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Tommy James & the Shondells -- the very mention of their name, even to someone who doesn't really know their music, evokes images of dances and the kind of fun that rock & roll represented before it redefined itself on more serious terms. And between 1966 and 1969, the group enjoyed 14 Top 40 hits, most of which remain among the most eminently listenable (if not always respected) examples of pop/rock. The group was almost as much of a Top 40 radio institution of the time as Creedence Clearwater Revival, but because they weren't completely self-contained (they wrote some, but not all, or their own hits) and were more rooted in pop/rock than basic rock & roll, it took decades for writers and pop historians to look with favor upon Tommy James & the Shondells.
Tommy James was born Thomas Jackson on April 20, 1947, in Dayton, OH. He was introduced to music at age three, when he was given a ukulele by his grandfather. He was an attractive child and was working as a model at age four, which gave him something of a taste for performing. By age nine, he'd moved to the next step in music, taking up the guitar, and by 1958, when he was 11, James began playing the electric guitar. In 1960, with his family now living in Niles, MI, 13-year-old James and a group of four friends from junior high school -- Larry Coverdale on guitar, Larry Wright on bass, Craig Villeneuve on piano, and Jim Payne on drums -- got together to play dances and parties. This was the original lineup of the Shondells, and they became good enough to earn decent money locally, and even got noticed by an outfit called Northway Sound Records, who recorded the quintet in a Tommy James original entitled "Judy" in 1962. That single didn't make much noise beyond their immediate locale, but in late 1963, the group came to the notice of a local disc jockey starting up a new label called Snap Records. They cut four sides, two of which were issued and disappeared without a trace on their first Snap single.
The second Snap label release, "Hanky Panky," was golden, at least in the area around Niles. A Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich song that the couple had already recorded under their nom de plume, the Raindrops, as a B-side that James and company had heard done by a rival band, "Hanky Panky," had become part of James' group's stage act. It was enormously popular on-stage, and the Snap single took off locally in Niles and the surrounding area, but it never got heard any further away. James and company picked up their marbles and went home, abandoning aspirations for a recording career in favor of pursuing music part time -- the singer/guitarist took a day job at a record store and confined his music efforts to the nighttime hours. The two years that ensued, from early 1964 until 1966, saw the original Shondells break up, as members left music or were drafted. This didn't seem to make much difference until a day came when James got an urgent request from a promoter to do a concert in Pittsburgh, PA.
Considering that the group had never even played there, he was puzzled. He soon found that the Snap Records single, "Hanky Panky," recorded back in 1963 and overlooked in Chicago and Detroit at the time, had suddenly broken out in Pittsburgh. A promoter, having found a copy of the Snap single in a used-record bin, had liked what he heard and gotten the record played locally at dances. In one of those fluky instances that made the record business in those days a complete marvel, people suddenly started requesting "Hanky Panky," and in response to the demand, bootleggers began producing it, attributed to various labels -- some sources estimate that as many as 80,000 copies were sold in Pittsburgh before the smoke cleared.
James saw what he had to do, but he no longer had a band and was forced to recruit a new group of Shondells. The lucky winners were the Raconteurs, a local Pittsburgh quintet. They became the Shondells, with Joe Kessler on guitar, Ron Rosman on keyboards, George Magura on sax, Mike Vale on bass, and Vinnie Pietropaoli on drums; Peter Lucia and Eddie Gray, respectively, replaced Pietropaoli and Kessler, and Magura and his saxophone didn't last long in the lineup.
From near-total obscurity, this version of Tommy James & the Shondells went to playing to audiences numbering in the thousands, and were being courted by Columbia Records and RCA-Victor. It was Morris Levy and Roulette Records, however, who outbid everybody and won the group's contract, and got a number one national hit with "Hanky Panky," in the version cut by the original group nearly three years earlier.
Tommy James & the Shondells, revamped, revised, and reactivated, spent the next three-and-a-half years trying to keep up with their own success. "Say Am I," their second Roulette single and the first by the extant group, only got to number 21, but it was accompanied by a pretty fair Hanky Panky LP, showing off the group's prowess at covering current soul hits by the likes of the Impressions, James Brown, and Junior Walker & the All-Stars. A third single, "It's Only Love," reached number 31, but the fourth, "I Think We're Alone Now," issued in early 1967, got to number four, and the fifth, "Mirage," was another Top Ten release. The latter record was truly a spin-off of the previous hit in the most bizarre way -- according to James, "Mirage" was initially devised by playing the master of "I Think We're Alone Now" backwards. Those recordings were the work of songwriter and producer Ritchie Cordell, who became a rich source of material for the group for the remainder of their history.
Tommy James & the Shondells were lucky enough to be making pop-oriented rock & roll in an era when most of the rest of the rock music world was trying to make more serious records and even create art (often even when the act in question had no capacity for that kind of activity). They were at a label who recognized the need to spend money in order to make money, and didn't mind the expense of issuing a new LP with each major single, despite the fact that Roulette was mostly a singles label where everything but jazz was concerned. The group members themselves were having the time of their lives playing concerts, making personal appearances, and experimenting with advancing their sound in the studio. Audiences loved their work and their records, and it only seemed to get better.
Their songs ran almost counter to the trend among serious rock artists. "Mony Mony," a number three hit coming out in the midst of Vietnam, the psychedelic boom, and just as rock music was supposed to be turning toward higher, more serious forms, was a result of the group looking for a perfect party record and dance tune; even the name was sheer, dumb luck, a result of James spotting the Mutual of New York (MONY) illuminated sign atop their building in midtown Manhattan at a key moment in the creative process. The group did grab a piece of the prevailing style in late 1968 with "Crimson and Clover," an original by James and drummer Peter Lucia that utilized some creative sound distortion techniques. A number one hit that sold five million copies, it was the biggest single of the group's history, and yielded a highly successful follow-up LP as well -- ironically, the latter album included liner notes by Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had gotten to know the band in the course of their performing at some of his campaign events during his 1968 run for the presidency.
James and company were among the top pop/rock performers in the world during 1969, with two more major hits, "Sweet Cherry Wine" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion," to their credit. Indeed, their presence on the Crimson and Clover album, in addition to the title cut, helped loft that record to a 35-week run on the charts, an extraordinary achievement not only in the history of the band but also -- for a non-greatest hits album -- for Roulette Records, who weren't known as a strong album label. They also began experimenting more with new sounds during this period, most notably on their next album, Cellophane Symphony. The latter record, whose release was delayed for four months because of the extraordinary sales of Crimson and Clover, had its share of basic rock & roll sounds but also plunged into progressive/psychedelic music with a vengeance, most notably on "Cellophane Symphony," a Moog-dominated track that sounds closer to Pink Floyd than anyone ever imagined possible. Cellophane Symphony sold well without breaking any records by its predecessor, and proved in the process that Tommy James & the Shondells could compete in virtually any rock genre. The only miscalculation made by the band was their declining an invitation to perform at Woodstock; the mere credit, coupled with perhaps an appearance in the movie or on the album, might have enhanced their credibility with the counterculture audience.
The end of the Shondells' history came not from any real decision, but simply their desire to take a break in 1970, after four years of hard work and a lot of great times. The moment also seemed right -- James was getting involved in other projects and moving in other directions, including writing and producing records for acts like the Brooklyn-based band Alive and Kicking, whose "Tighter and Tighter" got to number seven, and his own solo recordings. The Shondells continued working together for a time as well, under the name Hog Heaven, cutting one album for Roulette before withdrawing back to the Pittsburgh area where they'd started.
James went through a lot of different sounds on his own records, including country (My Head, My Bed & My Red Guitar) and Christian music (Christian of the World), and charted in the Top Ten one last time in 1971 with "Draggin' the Line," although he also saw more limited success for another two years with records such as "I'm Comin' Home" and "Celebration."
In the mid-'70s, he made a jump from Roulette Records, where he'd based his career for nearly a decade, to Fantasy Records, and he later recorded for Millennium Records. Following his 1980 Top 20 hit, "Three Times in Love," he resurfaced as a concert artist playing his old hits as well as new songs, although some of these shows were marred by reports of late arrivals and less-than-ideal performances; he has since reestablished a record as a serious crowd-pleasing act, cutting records anew with Cordell and even releasing a live hits collection in 1998.
Tommy James & the Shondells have even achieved something that they saw relatively little of in their own time -- respect. In the years 1966-1970, they were regarded as a bubblegum act and part of the scenery by the few discerning critical voices around, but in the '80s, their music revealed its staying power in fresh recordings (and hits) by Joan Jett, Billy Idol, and Tiffany, with "Crimson and Clover," "Mony Mony," and "I Think We're Alone Now," respectively; indeed, in one of those odd chart events that would have seemed more likely in the '60s, in 1987, Tiffany's version of "I Think We're Alone Now" was replaced at the number one spot after two weeks by Billy Idol's rendition of "Mony Mony." Rhino Records' reissue of the Crimson and Clover and Cellophane Symphony albums, in addition to greatest-hits collections and a survey of James' solo recordings from the decade 1970-1980, also seemed to speak for the group's credibility, and a 1997 Westside Records double-CD, It's a New Vibration, offering unreleased songs from the '60s as well as all of the key single tracks, confirmed the level of seriousness with which the group was perceived.
Tommy James was no Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison, to be sure, and his songwriting -- which was usually not solo, in any case -- lacked the downbeat, serious tone or the little mystical touches of John Fogerty. He's usually put more comfortably in the company of such figures as Paul Revere & the Raiders' Mark Lindsay, or with Johnny Rivers or Tommy Roe, in the middle or early part of the '60s. But from 1968 through 1970, when artists like Jagger, Fogerty, and Morrison were in their heyday, Tommy James & the Shondells sold more singles than any other pop act in the world, many of them written, co-written, or at least chosen by James. The mere fact that he released a concert DVD in the fall of 2000 is loud testament to the power and impact of his work four decades into his career.
Wikipedia:
Tommy James (born Thomas Gregory Jackson, 29 April 1947, Dayton, Ohio) is an American pop-rock musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer, best known as leader of the 1960s rock band Tommy James and the Shondells.
Early life and career
Born in Dayton, Ohio, Tommy and his family moved to Niles, Michigan; a child model at age four, he was no stranger to the stage. In 1959, at the age of twelve, James formed what would be recognized as his first official band "The Tornadoes". A year later the band changed its name to The Shondells. By 1964, Jack Douglas, a local DJ at WNIL radio station in Niles formed his own record label, Snap Records. The Shondells were one of the local bands he recorded at WNIL studios. One of the songs was the Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich ditty "Hanky Panky", which the pair recorded using the name The Raindrops. The song was a hit locally, but the label had no resources for national promotion and it was soon forgotten.
In 1965, a local dance promoter, Bob Mack, started playing the song at his Pittsburgh dance clubs, having found a copy of it in a used record bin. Soon after, a Pittsburgh area bootlegger made a copy of the song and began pressing copies of it, speeding it up slightly in the process. Sales of the bootleg were estimated at 80,000 in ten days. It became number one on Pittsburgh radio stations in early 1966. Douglas was the first to hear about the record's sudden popularity in Pittsburgh; his Snap Records labels always included his name and location. Further calls from Pittsburgh convinced James to come to Pennsylvania, where he met with Mack and Chuck Rubin, who handled the talent bookings for Mack's dance clubs. Before long, all three major music trade papers, Billboard, Cashbox and Record World, were listing "Hanky Panky" as a regional breakout hit. Rubin, who had music industry connections, said it was a good time for the trio to travel to New York in search of a record deal.
The men made the rounds of the major recording labels, getting initial potential offers from most companies they visited. One label, Roulette Records, gave no initial response because its head, Morris Levy, was out of town until evening; Roulette was one of the last stops on their visit. By the next morning, Mack, Rubin and James were now receiving polite refusals from the major record companies after the enthusiasm for the record the day before. James said, "We didn't know what in the world was going on, and finally Jerry Wexler over at Atlantic leveled with us and said, 'Look, Morris Levy and Roulette called up all the other record companies and said, "This is my freakin' record." (laughs) and scared 'em all away – even the big corporate labels.'" Their only option would be to sign with Roulette.
Since the band had broken up two years before, the only Shondell left was James himself. Mack made his dance club bands available to James, but nothing seemed to fit until one of the bands' guitarists took James to the Thunderbird Lounge outside Pittsburgh. The lounge's house band was a five man group called the Raconteurs. James sang with the band at the lounge, and this time the chemistry was right. The Raconteurs became the new Shondells, and Jackson acquired the professional name of Tommy James. By the third week of July 1966, "Hanky Panky" had become the top single in the nation.
Tommy James and the Shondells
The newly formed group had not played together except at the Thunderbird Lounge. The first time would be in the studio for the needed follow-up song to "Hanky Panky". When Bob Mack's attempt at finding some Shondells worked out in an inadvertent way, he told James about another record he'd found in the same used record bin "Hanky Panky" came from: "Say I Am" by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs. The only thing James and his new Shondells were aware of when they entered the recording studio for the first time is that whatever they recorded should sound similar to "Hanky Panky", except that the two songs sound nothing alike. Bob Mack, who was at the session, played The Fireballs record for the group and they decided to record their version of the song. Mack found the band the first tune they would record together; he was credited as the producer for the group's first album, Hanky Panky.
Songwriter Richie Cordell wrote (or co-wrote) and produced many of the group's hits, among them the classic good-timing "I Think We're Alone Now", "Mirage", and "Mony Mony". The creation of "Mony Mony" was a group effort, involving Cordell, James, Shondells band member Peter Lucia, producer Bo Gentry, and Bobby Bloom. James and Cordell set out to create a party rock single working out everything except the song's title, which eluded them even after much effort. They took a break from their creative endeavors on James' apartment terrace, when they looked up at the Mutual of New York Insurance Company's large neon sign bearing the abbreviation for the company: M-O-N-Y. Both knew instantaneously their song now had a name.
Tommy James and the Shondells also produced a "Mony Mony" video when the song was a hit, hiring a video company to produce a short film of it. Even though a number of musical groups had already produced videos by that time, there was no market at all for that film in the US. Television stations would not air it, and it was originally shown between double features in movie theaters in Europe. The film was not seen in the US until the creation of MTV.
With "Mony Mony" becoming such a hit in the US and an even bigger one in the UK, James was contacted by Beatle George Harrison, who was working with a group called Grapefruit at the time. Harrison and the group had written some songs they wanted James to consider recording. Since the group came to a decision to change their musical style (and would do so with "Crimson and Clover": see below) and the material Harrison and Grapefruit provided was in the style of "Mony Mony", James turned down their offer.
The music business changed after the success of "Mony Mony". Top 40 program formatting, based on 45 RPM single records, drove popular music on the radio. Few stations played cuts from record albums, so radio was, in effect, "selling" single records for the record companies. In August 1968, James and the Shondells went on the campaign trail for three months with presidential candidate Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. Meanwhile popular music had become album-driven, with artists like Led Zeppelin and Joe Cocker in the spotlight and on the air, displacing many performers whose singles had been top sellers. James realized he and the Shondells needed to become an album-oriented group if they were to survive in the business, necessitating a change in their style.
After working out a marketing strategy for their new sound, James visited WLS when the group was in Chicago to play a concert, bringing along a rough cut of "Crimson and Clover" to the station. WLS secretly recorded the music when James played his tape for them. By the time James was out of the building and in the car, its radio was playing the station's dub of the not-yet-finished song. "Crimson and Clover" had to be pressed the way it was heard on the radio station, and the marketing plan was now wasted time and effort.
"Crimson and Clover" was a huge success, and the group would have two follow-up hits that also reached the Hot 100's top 10, "Sweet Cherry Wine" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion". James, who co-wrote all three of those songs, and his band did well enough with the transition to be invited to perform at Woodstock. James describes Artie Kornfeld's invitation like this: "Artie was up and asked if you could play at this pig farm up in upstate New York." I said, "What?!?" "Well, they say it's gonna be a lot of people there, and it's gonna be a really important show." At the time James was in Hawaii and was incredulous about being asked to travel 6,000 miles to play a show on an upstate New York pig farm, telling the Roulette Records secretary, "If I'm not there, start without us, will you please?" Four minor hits later and a few months after turning down Woodstock, the group opted to disband.
Tommy James and The Shondells were voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends online Hall of Fame in 2006. Four of the band's biggest hits have been voted Legendary Michigan Songs: "Crimson & Clover" in 2010, and "Hanky Panky", "I Think We're Alone Now", and "Mony Mony" in 2011.
Solo
James went solo and had two further Billboard Hot 100 top 20 chart hits with "Draggin' the Line" (co-written by Bob King) (#4 in 1971) and "Three Times in Love" (#19 in 1980), plus eleven much smaller Hot 100 hits. James has had twenty-three gold singles, and nine gold and platinum albums. He also wrote and produced the million-selling 1970 hit "Tighter, Tighter" for the group Alive 'N Kickin' (co-written by Bob King). In 1972, James spent time in Nashville and recorded an album there with top Nashville musicians, My Head, My Bed and My Red Guitar. He left Roulette Records in 1974. To date, over 300 musicians have recorded versions of James' music.
In October 2008, Tommy James and the three surviving members of the original Shondells reunited in a New Jersey studio to record once again. The group had disbanded because its members needed time away from the pressure-filled recording business, remaining close friends even though they no longer were recording together. After not playing together for 37 years, the group recorded an album, I Love Christmas.
Music and the mob
In February 2010, an autobiography Me, The Mob, and The Music was published. James announced that deals were in hand to turn the story into both a film and a Broadway play. Martin Scorsese approached James about making a movie of the book shortly after its publication.
It was evident when James first met Morris Levy, the head of Roulette Records, that he was willing to strongarm others when necessary. Those signed to Roulette were there to produce money for the company, having their needs met only when it pleased Levy. Asking to be paid meant intimidation; to survive, those under contract to Roulette needed to find a means of generating income that did not involve the record company, such as personally booked tours. While a Roulette artist had great creative control when recording for the company, the lack of payment for those efforts was difficult to take.
James estimates the company owed him $30–40 million in royalties he never received. Roulette was a front for organized crime, also functioning as a money laundering operation. In the early 1970s, Levy was at the wrong end of a mob war. James had to leave New York for a while to avoid a mob hit, which explained why he recorded an album in Nashville in 1972. He did not feel comfortable writing his book until all those deeply involved with the record company had died. It was only after Roulette Records and Levy's Big Seven Music publishing company were sold (the record company to an EMI and Rhino Records partnership, the music publishing company to Windswept Pacific Music which was later sold to EMI) that James began to receive large royalty checks from sales of his records.
Solo discography
1970 Tommy James 1971 Christian of the World 1972 My Head, My Bed & My Red Guitar 1976 In Touch 1977 Midnight Rider 1980 Three Times in Love 1989 Tommy James - The Solo Years 1990 Hi-Fi 1993 Discography: Deals and Demos 1996 A Night in Big City 1997 Tommy James Greatest Hits Live
2004: I Love Christmas (CD single) 2005 Sweet Cherry Wine (CD single) 2005 Isn't that the Guy (CD single) 2006 Lupe & Jo (MP3 single) 2006 Love Words (CD Single) 2006 Hold the Fire
James himself had thirteen charting solo singles, with the three highest-charting being 1971's "Draggin' the Line" (#4), 1980's "Three Times in Love" (#19), and 1971's "I'm Comin' Home" (#40).
