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Morris Levy and George Goldner

© Barney Quick

For much of the twentieth century, midtown Manhattan, particularly Fifty-second Street, Times Square and Broadway, was the supreme symbol of the entertainment business’ glamour and power to enchant. Just behind the glitz, however, was a level of the business that was peopled by some rather steely-eyed, cutthroat individuals who took a very calculating view of the product they were dispensing. The performers of the music to be found in 1950s and sixties New York may have been loved, but the deal-makers prided themselves on being respected.

Morris Levy owned Birdland, one of the world’s most prestigious jazz clubs, in the heart of this environment. He’d opened it in 1949. He consistently booked the biggest names in black music.

In the early fifties, he promoted Alan Freed’s shows at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn. He could see for himself how big – and racially integrated - the market for r&b was getting.

In 1957, he formed a partnership with some other investors and started the Roulette label. Roulette covered a lot of bases in its first years: rockabilly, jazz, Italian dance-rock, and r&b. The company’s first release was a song that had been cut way out west, at Norman Petty’s little studio in Clovis, New Mexico, “Party Doll” by Buddy Knox. Soon Ronnie Hawkins, pop songster Jimmie Rogers, jazz-and-standards warbler Sarah Vaughan, r&b diva Dinah Washington, sax men Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt, and “Peppermint Twist” champions Joey Dee & the Starlighters were added to the roster.

Levy had been rumored to have mob ties for years, and authorities kept an eye on him. He was finally convicted in 1988 on charges of racketeering and extortion. He died the following year, still entangled in controversy and legal matters.

One of his first partners in Roulette was George Goldner, a snappy dresser and accomplished dancer who likewise had few scruples but abundant aggressiveness. Goldner had founded a Latin-music label, Tico, in 1948, which boasted Tito Puente and Machito among its artists. In the mid-fifties, he started the Rama and Gee labels, which helped put doo-wop on the map with “Gee” by the Crows and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, a Harlem group fronted by a thirteen-year-old whose cuteness belied his activities as a pimp and a dope smoker.

Goldner’s stay at Roulette only lasted a few months. Later in 1957, he founded the End and Gone labels. End released an early girl-group classic, “He’s Gone” by the Chantels. Little Anthony and the Imperials had their first and biggest hit, “Tears On My Pillow,” on End.

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