Read And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records for Free Online Page A

largest label in the world.
    I was able to get almost anything played on WNEW, WLIR, and WPLJ (though I could never corner the impenetrable Jonathan Schwartz, who would run and hide when he saw a promo person). I was, at least by my own reckoning, off to a very good start.
    A year or so after I joined the company, we moved to 810 7th Avenue. Brand new offices in a classy building. This was nice. I still had to share an office—this time with the new head of album promotion, Jay Schick—but I didn’t mind in the least. Jay came from Florida, where he had been a court reporter. After a few too many “trips,” he decided to venture into the music business. I watched Jay closely to see how he worked; I saw that although he worked hard, he had trouble concentrating. He introduced me to what would become not only my new favorite drug but also the preferred drug of the early-to-mid 1970s: Quaaludes. We were at a concert together, and he casually offered me a couple of pills. I shrugged and thought, “What the hell?” I swallowed two of them. It was a very nice kind of high. It made my fingertips tingle and slurred my speech a bit, but rather than feeling mellowed out, I felt like getting up and doing something, anything—sex, cleaning, cooking. It just felt good to be active. The drug would prove to be Jay’s undoing, as it would cause him to pass out at very inopportune times, like when we were all in a meeting. He left the company shortly thereafter to return to Miami and his more lucrative court reporting gig. But he taught me one important lesson: never take ’ludes before dusk.
    The biggest advantage of my new office was that I was right next to Joe Fields, the head of sales. Joe, who was short in stature, had more energy than any ten people I have ever known. I absorbed a host of great sales skills just listening to Joe on the phone. He was a master, given that much of our product was very difficult to sell, especially in the inflated quantities Neil asked him to move. Joe could also hold his own with any radio person; the format did not matter. I can honestly say that he sold the Brooklyn Bridge to a few people and mean it literally and figuratively (the band The Brooklyn Bridge, that is).
    One story illustrates just how crazy Joe was. Joe and Neil went to a convention for Heilicher Brothers, a very influential distributor in the Midwest. To make an impression, they hired an old-fashioned prop plane and dressed as 1920 aviators; then they had the plane buzz the convention hotel a few times and land on the hotel grounds. After that stunt, who do you think was the talk of the convention?
    One of our major artists was Curtis Mayfield, who, before going solo, was the lead singer of The Impressions. Curtis, along with his manager and partner, Marv Stuart, had his own label: Curtom Records. Buddah manufactured, sold, and promoted the product, but Curtis had total control over the content. Neil usually wouldn’t hesitate to correct an artist if he thought his or her music needed a little something, but when it came to Curtis Mayfield, he would never assume he knew better. Curtis was a true superstar in those days. His albums always went Gold (half a million units sold), and he became a household name in the summer of 1972, when he created the music for the smash movie Super Fly, the soundtrack for which sold over three million units. But, as exciting as his albums were, he was incredibly dull in concert, anchoring himself in front of the microphone and barely twitching a muscle.
    In September 1972, I was sent to Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, to act as liaison between Curtis and the ABC people during the taping of the infamous pilot episode of ABC’s In Concert TV series. Also on the bill was Alice Cooper, the original shock rocker, whom Curtis was to follow onstage. The taping was a mess. ABC’s people did not have it together, and everything was way off schedule. We had been slated for a 12:00 a.m. start