with all the record labels many of the heavyweights they were afraid of him they knew his involvement he was a very outgoing kind of guy he didn't hide who he was everybody knew the relationships that he had and he made hundreds of millions of dollars in that industry had a big big impact in it so that's coming up next mars levy watch for it i think you're going to enjoy it and i think you need to understand again it's just another business that the mob was able to infiltrate here in america one of the many aside from the unions aside from corporate america aside from the the gambling industry aside from the money uh the numbers business we had a big influence in america uh throughout the whole century i would say until the mid 80s when we know what happened at that point in time things started to go a little bit haywire so that's it for today look for music industry part two we'll probably do that on friday it's going to be coming up you're going to hear all about all about morris levy organized crimes involvement in the music industry it was big and uh again a lot of subscriptions i think we're up to almost 190 000 in less than three months and that's thanks to all of you enjoying the content we really appreciate the support subscribe because then you get alerts a lot of good interviews coming up michaelfrancis.com the community is growing we're way over 5000 right now the personal coaching the life coaching business coaching it's really growing and i appreciate that and i think a lot of people have benefited by it so that's it stay safe stay healthy god bless [Music] you