Black Artists
The headlines constantly read “White Publishers Rip Off Black Artists For 100 Years” but look further and you’ll see that a majority are…
.
When Jerry Wexler reminisced about Atlantic’s
competitors in the early 1950s, he listed some of these labels and the grizzledinfighters who owned them: Exclusive (Leon and Otis Rene), Modern (the Biharis), Imperial (Lew Chudd) Specialty (Art Rupe), Old Town (Hymie Weiss), Herald/Ember (Al Silver), Chess (Leonard Chess), and other such memorable logos. Wexler concluded, “I am reminded of the tribes of the Sinai desert — the Hittites, the Moabites, the Midianites, the Amorites. Gone, perished, vanished from the face of the earth. Only one survived — the Hebrews.”
The Weiss Brothers (Fantasy Records) not only stole from John Fogerty from CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival), singling Fogerty out because he was the star. Saul Zaents not only financed (with Michael Douglas) “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” from Fogerty’s sweat, but he basically owned him for another 10 years, so Fogerty stopped making business until 1985 with his new album “Centerfield” but then was sued by Zaentz for “sounding too much like himself”.
They stole from Mort Sahl — the very first live comedy album. Here’s an excerpt of the interview between Sahl and the Library of Congress (where it is now protected).
Library of Congress: What are you feelings, in 2017, about the “At Sunset” album? I read at one time that you had some mixed feelings about it.
Mort Sahl: You know, it was illegal. It was stolen, recorded, by the Weiss Brothers who ran the Fantasy record label. They sold it commercially without any permission…. Later, they even sold the hungry i reunion. I was never compensated. And it was the first [stand-up] comedy
record!
LOC: You never saw any proceeds from the album at all?
MS: No. But it opened up the whole record business to me and I signed with Verve records after that. I then brought a lot of other comics to them — Shelley Berman, George Carlin, Mike
and Elaine. None of them had been recorded before. And I brought them Jonathan Winters, too.
By attending to record industry economics, we might move toward a more nuanced view of the postwar era. Jewish record owners’ appreciation of the music, and their attitudes towards race politics, has heavily influenced assessments of their treatment of black artists. At the top of what amounts to a morality scale are the do-gooders: Jewish owners who were both genuine jazz fans and deeply committed to the mid-century struggle for racial equality. Milt Gabler (Commodore), Norman Granz (Verve) and Alfred Lion (Blue Note) have been regularly commended for their impeccable musical taste, pro-equality racial views, and avoidance of unfair business practices. Just below this tier are those Jewish owners who have been subject to some criticism for allegedly underpaying black artists.3 Jerry Wexler (Atlantic)4 and Bob Weinstock (Prestige) are included in this group. However, because of their genuine appreciation for the music, and respect for the black culture from which it arose, these men have largely escaped harsh criticisms. A tier seemingly more prone to exploitation comprises Jewish owners, most prominently Leonard Chess (Chess) and Syd Nathan (King), who — although they may not have started out as fans of the music — could spot talent, and entered through their employment in other areas of the entertainment field. Their entrepreneurial instincts led to some success producing and selling records. Though initially these entrepreneurs focused singularly on profitability, some eventually gained an appreciation for the
music and the artists they recorded. These men also played a positive role in furthering good relations between black and white — Nathan, through his
efforts to end Jim Crow hiring practices, and Chess through the black-
oriented radio station he owned.5 Nathan drew his labor force from the multi-ethnic, multi-racial Cincinnati community. Included on his application for work was: “Do you object to working with a person of a different religion or race,” Zella Nathan John Broven has provided testimony depicting Jerry Wexler and the Ahmet Ertegun (at
Atlantic Records) as the elite, or “royalty,” of the business, but we confine our analysis to Jewish owners in this article.
Underpaying refers to the amount companies subtracted for studio expense charges, not to the terms of royalties artists earned, which were determined by the American Federation ofMusicians union scale.
Wexler was brought in by Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records.
For Chess, see Nadine Cohodas, Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the legendary Chess Records (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); for Nathan, see Steve Tracy, Going to Cincinnati: A History of the Blues in the Queen City (Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1993). For Nathan’s generosity towards Otis Redding’s nascent production group, see
Scott Freeman, Otis! The Otis Redding Story (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2001), 93.
Robert Cherry and Jennifer Griffith / Down to Business
recalled. “If you put yes, you were not hired.” In 1949, the Cincinnati Post
reported on how Nathan’s business policies undermined Jim Crow
segregation:
Two year ago they told … the King Record Co. … that it couldn’t be
done. “Cincinnati is a border town,” said the skeptics. “You can’t get
Negroes and white people to work together. It’s too close to the south …”
The skeptics were wrong … The musical director, assistant office
manager, foreman of the mill room, set up man on the production line,
assistant promotion director, legal secretary, a dozen stenographers and 20
percent of the factory workers are Negroes … “We pay for ability,” says
[operations manager] Mr. Siegel, “and ability has no color, no race, and
no religion. Our hiring policy and our promotion system are based only on
the question of the individual’s capacity to fill a given job.”7
At the bottom of the scale are record company owners who never gained
an overt appreciation for the music or artists they recorded, held no
appreciation for the culture from which the music arose, and seemingly paid no attention to advancing the rights of African Americans. The most-often identified member of this group is Herman Lubinsky, owner of Savoy
Records. Music writer Frank Kofsky claims that Lubinsky had a “scarcely
disguised distain for black art,” due to his “unwillingness to develop any
understanding — appreciation, of course, was entirely out of the question — of the art that brought him such lucrative returns.”8
Lubinsky’s son, Herman (“Dink”) Lubinsky Jr., admitted that his father
had little interest in the artists outside of business dealings. When asked if
Herman, Sr. socialized or took individual artists aside, he recalled, “He might have [taken an artist aside]. He might have done that. But did he have them over to his house for dinner? No. Did he go out and socialize? No. Nothing like that.”
Not surprisingly, critics contend that Lubinsky’s insensitivity towards
black music and the black experience was mirrored in his business practices.
Atlantic recording executive Joel Dorn called Lubinsky “a hemorrhoid of a
human . . . whom even the worst record business golems of the era shunned.”10
6 Julia Goldman, “The Other ‘King’ of Rock ’n’ Roll,” The Jewish Week (Aug 15, 2003) 21–22.
7 Steve Tracy, Going to Cincinnati: A History of the Blues in the Queen City (University of Illinois
Press, 1993) 120–121.
8 Frank Kofsky, Black Music, White Business ([n. c.]: Pathfinder, 1998), 42–43.
9 H. Lubinsky Jr., interview, January 31, 2012.
10 Shaun Dale, “It’s Not a Normal Life: Cosmik Interview with Joel Dorn,” accessed
11/12/10, http://www.cosmik.com/aa-april01/joel_dorn.html.
Journal of Jazz Studies4
Billboard executive Paul Ackerman characterized Lubinsky’s operations as
“slave barracks.”11 As a result, Lubinsky has become such a pariah that “when the New Jersey Performing Arts Center was about to mount a program on Savoy Records,” related Newark historian Clement Price, “we decided that it might be too controversial given the then coded notion that the company may have unfairly treated its black artists and we canned the event.”. We contend that whatever Lubinsky’s personal shortcomings, the
evidence of his having treated black artists worse — in terms of business
dealings — than other independents remains unconvincing. Randall Sandke
agrees that Lubinsky “earned a dismal reputation by paying musicians as littleas possible.” Sandke, however, does not believe that Lubinsky exhibited different behavior among Savoy’s “interracial array of artists.” Whatever his shortcomings, Lubinsky fulfilled the necessary role that music-industry middlemen played: “the necessary link between black artists and white audiences … opening up unprecedented opportunities for African American artists.” Tiny Prince, who covered the night-club scene for the Herald News in the 1940s, observed:
There is no doubt everybody hated Herman Lubinsky … At the same
time, some of those people — many of Newark’s top singers and
musicians — would never have been exposed to records if he didn’t do
what he did. Except for Lubinsky, all the hot little numbers, like Buddy
Johnson’s “Cherry” would have been lost. The man may have been
hated, but he saved a lot of our history — for us and for future
generations.”
We situate Lubinsky, more generally, in the highly competitive world of
the independent record owners in the postwar era. The behavior of Jewish
record owners during this period, we argue, reflected more the changing
economics of the industry than their personal attitudes. Jazz as a commercial enterprise had its ups and downs across the mid-century, but in times of decline, most record companies became desperate to survive and were forced
to make difficult business decisions. To highlight these economic concerns, we
Quoted in David Ritz, Faith in Time: The Life of Jimmy Scott (New York: Da Capo, 2002),
92.
12 Clement Price, personal correspondence, January 20, 2012.
13 Randall Sandke, Where the Dark and Light Folks Meet (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press,
2010), 172.
14 Ibid, 172.
15 Ibid., 197.
16 Barbara Kukla, Swing City: Newark Nightlife, 1925–50 (Philadelphia, PN: Temple
University Press, 1991), 158.
Robert Cherry and Jennifer Griffith / Down to Business 5
will show how differences in business practices of such exemplary figures asNorman Granz and Milt Gabler, compared to those of George Wein and Bob Weinstock, were the result of the changing financial viability of jazz
recordings and concerts.
SAVOY RECORDS
Herman Lubinsky’s first love was electronics and, as owner of United Radio
based in Newark, NJ, began selling records out of his radio parts store. This
led to the establishment of Savoy Records in 1942. He recorded some of the
first bebop jazz sessions, capturing the early work of Charlie Parker, Miles
Davis, and Dexter Gordon. From the start he recorded a blues component
that included artists such as Varetta Dillard, Big Maybelle, and Nappy
Brown.17
While Savoy had produced gospel records from the beginning — including
a Clara Ward bestseller in 1949 — Lubinsky only began to concentrate on
gospel when he refused to give payola (the practice of pay-for-play in radio
stations), when it became widespread in the late 1950s. “Lubinsky didn’t
appreciate that type of operation, and we didn’t have it in the gospel field —
and still don’t,” explained Fred Mendelsohn. “There are not that many
companies and not that many releases. Jockeys are happy to get new gospel
releases.”18 In the 1960s, Lubinsky and his company men helped church
singers, like the Reverend James Cleveland and Dorothy Norwood, to become
household names in black neighborhoods nationwide. When Lubinsky died in
1974, still working out of Savoy’s Newark office, Clive Davis at Arista Records
acquired the label’s catalogue.19
Stories of Lubinsky’s tight-fistedness are legendary. Lubinsky’s eldest
daughter, Lois Grossberg has stated,
He had a reputation as an ogre in the business … You have no idea of the
cheapness. He paid his bills, but he was always arguing with the
17 According to Bob Porter, a broadcaster and record producer who worked at Savoy during
the Arista ownership beginning in 1975, Lubinsky also tried western music, Yiddish, sweet
bands and novelty recordings in the early years, but gradually moved away from these in favor
of black music styles. Bob Porter, personal communication, May 13, 2012.
18 Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years Of Rhythm And Blues (New York:
Crowell-Collier Press, 1978), 356.
19 Barbara Kukla, Swing City: Newark Nightlife, 1925–50 (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1991), 153. Bob Porter reports that Screen Gems, the music publisher which partnered
with Arista, was folded into the deal when Arista bought Savoy (B. Porter, personal
communication, April 11, 2011).
Journal of Jazz Studies6
repairmen. He always thought he was getting gypped. Other than a
Fleetwood Cadillac and a boat at the Shore, he didn’t have any simple
pleasures. He never enjoyed his money.20
Relying on the testimony of the musicians, Barbara Kukla has highlighted
Lubinsky’s mistreatment of a local Newark (NJ) group, The Dictators.
Lubinsky’s first recording venture was to release four of their tunes, in 1942,
without giving them any money, even for the recording sessions. Though they
admitted that they eventually earned “a few dollars,” the experience more than
soured the group on Lubinsky. Without knowing what the initial agreement
was, or if Lubinsky made money on the recording, it becomes difficult to
evaluate this evidence. When interviewed decades later, Al Henderson, the
group’s lead singer, claimed, “There ain’t nobody who has ever had a kind
word to say about him. The S.O.B. was the worst thief in the world. He made
millions on us [black musicians] and he wouldn’t pay you nothin.”21 But the
Dictators’ lack of subsequent recordings through other companies also
suggests that Lubinsky was hardly responsible for their relatively small
success.22
Lubinsky had little understanding of the music Savoy produced but he
employed a series of highly talented Jewish A&R men (artists and repertoire):
Teddy Reig, Fred Mendelsohn, Ralph Bass, and Lee Magid. He was astute to
rely on them to recruit new artists, and for their judgments concerning
recording decisions. These A&R men believed that Savoy was no different
than its competitors in its financial treatment of black artists. Fred
Mendelsohn described the financial constraints that Savoy and others worked
under. His testimony points to conditions under which royalty payments were
later a possible source of confusion for artists.
Herman was a very tough, hard individual, difficult to work for and often
an intolerable man. But he was honest. None of the musicians really were
robbed. They all signed contracts and got five percent royalties. The fact
was the money for the session had to be recouped before they got
royalties, not just at Savoy, at every company.23
20 Quoted in Kukla, 154. Arnold Shaw (351) noted that Lubinsky had a bachelor’s apartment
in New York City where he was “acting the man-about-town.”
21 Kukla, 155.
22 Kukla (155–56) cited the claims of Picadilly Pipers who alleged that after their hit “Don’t
Stop Now” sold 80,000 copies, Lubinsky only gave them $75 instead of the $8,000 the group
felt they deserved. Even if the sales figure is accurate, at 2 cents per record, the gross would
have been $1,600 from which recording expenses had to be subtracted.
23 Kukla, 157.
Robert Cherry and Jennifer Griffith / Down to Business 7
Here, Mendelsohn described the standard contracts that artists signed.
Contracts gave artists a fixed percentage — 3 to 5 percent — of the record sales
as royalties, minus the cost of producing the record and any advances given.24
While certainly the owners could “cook the books” by overstating recording
costs, the main problem less successful artists faced was a lack of sufficient
record sales, especially in the 1950s as jazz record buying waned. In addition,
most contracts were for the exclusive right to record. Thus, if another label
wanted to record an artist under contract, it would have to negotiate with the
label that held the exclusive right.
Summing up the financial risk, Herman Lubinsky, Jr. portrays his father’s
position (or the position of any record company owner) in light of his
experience of artists’ inflation of their own success:
When you hire a studio, and you hire a band, and an arranger, and studio
time, and all of this stuff … And you bring a guy in, and you give him
some money for coming in. You pay the musicians and background
singers, and you put the record out, and you have them printed and
stamped … and the record doesn’t sell — you’re out that. There’s no
remuneration for that. Then a guy maybe sells 10,000 records, and then
tells you he sold 100,000 or a million — they all do that.25
Lubinsky, Jr. notes that,
My old man’s gotten a lot of bad rap as not being good to artists or for
being tough … A lot of artists will say the old white independents
screwed them. But my father never took a penny of royalties from those
people, and the woman who worked for him for 45 years taking care of
that, Helen Gottesman, she wouldn’t take a nickel.26
Another A&R man, Lee Magid, who left Savoy because of the minimal
salary he received, suggested that in the highly competitive music world of the
1950s, where survival was uncertain, the independents had to fight for every
dollar they could. He argued,
Lubinsky is one of those old, hardcore guys, like Syd Nathan, of another
era. But he keeps a tight rein. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I
24 Our efforts to obtain information about Savoy’s contracts and financials — of the decades we
discuss — were unsuccessful. Should we have gotten the flights and accomodations, Dan Marx,
in charge of Savoy’s historical records, was available on too limited a basis to accompany us to
a remote warehouse in Georgia where they are stored.
25 Herman Lubinsky Jr., interview, January, 2012.
26 Bill Carpenter, Mavis Staples, and Edwin Hawkins, Uncloudy Days: the Gospel Music
Encyclopedia (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 2005), 259.
Journal of Jazz Studies8
don’t care. Maybe he ain’t right with this and maybe he ain’t right with
that, but then who is? Unless you’re dealing with your top companies.27
Arnold Shaw had business dealings with Lubinsky when he joined
Edward B. Marks Music Corporation. Assessing Lubinsky, Shaw concluded,
Having fought his way to eminence in a very tough field, Lubinsky was
never an easy spender. But record producer John Hammond remembers
him as a man who was helpful to many jazz musicians; apparently,
Herman guarded his generosity. He was a hearty, energetic and
dedicated man, and I liked him.28
These more favorable assessments, of course, obscure the potential
thievery by omission that looms over such “deals.” Artists who had seen only
unfair contracts were hardly in a position to recognize a fair deal or to know
how to make a better deal. But this occurred throughout the record business.
Kukla sums up,
From the artists’ perspective, Lubinsky was a wily, unethical shark out
for bucks, a man who could locate a vulnerable point, then go for the
jugular. But times were hard, opportunities limited, and money tight, so
they tended to set aside their fears and suspicions, succumbing to what
often amounted to their only chance to record their music.29
Sadly, the artist had little choice in the early recording environment except to
see it as a means toward gaining exposure, not as a money stream from the
music recorded. Herman Lubinsky Jr. points out that,
The artist would get what was coming to him with the royalties. The
purpose of a record for an artist wasn’t the royalties, like today where
they sell millions and millions. The purpose was to get you known and
get you booked, your manager gets you in clubs and gets you a tour … I
mean, only if you were a Sinatra or a Crosby, you might make a lot of
money.30
27 Shaw, 363.
28 Shaw, 351.
29 Kukla, 155–156.
30 H. Lubinsky Jr., interview, January, 2012. Dink’s testimony points to other branches of
exploitation. In exploring the origins of claims of artist exploitation, and clarifying Lubinsky’s
role, we might examine divisions outside company owners’ domain that confuse and
complicate matters of artists receiving their financial due. During the postwar period, artists
made most of their money on live appearances. Recordings were used to create publicity,
which helped artists obtain more concert dates and higher pay for their performances. Hence,
live performances increasingly became opportunities for exploitation — by venue operators,
Robert Cherry and Jennifer Griffith / Down to Business 9
According to one account, Savoy supposedly took advantage of Charlie Parker,
not paying him for songs recorded in 1945, including “Ko-Ko.” Subsequent
behavior by Parker, however, supports the idea that he had a square deal from
Lubinsky. (At this stage in his career he might more than likely have recorded
for cash to support his drug habit.) Even at the height of his popularity in the
late 1940s, there seemed to have been no hard feelings between Parker and
Lubinsky. In December 1947, Reig approached Parker to do another session
on Savoy. According to Miles Davis, “Billy Shaw, who had a lot of influence
over Bird and was, I think, a co-manager, told Bird that he had to stop
recording for small labels like Dial and stick with a big label, like Savoy.”31
Although not a definitive indication that Parker was always treated fairly by
Savoy, Davis’s story calls into question claims that Lubinsky was among the
worst exploiters.
SAVOY AND LITTLE ESTHER
Esther Mae Jones’s story further illustrates the complexity and competitiveness
of the independent record company environment in postwar years. In 1949,
Lubinsky visited Los Angeles where he immediately signed the thirteen-year
old Esther Mae Jones, known as “Little Esther,” who had stopped the show
cold at an amateur night performance. She was a singer in Johnny Otis’s band,
and her first Savoy recording, under the guidance of Otis and Ralph Bass,
produced the classic tune, “Double Crossin’ Blues.” The side was an
immediate hit and made her a star. By the end of 1950, Little Esther had six
record releases, many with Otis’s band, all good sellers, one true classic, and a
host of awards and in-person appearances that made her a nationally known
performer.32
Controversy arose after the new year began. On January 5, 1951, the
Superior Court of California appointed Esther’s mother as her legal guardian
booking agents, and managers. Jimmy Scott’s case serves as an example of how artistic careers
were vulnerable to unfair practices particularly by managers (see Shaw, 358). See also David
Ritz, 58–59, for claims of exploitation against Gladys Hampton (manager of Lionel
Hampton’s band), and 71–72 for Magid and Wexler’s assessments of Teddy Reig in
relationship to promoter Jimmy Evans, with personal stories from Chuck Berry and Jimmy
Scott.
31 Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1989), 106. By “big,” Shaw means those labels with good distribution and an advertising
relationship with Billboard, Cash Box, or other industry trade publications that published
charts of song popularity.
32 J. C. Marion, “The Story of Little Esther,” accessed 10/12/10,
http://home.earthlink.net/~jaymar41/Lesther.html.
The recent death of the great Rock & Roll pioneer Chuck Berry at 90 years of age, and the “love” being showered upon him, offers us the opportunity to really understand the life and legacy of a music legend. As an artist in the 1950s, Chuck Berry was one of many brilliant Black guitarists playing an electrified urban blues style, a fraternity that included such greats as B.B. King, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Buddy Guy. But Berry infused enough of the country twang into his style to “cross over” to the much larger and more lucrative white market. The power of his signature guitar riffs ushered many of his white imitators into superstardom. Berry was pop music’s most influential sound and the very first inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Forget Elvis, forget the Beatles, forget Bob Dylan, forget the Rolling Stones — Chuck Berry is the King of Rock & Roll.
Though his music legacy is well established, far less known is Chuck Berry’s long and bloody battles with the cutthroats, exploiters, leeches, and piranha that infested the top rocker’s financial career. Seems that the big names now “paying homage” to a musical mentor were not just imitators — they were thieves. The Beach Boys were legally forced to give Berry a writing credit for their mega-hit Rockin USA, when it was shown to be a direct larceny from Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen. The Beatles played Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven as their very first song of their very first American tour. Berry had to sue them for lifting the iconic Come Together from his song You Can’t Catch Me. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones made the larcenous brag, “I lifted every lick [guitar riff] he ever played.”
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, himself a master musician and playwright, spoke harshly of this underworld that our entertainers must traverse if they wish to gain the fame and fortune they worked so hard to achieve. Here, The Minister serves up a word of warning:
“I think we have made a grave mistake; we have been deceived into thinking that the Jews have been our allies in our recent civil rights struggle…Yes, he poses as your friend. He’s with you as an agent, he’s with you as a manager, he’s with you as an investor, he’s with you as a guide in economic development, but he has never asked you to do what he has done. He networks with other rich, influential Jews and he buys, he invests, he’s in trade and commerce.”
Though the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has showcased The Minister’s words as though they are manifestly untrue and “anti-Semitic,” Chuck Berry is the veritable poster boy for the reality that The Minister describes.
The pillaging of Chuck Berry’s talent began on his first foray into the music world, when he was lured into the orbit of the notorious Chess brothers of Chicago. Brothers Lejzor and Fiszel Czyz were the sons of Jewish immigrants from Poland. As so many Jews have done, they Anglicized their names, rechristening themselves Leonard and Philip Chess. They became liquor store and saloon owners in Chicago’s South Side, catering exclusively to Blacks, many of whom had made the trek from the South during the Great Migration. Between 1940 and 1960, the Black population in the city grew from 278,000 to 813,000. And many of these refugees brought with them a love for the Blues, a uniquely Black musical art form with roots in the deep plantation South. Leonard and Philip recognized the demand for that cultural genius and set up a recording studio to usurp its market potential.
Chuck Berry heard of Chess studios and in 1955 he signed a contract with them to make his first record Maybellene. The record hit big and Berry went on a national concert tour. Berry chronicled a series of financially questionable incidents in his 1987 memoir, Chuck Berry: The Autobiography (1987):
Chuck Berry’s contract guaranteed him sixty percent of the box-office income at each of his concerts, which would have paid him $750 (this is equal to about $9,000 in 2017 money), but he would only get $150 if the crowds were not large enough. Maybellene was the number 1 hit in America and the crowds were huge. Still, the “big beer-bellied bully” of a manager assigned to Berry by the Chess brothers kept telling him that “they just missed” the box office and so he was entitled to just $150. Berry started counting the audience while on stage and confronted the manager, who told Berry that if he wanted more he would have to “prove it.” Berry wrote: “the 10 percent of all income I was paying [Chess’s assigned manager] was not in the least being earned.” After catching the scoundrel cashing checks made out to him, Berry fired this “manager” and began managing himself.
Chuck Berry saw the actual 45 record of Maybellene when his tour reached New York. It was stacked to the ceiling in boxes in the office of one of the Chess’s distributors. Berry noticed that two people he never heard of were listed on the record as co-writers! The names were Alan Freed, the crooked Jewish disc jockey implicated in the 1960s payola scandal, and another man named Russ Fratto, the landlord of the Chess office. And this “writer’s credit” would entitle those ghost swindlers to two thirds of the royalties, the sole writer and performer — Chuck Berry — receiving just one third. It seems that the Chess brothers perpetrated that open thievery as a bribe to Alan Freed to play their records on the radio, and as a payoff to Russ Fratto, a printer to whom the Chess brothers owed money. It took Berry until 1986–31 years — to get those slugs off the record credits, but not before Chess, Freed, and Fratto syphoned millions from Berry’s account. Today it is called identity theft, then it was called business.
Berry wrote of Leonard Chess’s “tactics” of financial deception. Posing as Berry’s friend, Chess brought Berry out to a big breakfast, and then let Berry use his Eldorado Cadillac to visit a friend on the other side of town. When Berry got back to the Chess studio, he found that his band was backing up another artist in a recorded “audition” that ended up at the top of the pop charts. And you guessed it — with no compensation to the musicians or to Berry.
Chuck Berry lamented that his youthful enthusiasm and his hopes and dreams of becoming a recording artist caused him to enter into regrettable contracts with gangsters — all of whom “happen” to be Jewish — despite the clear guidance from both his parents. His father, a contractor, warned his son: “One must read and comprehend all obligations.” His mother’s advice was succinct and pointed: “Don’t let the same dog bite you twice.”
Berry, a very well-educated man, had all the musical talent, but he had to get costly on-the-job training to understand the intricacies of recording contracts and music publishing, royalties and percentages, copyrighting, recoupables, and service fees, and the ins and outs of doing business with booking agents, lawyers, and road managers. It begs the question, How could two Jewish saloon owners and liquor dealers, whose parents had so recently arrived from Poland, have obtained such a vast knowledge of the music business and the benefits of a national network of operatives at their disposal to then so smoothly and completely rip off so many Black artists?
Minister Farrakhan said that “he poses as your friend” in order to get access to your genius. One writer discussing the Chess legacy observed that the brothers had even adopted the Black man’s ways. The Chess brothers were “influenced by the jargon used by their performers, using black slang — often profane — in their business dealings…[T]he brothers’ speech was a mixture of heavy Chicago accent, with a hint of Yiddish and a lot of black expressions.”
And it gets even friendlier. Berry wrote of “a certain Jewish girl” who “suddenly showed up” at his concerts in deep dark Mississippi without a care about the racial codes of the 1957 American South. “She popped up in the most weird places,” Berry wrote, and exhibited an alluring behavior that he described as “too bizarre.” One might easily speculate that the “certain Jewish girl” was another of the Chess-assigned “managers” hoping to use her wiles to siphon even more of Chuck Berry’s wealth. Mossad has certainly found that tactic to be extremely effective.
The Chess brothers parlayed their ill-gotten gains into absolute control over the Chicago music scene and legacy. In 1963, they bought the radio station WHFC, which they renamed WVON — VON stood for “voice of the negro,” and it became a successful R&B station. Imagine that: two Jewish gangsters claiming to be the Voice of the Negro!
A Jewish writer acknowledged that the Chess operation could be compared to sharecropping, and ultimately it began to collapse around them. Chess was sued for underpayment of royalties by the great Howlin’ Wolf (Chester Burnett) in 1974, and again in 1976 by blues artists Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield). Howlin’ Wolf’s claim for $2.5m was settled after his death. Dixon and Waters used their award to start their own label.
Can Farrakhan be more exact? Let’s look at his words again, as recorded by the ADL:
“I’m here to tell you no Black man or woman becomes a multi-millionaire without friendship in the Jewish community. Did you know that nearly all prominent Negro actors and musicians have or had Jewish sponsors and managers? They have a way of attaching themselves to your gifts, but you get nothing. They get it all.”
If anything, Chuck Berry was a fast learner. He was ultimately able to free himself from the clutches of those Jews he referred to as “swindlers.” At his recent passing Berry’s estate is said to be worth $50 million, and that includes publishing rights to most of his 200 songs, and royalties that could amount to $500,000 per year. He also invested in real estate all over the country. The irony is that his music made a talentless gaggle of schemers much, much more. The Chess brothers contributed to Jewish institutions and causes, which gladly turned a blind eye to the Chess brothers’ “fundraising” methods. In his thoughtful and analytical 1987 autobiography, Chuck Berry went back to his St. Louis church roots in discussing the Chess brothers’ pillaging of his wealth and his talent: “Woe be unto him whose wrongs are revealed.”
But if you need some laughter (while still being informed), why not kill (bad expression) two birds with one stone with the Out For Smokes podcast.