From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Wed Aug 27, 2003  1:18 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Morris Levy
 
MORRIS LEVY

Born Moishe Levy, 27 August 1927, The Bronx, New York City, New York
Died 21 May 1990, Ghent, New York 

Morris Levy was a notorious music business mogul who was involved in 
many facets of the industry. In a 1957 article, Variety dubbed Levy 
the "Octopus" of the music industry because he had an outstretched 
hand in nearly every area of the growing business. Decades later 
another writer dubbed him "The Godfather," a nickname reflecting both 
his power in the industry (a supposed net worth of $75 million by the 
early '80s) and his reputed mob ties. The founder of Roulette Records 
and onetime proprietor of New York City's famous Birdland nightclub, as 
well as a notorious crook who swindled artists out of their owed 
royalties, Levy represents everything adventurous and underhanded about 
the infancy of rock & roll.

Levy received little formal education. Quitting school at the age of 
13 (after an incident where he assaulted his 75-year-old homeroom 
teacher) Levy grew up on the streets, developing the kind of tough, 
cutthroat world view that would later make him a wealthy man in the 
music industry.  During his teens, he ran away to Florida and 
eventually landed a job as a darkroom boy developing pictures of the 
customers who frequented the clubs. After a brief stint in the Navy, 
more nightclub jobs followed, and Levy persuaded his old bosses 
(speculated to be mobsters) to purchase a place in the Latin Quarter of 
New York called Topsy's Chicken Roost and allow Morris to run it. Soon 
Levy was at the forefront of the bop movement, booking jazz musicians 
such as Dexter Gordon and Charlie Parker into the Cock Lounge, an 
adjoining nightclub he had opened.

When an opportunity arose for Levy to go out on his own, he did so by 
opening Birdland, one of the most legendary clubs of the jazz era.

It was at Birdland that Levy began his phenomenal rise to the top of 
the music industry. The start came innocently enough, as Levy was 
approached by a representative for ASCAP and told he must pay the 
publishing company a monthly stipend for the privilege of booking live 
music. Thinking that a rival mob was moving in on his operation, Levy 
consulted his lawyer who confirmed that the ASCAP representative 
was legitimate in collecting money on behalf of songwriters and their 
publishers under an act of Congress. Realizing an unbelievable 
business opportunity, Levy formed a publishing company, Patricia 
Music, and acquired the rights to songs first performed in his clubs, 
like the jazz standard "Lullaby of Birdland".

With both Birdland and his publishing company doing well, Levy formed 
Roulette Records in 1956. Originally intended as a rock & roll label, 
Roulette also recorded Birdland acts such as Count Basie and Joe 
Williams. Soon Levy's label absorbed other independents, such as 
the Gone and End labels. And at one point, after befriending disc 
jockey Alan Freed, Levy actually owned the phrase "rock & roll," 
collecting money from the use of the term that Freed had coined. It was 
around this time that Levy also began the unsavory practice of forcing 
his name onto the songwriting credits of his acts' releases, allowing 
him to collect even more money from the publishing.

By the '60s and '70s, Levy's vast publishing empire was such that it 
even affected the Beatles. When their Abbey Road album contained a 
composition, "Come Together," that sounded remarkably similar to a 
Chuck Berry song ("You Can't Catch Me") whose rights Levy owned, 
the publishing mogul sued Lennon for infringement. In exchange for 
dropping the charges, Lennon agreed to include three of Levy's 
copyrights on his "Rock 'n' Roll" album. When Lennon stalled, Levy, 
never one to lose out on a dollar, stole the unfinished tapes and 
released them as a TV mail-order album entitled Roots.

At his peak, Levy owned several record labels, a vast publishing 
empire, and a chain of record stores worth $30 million alone. But when 
the music industry went corporate in the '70s and '80s, Morris Levy 
found himself the last of a dying breed. The hustlers and hoodlums that 
he had done business with were being replaced with young, legitimate 
execs such as David Geffen. Giving up many of the small independent 
labels he controlled, Levy eventually sold his largest label, Roulette, 
as well as his publishing rights for more than $55 million. In 1988, 
Levy's mob ties eventually caught up to him as he was exposed on 
national TV as a conspirator with the mob in the extortion of a 
small-time music wholesaler named John Lamonte. Sentenced to ten years 
in jail, Levy died while awaiting appeal, marking the official end to 
the swashbuckling days of the music industry.

In 1990, the Roulette catalogue was jointly acquired by EMI and Rhino
Records.

(Adapted from All Music Guide.)

Further reading: Frederic Dannen, Hit Men : Power Brokers and Fast
Money Inside the Music Business. New York : Random House, 1990.

More info on the Roulette label: http://www.bsnpubs.com/roulette.html