The Jews who
dominated Tin Pan Alley and the turn-of-the century vaudeville world were also
central in the popularization and propagation of profoundly demeaning
African-American stereotypes. Pamela Brown Lavitt notes Tin Pan Alley and the
many onstage Jewish "coon callers":
"Jewish women vaudevillians at
the turn of the century popularized what is now a little-discussed and
misunderstood performance venue, known as "coon shouting" ... Trying
to break into the entertainment business, [Tin Pan Alley entrepreneurs']
aesthetics were circumscribed in a vehemently anti-black and xenophobic milieu.
By the mid-1880-s they had formed a tight-knit Tin Pan Alley industry that came
to dominate vaudeville and early black musicals ... Intended as comedy, coon
song ranged from jocular and dismissive to cruel and sadistic ... Coon song
sheet music and illustrated covers proliferated defamatory images of blacks in
barely coded slanderous lyrics. For example, the 'N' word and associated
inferences were dispatched in words like 'mammy,' 'honey boy,' 'pickinniny,'
'chocolate,' 'watermelon,' 'possum,' and the most prevalent 'coon.'"
[LAVITT, P., 2000, p. 253-258]
Especially well known Jewish
"coon callers" included Sophie Tucker, Stella Mayhew, Fanny Brice,
Anna Held, Eddie Cantor, and Al Jolson.
Jews have long gravitated to an
entrepreneurial exploitation of the Black cultural scene and jazz music. As
Burton Peretti notes:
"Aside from the hazards of the
mob [organized crime] environment, the exploitation faced by jazz players was
rather typical for this era [1930s and 1940s]. Jazz, like minstrels and ragtime
before it, came under the control of professional promoters who sought to make
music profitable. [They adapted] the technique of advertising, song plugging,
and vaudeville ... Some promoters, like Joe Glaser (who managed Louis Armstrong
in the thirties) were associates of organized crime who left the underworld
when prohibition was repealed. Glaser apparently had overseen Al Capone's
profits from the Sunset Cafe and a prostitution ring before he became
Armstrong's manager in 1935. Many more promoters, however, were veterans of Tin
Pan Alley, Manhattan's song-publishing industry, including Irving Mills, a
former singer and songwriter who managed Duke Ellington's and other black bands
in the thirties." [PERETTI, p. 147]
Glaser ran the Associated Booking
Corporation, often "the exclusive agent for many of the top Black
performers. He became a close associate of many of the top underworld figures
in Chicago and New York, whom he met through his band-booking agency."
[MOLDEA, p. 14] Glaser had been an early partner in the company with eventual
MCA chief Jules Stein. In 1962, mob-linked attorney Sidney Korshak, also
Jewish, gained control of the ABC company. [MCDOUGAL, p. 141] Mills and Paddy
Harmon, owner of Chicago's Dreamland Cafe, "sought and gained spurious
renown, as Mills took partial credit for many Ellington compositions and Harmon
patented and gave his name to a trumpet mute that had long been popular among
Joe Oliver and other black players." [PERETTI, p. 148]
The rip-off of Black artists was a
norm for the era. As Al Silverman notes in the case of Fats Waller: "In
his time Fats wrote the melodies to over 360 songs. Not that many bear his name
today, unfortunately, because when money was needed he'd write the music and
sell all rights to unscrupulous Tin Pan Alley characters." [SILVERMAN, p.
129-130] "That practice of show business share-cropping ... in the 1920s
and 1930s," notes the director of Harlem's Apollo Amateur Night, Ralph
Cooper, "existed right on through the fifties and sixties. Its bitterness
still exists among many performers to this day -- a bitterness from the theft
of their songs, their sound, their talent." [COOPER, p. 199]
Jewish singers "Sophie Tucker,
Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson," notes Donald Fischer, "performed in
blackface at the beginning of their careers, singing black songs. They later
built on their successes in this medium to develop national statures and
professional sucesses with other music. However, their early songs were for the
most part borrowed or plagiarized from African-American sources, with little or
no public recognition -- or monetary reward -- for the creative talents that
produced them." [FISCHER, D., 6-30-2000, p. 21A]
Jews were also prominent in the
overseeing of the Black community's jazz life, including the control of musical
clubs in Black neighborhoods in a variety of American cities. "The
invasion of the Black community by organized crime lords with connections to
downtown money," notes Ted Vincent, "was certainly the most
sensational contribution to the loss of Black oversight of neighborhood dance
halls and theatres." [VINCENT, p. 176] "Slumming resorts" served
a largely non-Black audience and "were noted for their riverboat decor,
fake magnolia plants, and nearly nude dancers ... Perhaps the nationwide
pioneer in the resorts was Isadore Shor's Entertainment Cafe." [VINCENT,
p. 78] In Harlem, such clubs included Connie's Inn (owned by Connie Innerman)
and the famed Apollo Theatre. "From the opening of the [Apollo] building
in 1912 until 1934," notes Vincent, "the theatre was a showcase for
white [i.e., largely Jewish] vaudeville burlesque shows, with white strippers
coming to be the main attraction." [VINCENT, p. 189] The Apollo was
eventually sold by "Burlesque Kings Hurtig and Seaman" to Sid Cohen
and Morris Sussman, and then to Frank Schiffman and Leo Brecher. Brecher also
owned the Douglas, the Roosevelt, the Lafayette Theatre ("the prime showcase
for black talent in America") [COOPER, p. 44], and the Harlem Opera House
located a block from the Apollo. [VINCENT, p. 189-192] Jay Fagan, and Moses and
Charles Gale (Galewski), founded the popular Savoy Ballroom in 1926.
Mel Watkins notes the reputation in
the Black community of dominant mogul Frank Schiffman:
"Schiffman was a controversial
figure in black entertainment. Admired and respected by some, scorned and
excoriated by others, he was rarely viewed neutrally. His Machiavellian
approach to business is a matter of record, and most would admit that he was an
unrepentant shark in business matters. He quickly eliminated his competitors
and for decades eradicated all serious competition, which earned him the
grudging esteem of other showmen. Among performers, however, the estimate was
not glowing. Of his knowledge of black acts, John Bubbles [an African-American
performer of the era] said, 'Only thing he knew was how to get people cheap as
he could, and work them as long as he could.' And John Hammond, a record
producer and friend, flatly declared 'Frank had no artistic taste at
all.'" [WATKINS, M., 1994, p. 386]
Samuel Charters and Leonard Kunstad
note the situation of another famous nightclub:
"The Cotton Club had opened at
142nd St. and Lexington Ave. in 1922 with a strict policy of white only. The
owner, Bernard Levy, had pressed his policy, despite loud protests from the
Harlem community. He used Negro orchestras and a Negro revue and ran it as a
tourist attraction for society people who wanted to see a little of 'Harlem
life' ... The club was forced to admit colored patrons during the next winter,
but the prices he kept high and it remained predominantly a tourist attraction
until the Depression." [CHARTERS, p. 217] New York's Latin Quarter club
(with eventual branches in other cities) was also owned by a Jew, Lou Walters,
father of famous newscaster Barbara Walters; Monte Kay was the founder of the
famous Birdland jazz club. He too was Jewish. Mobster Morris Levy later
controlled the place. As Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway notes about a common
undercurrent in such night life: "Jewish Gangsters frequented nightclubs
... In fact, Jewish underworld figures owned many nightspots and speakeasies.
In New York, Dutch Schultz owned the Embassy Club. Charley 'King' Solomon owned
Boston's Coconut Grove. In Newark, Longy Zwillman owned the Blue Mirror and the
Casablanca Club. Boo Boo Hoff owned the Picadilly Cafe in Philadelphia.
Detroit's [Jewish] Purple Gang owned Luigi's Cafe, one of the city's more
opulent clubs. Jewish singers and comedians, such as Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor,
Fanny Brice and Sophie Tucker played in the mob clubs." [ROCKAWAY, R.,
1993, p. 205]
Upset with outsider exploitation and
degradation of the Black community (where many night clubs were located), there
was an effort by the Marcus Garvey African-American movement as early as the
1920s to institute Black-owned Liberty Halls "where the musical offerings
would be part of an overall effort at community uplift and not just a profit-oriented
business." [VINCENT, p. 114] (From France, even the international jet-set
luxury playground/resort of "Club Med" was founded by Gerard Blitz,
and built to power by Gilbert Trigano. Both are also Jewish. By 1999 the firm
had 116 sites in 36 countries, now headed by Gilbert's son Serge. [REGULY, E.,
4-25-88, pl. 24; MCDONELL, E., 5-1-99, p. D10] Hollywood's Roxy nightclub was
founded by the Jewish managerial trio of David Geffen, Loud Adler, and Bill
Graham. [KING, T., 2000, p. 187]
Jews have of course been prominent
over the years as musical performers. These included three of the most
influential band leaders of the 1930s -- Benny Goodman ("the King of
Swing"), Harry James, and Artie Shaw (Arthur Arshansky). More recent
popular names include Leonard Bernstein, Andre Previn, Arthur Fiedler, Stephen
Sondheim, and many others.
As noted earlier too, by the 1930s
MCA (Music Corporation of America) was a powerful talent agency, founded by
Jules Stein and built later to power by Sidney Sheinbein and Lew Wasserman, who
ultimately became one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Ronald Brownstein
observes that: "By the mid-1930s, MCA controlled many of the country's
most popular bands, from Tommy Dorsey to Artie Shaw." [BROWNSTEIN, p. 181]
For years, MCA's Jules Stein, adds Michale Pye, "ran the music business so
toughly that no dance hall would stand against him." [PYE, p. 18-19] In a
1946 antitrust trial that MCA lost, a Los Angeles federal judge "declared
that MCA held a virtual monopoly over the entertainment business." The
presiding judge also stated that MCA was "the Octopus ... with tentacles
reaching out into all phases and grasping everything in show business."
[MOLDEA, p. 2, 3] "The one man," notes non-Jewish band leader Guy
Lombardo, "who probably more than any other solidified the business and
hastened the era of the Big Bands was Jules Stein. He had started his Music
Corporation of America in Chicago and to that city gravitated bands from all
over the country, seeking the buildup and engagements they would get if MCA
took them in the fold." Lombardo was also under contract to Stein.
[LOMBARDO, G., 1975, p. 153] Stein even wrote an introduction to Lombardo's
autobiography.
For years MCA increasingly
interfaced with Chicago's Mafia and other underworld personalities. Seemingly
omnipresent in Hollywood was lawyer Sidney Korshak. "A close friend of
Stein's and Wasserman's," says Dan Moldea, "Korshak quickly became
one of the most powerful influences in the entertainment industry and in
California politics ... [MOLDEA, p. 5] ... Korshak ... has been described by
federal investigators as the principle link between the [Hollywood] legitimate
business world and organized crime." [MOLDEA, p. 2]
And rock and roll? The Jewish
foundation continued. "The most famous and important [rhythm and blues
disc jockey]," note Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo, "was ... Alan
Freed, the father of Rock 'n' Roll ... Freed was credited with co-writing
fifteen rock and rock hits including Chuck Berry's 'Maybelline,' but he did
little more than promote any of them." [CHAPPLE, p. 56-57] A biography of
Freed notes that "by 1956, there was no bigger name in rock and roll than
Freed, except Elvis Presley." [JACKSON, p. ix] (Another of America's best
known early disc jockeys was also Jewish, Murray the K, aka Murray Kaufman). In
1960, Freed was indicted for accepting $30,000 in bribes to play songs at his
radio station. "[Freed] grabbed the kids and led them to the great rock
candy mountain," says Albert Goldman, "He named their music, coined
its us-against-them rhetoric, created rock show biz, including the package tour
... Alan Freed is really one of the principal exhibits in the Rock 'n' Roll
Hall of Ill Fame ... [He] was not only a crook but a self-righteous hypocrite.
Even [Freed's manager] Morris Levy [with deep ties to the criminal underworld,
particular the Mafioso Gigante family] had to concede that the 'Father of Rock
'n' Roll' was not a nice man. Speaking as one Jew to another Jew about a third
Jew, Levy said simply: 'He could have been another Hitler.'" [GOLDMAN, p.
519-520]
In a book about the Atlantic Records
empire (later swallowed by Warners), Dorothy Wade and Justine Picardie noted
Morris Levy and the kinds of people that populated the rock and roll industry:
"The truth is, with or without mob connections, Morris Levy was much more
typical of the new music moguls than either [non-Jewish] Ahmet Ertegun or
[Jewish] Jerry Wexler ... The world in which Atlantic had to survive was
populated largely by hoodlums and hustlers." [WADE, p. 57] As Syd Nathan,
the owner of King Records, once said, "You want to be in the record
business? The first thing you learn is that everyone is a liar." [WADE, p.
60] "The early rhythm and blues companies were run by a fraternity of Jews
... They were tough and they were shrewd -- some say unscrupulous -- and they
were alternately loved, despised, respected, and feared. The deep bond of these
cultural outsiders prompted one gentile, mild rebuke in his voice, to comment
that 'Yiddish was the second language of the record business." [COHODAS,
N., p. 3-4, 2000]
"To the general public,"
notes Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo, "the music business seems to have
a tremendous amount of corruption." [CHAPPLE, p. 226] "I think in
Hollywood," media psychologist Stuart Fischel of California State
University at Los Angeles told the Los Angeles Times in 1993, "people get
into a kind of mind meld. You can come in as a relatively moral and ethical
person, but eventually [Hollywood] produces a re-socializing of a subculture
with different norms and ethics based on hedonism and materialism. It's hard to
know what's going to breach the bounds of acceptable criminality in
Hollywood." [ELLER, p. B8, B11] Aside from drugs, prostitution, and all
the other extracurricular norms of the interrelated music, film, and television
worlds of Hollywood, just at the most basic business level, "payola
[bribery] has been a key factor in the establishment of major artists,"
says Roger Karshner, "the evolution of publishing dynasties and the
creation of recording empires. Payola, layola, and taking care of business are
the ABC's of the music industry past and present. It has taken many forms, and
many publishers, artists, managers, and record people at all levels have
participated in payola practices." [KARSHNER, p. 39]
Probably the most important early
rhythm and blues recording company was Chess Records, founded by Leonard and
Phillip Chess, Jewish immigrants from Poland. They started out with a scrap
metal business in the ghetto, then moved into the liquor business, eventually
owning several bars in the Black neighborhoods of South Chicago, including the
large Macamba Club, which was "reputedly a prime center for prostitution
and heavy drug dealing." [DIXON, p. 78] The Chess brothers soon recognized
a profitable opportunity open to them with the many Black musical acts that
played at their nightclubs; the entrepreneurs soon embarked upon a recording
business, eventually producing blues, gospel, and rock and rock music. Seminal
Black artists who signed on to the Chess label included Bo Diddley, Howlin'
Wolf, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Etta James, Chuck Berry, and many others.
Berry's songs were among the most influential in rock and roll history.
"Some people have called Leonard and Phillip Chess visionaries who
recognized the potential in the visceral blues of post-World War II Chicago,
"says Don Snowden, who co-wrote the auto-biography of bluesman Willie
Dixon, "A far greater number have branded the Chess brothers as exploiters
who systematically took advantage of the artists who created that music."
[DIXON, p. 78] The Rolling Stones even found seminal bluesman Muddy Waters
still painting the Chess's home when they came to record in Chicago. [WADE, p.
71]
Frank Schiffman, owner of a number
of musical venues in New York's Harlem area, "was a ruthless competitor
who would do anything, including take advantage of his black employees and
exploit the great black artists who worked for him, in order to increase his
profits and beat down the opposition." [COOPER, p. 44]
"Remember [Black singer] Little
Eva Boyd?" asks Ralph Cooper, "She worked as a babysitter for two Tin
Pan Alley [Jewish] rock and roll writers, Carole King and Gerry Goffen. They
wrote a song called 'Loco-Motion' and they asked her to sing it ... Now [1990]
she lives in North Carolina, where her people are from. She's a working mother
on welfare. She works in a barbeque kitchen as a cook." [COOPER, p. 196]
In 1997, Black singer Darlene Love
won a lawsuit for back royalties against famous Jewish musical producer Phil
Spector. (Originally awarded $263,000, it was later dropped down to $130,000.)
Love was the anonymous lead singer on a number of 1960s-era Spector productions,
including He's a Rebel, Da Do Ron Ron, He's Sure the Boy I Love, and other
hits. In the early 1980s Ms. Love found herself cleaning toilets for a living,
but her singing career later flourished anew. [WILLMAN, C., 10-15-88, CALENDAR,
p. 10; WARRICK, P., 11-2-98]
"I didn't know anything about
the record business," said early rock and roll sensation Little Richard
(of "Tutti Frutti" fame) about his rock and roll career. " I was
very dumb ... I was just like a sheep among a bunch of wolves that would devour
me at any moment. I think I was taken advantage of because I was uneducated. I
think I was treated inhumane ... I think I was treated wrong and many people
got rich out of the style of music I created. They are all millionaires, writ
many times, and nobody offered me nothing." [WADE, p. 74] Dorothy Wade and
Justine Picardie note Little Richard's lamentation, then add: "To which
many, if not most, of his black musical contemporaries would add: Amen."
[WADE, p. 74] Among others, Richard had in mind the Jewish owner of Specialty
Records, Art Rupe, who many years ago bought the rights to his songs for a
paltry $10,000.
Chuck Berry remembers being cheated
by the Chess brothers: "[Phil Chess finally acknowledged] in writing that
no songwriter royalties had been paid for three years on my Chess Records
product ... [And in a review of Chess documents] I was surprised to learn that
I had been paid the same songwriter royalties for an LP as I was receiving for
a single record. Chess claimed to be unaware of this 'mistake,' as if they had
never noticed that LPs had between eight and ten songs on them." [BERRY,
C., p. 246-247]
"In 1974 Howlin' Wolf filed a
lawsuit against Arc Music [the publishing wing of Chess Records, it was
co-owned by the Chess brothers and two brothers of Jewish band leader Benny
Goodman] [COHODAS, N., 2000, p. 37] asking for $2.5 million for unpaid
royalties from his songs ... In 1976 Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon filed
identical lawsuits against the publishing company, alleging fraud and
conspiracy and asking to paid money damages and to have their publishing
contracts voided." [COHODAS, N., 2000, p. 308]
In 1972, Martin Otelsberg became the
manager of African-American musician Bo Diddley. Suspecting in later years that
he had been swindled, Diddley filed suit against Otelsberg's estate in 1994 and
recovered $400,000. As Diddley's lawyer (also Jewish) John Rosenberg noted,
"This is a typical story that's happened time and again to musicians like
Bo." [MORSE, S., 6-18-94, p. 28] Diddley complained of being cheated by
the Chess brothers as well. "To me every nationality has a reason for
bein' here," said Diddley, "an' mostly all the Jewish people own
everything. They got all the money. Give him a thousand dollars, he'll turn it
into ten million. How the heck they do it, I don't know." [COHODAS, N.,
2000, p. 110]
The Jewish agent-producer
exploitation of Black recording artists in the early rhythm and blues era of
the 1940s and 1950s (and later) was predominant and widespread, entrenching a
Black hostility among many to their Jewish financial controllers to the present
day. The following Jewish entrepreneurs were among those who founded record
labels featuring mainly Black talent: Herman Lubinsky (Savoy Records); the
Braun family (DeLuxe Records); Hy Siegal, Sam Schneider and Ike Berman (Apollo
Records); Saul, Joe, and Jules Bihari (Modern Records); Art Rupe (Specialty
Records-- its biggest hits were those of Little Richard); Lev, Edward, and Ida
Messner (Philo/Aladdin Records); Al Silver and Fred Mendelsohn (Herald/Ember
Records); Paul and Lilian Rainer (Black and White Records); Sam and Hy Weiss
(Old Towne Records; Sol Rabinowitz (Baton Records -- Rabinowitz eventually
became vice president of CBS International); and Danny Kessler (head of OKeh
Records, a "cheap" branch of Columbia Records). Sydney Nathan
controlled both the King and Federal record labels and Florence Greenberg owned
the Mafia-influenced Scepter Records (featuring the Shirelles and Dionne
Warwick). "Those illiterates," Hy Weiss of Olde Towne once said about
his recording artists, "they would have ended up eating from pails in
Delancey Street if it weren't for us." [WADE, p. 70]
"The record producers were
white," says Nadine Cohodas in her book about the Chess brothers, "their
talent for the most part black, many from impoverished backgrounds and few with
much formal education, living in a society that regarded them as second-class
citizens. The deals between the two parties were not the negotiations of peers.
The relationship coluld be paternalistic, even condescending. At Chess it
sometimes looked as though Leonard and Phil gave their musicians an allowance
rather than a salary." [COHODAS, N., 2000, p. 4]
The history of rock and roll is, of
course," notes Rich Cohen, "riddled with pioneering white record men
who built careers recording, and sometimes, exploiting black artists: Morris
Levy, that burly, cigar-smoking product of the Brill Building, allegedly
stealing writing credits from Frankie Lyman; Herman Lubinsky, the founder of
Savoy Records in Newark, New Jersey, throwing around nickels as if they were
manhole covers." [COHEN, R., 6-21-01]
In Philadelphia, in 1984 lawsuits
were swirling around WMOT, a company that "developed a reputation as an
aggressive independent record producer specializing in the 'Philly
sound.'" Formerly owned by Steve Bernstein, Alan Rubens, and David
Chacker, it was acquired by Michael Goldberg, Allen Cohen, and Jeff and Mark
Salvarian. Lawsuits even named Israel's Bank Leumi among defendants in a scheme
to use the record company to launder drug money. The central player in this
accusation was Larry Lavin, who was indicted as the "kingpin of a
13-member [drug] ring that allegedly sold $5 million of cocaine a month."
[DAUGHEN, 1984]
By 1978 president Oscar Cohen of the
Associate Booking Corporation presided over "the country's biggest black
talent booking agency." [SHAW, A, p. 419, p. 133] Recurrent,
"mobbed-up" Morris Levy even eventually owned Birdland in its heyday,
the famous jazz club. [WEXLER, p. 130] Levy also controlled the Roulette Record
label. Nat "the Rat" Tarnopol headed the Brunswick label (Jackie
Wilson was one of its most prominent African-American stars). Tarnopol was
indicted twice in the 1970s "for using payola, drugola, and strong-arm
goons to get radio airplay for Brunswick recording artists." [MCDOUGAL, p.
366]
An early and important supporter of
disc jockey Alan Freed and his own empire was Leo Mintz, who owned a large
record store near Cleveland's Black ghetto. Even earlier, Eli Oberstein founded
Varsity records in the 1930s, Joe Davis launched Beach records in 1942, and
"Jake Friedman had Southland, one of the biggest distributing outfits in
the South." [SHAW, A., Honkers, p. 236] "The whole history of rock
'n' roll," noted the London Guardian in a review of Jewish author Michael
Billig's book about the subject, "has been portrayed as white artists
'ripping off' black music. Only now [with Billig's volume] has the major Jewish
contribution been acknowledged." [ARNOT, C., 10-4-2000, p. 6]
Atlanta-based Mark Shimmel, for instance, is the CEO of LaFace Records, which
headlines TLC, Usher, Tonik Braxton, GoodiMob, "and a raft of hot hip-hop
artists ... He built his own company, managing talents as varied as John Denver
and Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn ... He doesn't worry much about what he
calls 'the white guy in the black music business.'" He has also worked
with Huey Lewis, Harry Belafonte, Ray Charles, and former Eagle Don Henley.
[POLLAK, S., 1-7-00]
**********
Joseph Heller, formerly of
Heller-Fischel, booked acts like Styx, the Electric Light Orchestra, Boz
Scaggs, and a variety of others. "He represented top-drawer rock talent
like Van Morrison, the Guess Who, Marvin Gaye, War, Elton John and Pink Floyd."
[SNYDER, N., 2-19-01] Stretching out as dangerously as possible to make a buck,
Heller eventually gravitated towards a relative goldmine in the Black
ghetto-based "gangsta rap." He cofounded Ruthless Records and managed
the pioneer rap group NWA (Niggaz With Attitude) from early in their careers.
The musical genre of gangsta rap, notes Jory Farr, "thrives on misogyny,
as well as homophobic and race-baiting rage ... [It] was the perfect music for
[a] lifestyle loaded down ... with warnings of betrayal, murder, revenge, and a
short life." [FARR, p. 70] "I believed that rap would become the most
important music of the nineties," said Heller, "... [But] you can't
sell two million rap records to kids in the inner city. That's a way to sell
200,000. You have to market it to the white kids." [FARR, p. 68, 71]
Heller hired Ira Selsky as his
corporate attorney and an Israeli-born security chief named Michael Klein to
ward off angry, exploited Blacks who quite literally walked into his office
threatening to kill him. Rap star Ice Cube even threatened Heller in one of his
recorded songs, prompting the Anti-Defamation League to flag it as
anti-Semitic. Ruthless Records released a Jewish rap duo called Blood of
Abraham. As Chuck D, the lead vocalist for the Black rap group Public Enemy,
noted, "There's no way to get trained on the seamier elements of the music
business being on the street -- that element is reserved for boardrooms."
[D, CHUCK, p. 85] Those in Chuck D's reminiscences about "boardroom"
behavior include Lyor Cohen (manager of Rush Productions, and an Israeli); Al
Teller, an executive at MCA whose parents died in the Holocaust; Steve
Ralbovsky of CBS; Bill Adler (a publicist); and Rick Rubin of Def Jam Records.
(Jewish diamond dealer Jacob Arabo has made the news as a favored jewelry
merchant to the Black rap crowd that seeks to symbolize wealth and power, or,
as the New York Times put it, "the jeweler who gives most of today's
leading rappers their shine." [CENTURY, p. 1]
In 2001, Heller was named the
"Godfather of Latin Rap" by the Los Angeles Business Journal; he was
joining in attempting to build a rap movement in the Latino market via Hit a
Lick records. As the Journal noted:
"If Heller is convinced that
Latin rap will emerge as the next big thing, it probably will be, said other
music industry veterans ... Indeed, Heller is widely acknowledged as one of the
key forces behind gangsta rap's crossover into the music mainstream ... While
Heller has the second-tier title of chief operating officer, he acknowledges
that the other partners 'generally run everything by me because of my
experience and expertise.'" [SNYDER, N., 2-19-01]
By 2001 too, the aforementioned Lyor
Cohen had catapulted to power in the Rap world. Rolling Stone even magazine
featured an article about him, sub-titled How Lyor Cohen -- the White, Jewish
Israeli-Raised President of Island Def Jam Records -- Became One of the Most
Important Men in Hip-Hop, and Why He May Now Become One of the Most Important
Men in Rock & Roll." Cohen started out promoting punk rock acts like
the Circle Jerks, Social Distortion, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He then
became president of the rap music label Def Jam in 1988 and soon had become
"perhaps the most powerful white executive in an African-American business."
(Def Jam was bought out by the Jewish-owned Polygram company in 1999). Irv
Gott, a Black record producer, notes that Cohen is
"a white Jewish guy, but I
think everybody respects him like he's black. He knows how to carry it too. He
knows how to get gangster, how to fall back, when to shut the fuck up, whento
say something. That's why other white executives are scared of him. He knows
how to deal with the hoods, the criminal element."
Cohen, continued Rolling Stone, has
broadened his musical base and "oversees an empire that includes hundreds
of artists performing in dozens of genres, a roster that features PJ Harvey,
American Hi-Fi, Shelby Lynne, Lionel Richie, Bon Jovi, Melissa Etheridge,
Saliva, Ludacris, Kelly Price and Sisquo." Cohen's nickname is "Little
Lansky" (after famed Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky). He was born in New York
City "where his father, an Israeli, worked in the consulate." He was
later raised on an avocado farm near Tel Aviv. [COHEN, R., 6-21-01]
Cohen has also been active in trying
to readjust Black consciousness of Jewish exploitation of the African-American
community. "In the late Eighties," notes reporter Rich Cohen,
"when [Public Enemy's] album It
Takes a Nation of Milions to Hold Us Back was topping the charts, the group's
minister of information, Professor Griff, made several anti-Semitic statements.
As a Jewish exec working with the band, Cohen found himself in the middle of a
rough, formative experience. 'When Professor Griff from Public Enemy said what
he said, and it caused this whirlwind, the whole industry asked me, 'What the
fuck are you doing?' says Cohen. 'Every president of every record company
called and said, 'Drop them: But I believe part of being Jewish is education.
And I believe I was instrumental in changing Public Enemy's views. I said,
"Your voice is being muted because you say Jews are this or that. You
can't make blanket statements. If you want your message out there" -- and
it was profound, I think -- "stop generalizing." And I was the only
Jew in their lives. What if I resigned? They would only be more alienated. I
hadn't quite being a Jew. I can't quit being a Jew. Instead, I tried to have an
impact. I felt like I was doing the right thing. Not just as a Jew, as a
person. They had a big voice da nation of millions, to quote their album I had
the Holocaust Museum [the Simon Wiesenthal Center] shut down, and we had a
private tour. The first thing you see is a Jewish skull plus a black person's
skull equals a baboon. The last thing is a monkey with enormous lips dressed
with a Star of Daivd holding a trumpet and a sign saying, 'It's these Jews that
are bringing in this music call jazz.'" [COHEN, R., 6-21-01]
Then there is former tax attorney
Joe Weinberger who drives a Jaguar S-200, wears a diamond-studded Rolex watch
and "fat gold rings," and carries a "9mm automatic pistol tucked
in his pocket." As the Miami New Times notes about his rise to power in
the African-American rap music world,
"In the early Nineties, Miami's
reigning booty-rapper, Luther Campbell, hired Weinberger away from the carpeted
hallways of a swash Brickell Key law firm to help manage a growing musical
empire and its attendant lawsuits. Within five years Campbell was bankrupt and
Weinberger had purchased the rights to his music. Rather than return to the
comfortable confines of his former life, the 42-year old lawyer, who is single
and childless, opted to launch his own label, Lil' Joe ... In a post bankruptcy
fire sale overseen by Richard Wolfe [Weinberger's lawyer/partner, also Jewish],
Weinberger bought the rights to 2 Live Crew music for about $800,000, plus the
outstanding money he claims Campbell owed him." [KORTEN, T., 8-10-2000]
Weinberger has even been accused of
ordering a car bombing and directing death threats against an employee.
Then there is Canada-born Bryan
Turner, who founded Priority Records in 1985; he is also Jewish. [JEWHOO, 2000]
By 1998, Priority had yearly sales of $250 million. As the Los Angeles Times
notes:
"When the pioneering gangster
rap group N.W.A. was looking for its first record deal, it found a distributor
in Priority Records, which released an album so obscene it prompted a letter of
complaint from the F.B.I. When Ice-T left Warner Brothers Records after police
groups and the company's shareholders objected to his song 'Cop Killer,' he
found a new home at Priority. When Suge Knight, the imprisoned head of Death
Row Records, who is known for his pugnacious business tactics, was looking for
his first deal, Priority gave it to him. Through all the violence and
controversy of hardcore rap music -- from its roots in N.W.A to its current
resurrection with Master P -- the Los Angeles label Priority Records has been a
major player." [STRAUSS, N., 9-3- 98, sec. E, p. 1]
And as the Times noted on another
occasion: "When Time Warner first parted ways with rapper Ice-T after the
'Cop Killer' flap and then with rapper Paris over a song that portrayed an
assassination fantasy of President Bush, Turner wasted little time signing
deals with both artists." [HOCHMAN, S., 7-30-95, CALENDAR, p. 82]
Jewish entrepreneur Steve Rifkind
has also become very successful in the rap music field. In 1993, Rifkind
founded and still heads Loud Records (its president is Rich Isaacson). Earlier,
Rifkind began the Steven Rifkind Company, "a consulting firm specializing
in Rap and R&B." Loud acts include Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, Yvette
Michelle, Funkmaster Flex, Alkaholics, Raekwon, and Xzibit. The company's value
is estimated at about $100 million. [collegemusic.com/1-11-00]
"Rifkind," notes the online magazine Entrepreneur,
"who trademarked the term
'Street Teams,' takes marketing to the street -- literally -- by hiring youths
to tell their communities about his artists' music. 'My philosophy has always
been 'You can't stop word-of-mouth, explains Rifkind, who has street teams
across cities, distributing free singles to teenagers at housing projects and
schools, and scrawling the names of his albums in the dust on parked trucks,
which then serve as mobile billboards." [entrepreneur.com]
Yet another major Jewish rap
entrepreneur is the aforementioned Rick Rubin, who, says Jory Farr, found his
"biggest stars were former gangsters who used beats and rhymes to
glamorize wealth, dope, and violence. Deciding who to sign could be a moral
quagmire ... but Rubin wasn't one to be bothered by the trivia of social
responsibility." [FARR, p. 126] "I could do anything I wanted,"
Rubin once said about his own family life in New York, "We were always upper
middle class. We were wealthy for the community we lived in. In a sense I was
spoiled." [FARR, p. 119]
Rubin's record company Def American
is now called American Recording; at one time Geffen Records distributed
Rubin's material. Earlier in his career he had signed bands like Slayer (whose
lyrics exhorted "everything from virgin sacrifice and satanism to sadistic
mutilations and the atrocities of Auschwitz" [FARR, p. 109]) and the Geto
Boys, who "pushed misogyny and sadism to new depths." [FARR, p. 108]
Rubin's own star rose so high that he eventually produced albums for Mick
Jagger and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Troubles, however, came from a lawsuit
against him by Adam Horowitz of the Beastie Boys and threats from the Meir
Kahane-founded Jewish Defense League. Outraged by Rubin's promotion of
violently anti-Jewish lyrics by Black ghetto groups, the Jewish group
reportedly came looking to beat him up. Rubin couldn't understand their anger.
He told an interviewer that
"They should've talked to me
and found out what I felt before coming to attack me, because I was a JDO
[Jewish Defense Organization] supporter. When I was at NYU I saw [right wing
rabbi] Meir Kahane speak and he blew me away -- he was amazing ... After
hearing him speak, I wanted to pack my bags and go to Israel ... I called the
JDO several times, wanted to join, but they never returned my calls."
[FARR, p. 123]
Among the most controversial
"gangsta rap" labels was Death Row Records (including Tupac Shakur,
Dr. Dre, and Snoopy Doggy Dog). A noted earlier, Death Row products were
distributed by the Jewish-dominated Time-Warner company until "pressure
from stockholders after an outcry over the flagrantly violent and misogynist
lyrics" of its stars. Time-Warner dropped the label, but eighteen months
later it was picked up (for $200 million) by the Universal Music Group, a
subsidiary of the Jewish Bronfman family's Seagram company. Universal too
eventually abandoned the controversial label, only after "pressure from
stockholders and regulators." [HELMORE, E., 8-29-97, p. 10]
Still another Jewish push -- more
recently -- into the rap world is Koch Entertainment's In The Paint record
label. Koch, one of the largest "independent music distribution
companies," is headed by founder and CEO Michael Koch and President Bob
Frank. [kochentertainment.com]
And lastly for the music scene, the president and CEO of the Recording
Industry of America -- a lobbying group (with a staff of 72) for the big record
companies -- is also Jewish, Hilary Rosen, who was described in 1997 by the
Washington Post as "a powerful woman in an industry dominated by men. One
of the most influential yet least known players in the U.S. entertainment
behemoth." [WEEKS, p. C1] Rosen became the CEO when another executive,
Jason Berman, stepped down from the position.
C. Delores Tucker, the founder of
the National Political Congress of Black Women, has singled out Rosen's
organization for special condemnation:
"In terms of children, the RIAA is the most
destructive lobbying force in America. It is incomprehensible that anyone with
an ounce of concern for children would be demanding the promotion,
distribution, and sale of gangsta-porno rap to children." [WEEKS, p. C1]
