Tommy James Divulges Secrets in His Book "Me, the Mob, and the Music"

Tommy James sold 100 million records and wrote iconic songs like “I Think We’re Alone Now” and “Mony Mony.” He joined Imus today to talk about his book “Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James and The Shondells.”

James broke into the music business in 1965 with the hit “Hanky Panky” in what he called an “only in America kind of story.”  He and the Shondells then went to New York City and met with big record companies like Columbia and Epic, But wound up signing with a small, independent label called Roulette, for reasons James learned years later.

“Morris Levy had called all the record companies and said, ‘This is our record,’” he said.

Levy was a record mogul who owned the famed Birdland jazz club, and he was considered one of rock and roll’s biggest entrepreneurs. He owned and ran Roulette, but he was also connected, using the record label as a front for mob activity.

“It was a tumultuous kind of love-hate relationship,” James said of his and Levy’s association. “But I’ve often said, every time I go to say something bad about Morris and Roulette, I’m always reminded if it weren’t for Morris, there wouldn’t be a Tommy James.”

Though Roulette paid him, James said Levy was “much more likely to buy you something special than pay you a couple of grand.” And confronting Levy or any of Roulette’s financial backers, who were members of the Genovese crime family, was “not a fun experience,” he said.

Despite Levy’s ties to the mob, he was, in James’s opinion, a good record man. “He had good ears,” said James. “He bought and sold music by the pound. Nobody could sell singles better than Roulette Records.”

He owed some of his success to the small, independent nature of Roulette, pointing out that a larger label would not have given him as much artistic freedom. “We would have been handed a producer, and that would have been it,” said James.

For years, James was unable to talk about the real Roulette with other artists or to air his grievances anyplace. In fact, he waited to write “Me, the Mob, and the Music” until the last “Roulette regular” passed away in December of 2005.

“This was very therapeutic for me,” he said of the book, which is being made into a movie. “I was carrying this around for a long time.”

A religious man, James said he’s not bitter. He and a different group of Shondells have been touring together for the last 25 years, and he got back with the original Shondells to record a new version of “I Think We’re Alone Now” for the movie soundtrack.

“I just have always felt that this was the way it was supposed to be,” said James. “What were going through right now is God’s way of evening out the playing field.”

Amen to that.

-Julie Kanfer