Gettin’ Together With Tommy James, Onstage, Online, and On the Big Screen – Part Two
In part one, we talked with Tommy James about his most recent projects, including this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, his upcoming acoustic album, and his new YouTube series. In this portion of our interview, we’ll go a bit further back in time and discuss more of James’ history with Roulette Records and the music he originally released on the label.
REBEAT: You started out with very straightforward garage rock, and then went very AM pop, then psychedelic. Were you guys just experimenting or trying to find your sound?
TOMMY JAMES: Well, you know what it was? Basically, we were very fortunate at Roulette. You know, as many headaches as Roulette gave us, we were very lucky to be there because they actually needed us. They hadn’t had a hit in several years, and they left us alone and allowed us to sort of morph into whatever we could become. If we had gone with one of the corporate labels like CBS or RCA, I can tell you right now, especially starting out with a record like “Hanky Panky,” we would’ve been lucky to have been a one-hit wonder. We would’ve been sort of overshadowed by the competition [with] so many other artists on the label. And I tell you, we would’ve been handed over to an in-house A&R guy, and that’s probably the last time anybody would’ve heard from us.
At Roulette, we produced ourselves. We gradually started writing our own material. We had the attention of the public long enough that we morphed into these various styles, incarnations if you want to call them, from a garage band to heavier kinds of music and more serious kinds of music. We were left alone. I also was allowed to learn my craft of everything from producing to album design, and I completely learned the record business where I would have only learned bits and pieces of it anywhere else. So it was really great on-the-job training.
There’s always that small label advantage, I guess.
There is, and because it was an independent label, we had basically the power of the bigger distributorships. We had the power of a big label, and yet with the individual attention of a small label. I was very, very happy, from a creative standpoint, that we ended up at Roulette.
Were you Roulette’s biggest act at the time, or were there other bands on the label that did as well as you?
Well, of course, Roulette started out in the ’50s. They started out in 1956 with acts like Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen. They moved onto Joey Dee and the Starlighters, and of course George Goldner, who was one of Morris Levy’s partners, had End Records, which was distributed by Roulette, which had the Chantels, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Flamingos, Little Anthony and the Imperials. That was all distributed by Roulette.
Roulette was a very interesting place to be. They had a lot of hit singles. But until Crimson & Clover in 1969, they weren’t really selling that many albums. And we were just very fortunate that, right at the moment, we had Crimson & Clover because Crimson & Clover allowed us to make that jump from AM Top 40 singles to FM album progressive rock. And that allowed Roulette to start selling massive quantities of albums. So it was like an evolutionary process.
That sort of brings me to another weird little question. I’ve always wondered about that “I Am a Tangerine” song from Crimson & Clover. Was there any specific motivation behind that?
Yes, yes there was. It was called pot. [laughs] That is a lot of motivation! That was one of those songs that you never would’ve done any other way.
I was just wondering if there might be some concrete reason because, for example, John Lennon said “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds” wasn’t supposed to be LSD. It was inspired by his kid’s drawing.
Well, you know, it’s funny because when you’re looking to come up with songs and new material, you’re constantly looking for titles. And you never know, you may see it on a matchbook cover, you may see it on a billboard. You may just see a combination of words that works as a title, and you make it mean something else. You’re always looking for new material. And we still are always looking for new songs, new ways of saying things. You never know where inspiration is going to come from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5CUuXKeAs
Do you have a favorite song or album that you’ve ever done?
Well, for different reasons, yes. Of course, the most important record you can ever do is your first one, your first hit record. But basically, once we got going, I would have to say, there were two of them. One was the Crimson & Clover album because it was so radically different for us, and it really started our career in album sales. And then the second one, and probably the last album I actually did with the Shondells before I went out on my own, was Travelin’. And I must say, one of the ones I’ve done more recently is our Christmas album. It’s called I Love Christmas, and I produced it with Jimmy Wisner, who’s my old time partner, and that has been out for three years. Last year, we just put it out on vinyl as well. You know, vinyl’s making a big comeback.
Do you think that the vinyl comeback is helping your music in any way?
Well, we’re not really releasing any of our older songs on vinyl. We may, at some point. But I really believe — you know, we’re never going to see the days of vinyl like in the old days, but vinyl really has some interesting qualities about it. It’s bigger and you can really see the album cover, especially with a Christmas album. People want to hold a Christmas album in their hands. You don’t download a Christmas album. [laughs] There’s something about a Christmas album — it’s a present almost.
Have you ever had any surprise hits that you weren’t expecting to be as big as they were?
Yes, one of them was “Draggin’ the Line.” “Draggin’ the Line” was actually a B-side. It was the flip side of a record we had out called “Church Street Soul Revival,” and the strange part was, this is the first time that had ever happened where we put out a song and we actually got more airplay on the flip side. So we said, “Wow, radio seems to want that record,” and we went back in the studio and put a couple of horns on it and remixed it and put it out again as an A-side. And it immediately went Top 10 and #1 in a lot of places. That had never happened to us before.
I recently wrote an article about some of my favorite Shondells deep cuts, and I was wondering if there were any songs you released back in the ’60s that you expected to be a hit but didn’t seem to make it. Did you have any favorites like that?
Well, honestly, we were so lucky that we charted with basically everything we put out. But there were songs that would’ve been singles if we hadn’t had something else. Like there was a song called “Loved One” on the Cellophane Symphony album. If we hadn’t had “Crystal Blue” right there, for example, we would’ve probably done that as a single. And then there were records like “Sugar on Sunday” that we just put on an album and didn’t have time to really finish it as a single, and another group grabbed it, the Clique, and had a Top 5 record with it back in 1969. There were songs that I wrote, like “Tighter and Tighter” for Alive ‘N Kickin’ that I originally wrote for myself. But they asked if I’d produce them, and I had this song. And I rewrote it as a duet for them [since] Alive ‘N Kickin’ was a guy and a girl. We put it out on the track that I had originally made for myself, and we put their voices on it, and it was a #1 record.
We, just this last week, got a commercial for Samsung. You’re going to start seeing it in about a month, introducing their new phone, using a song from the Crimson & Clover album called “I’m Alive” with Johnny Thunder singing it. I produced him using my track. This was back in 1970, and it was put out as a single, but it never, you know, it never really happened. Well, all of a sudden, it was chosen as a commercial for Samsung, and it’s going to played all over the world now. So, I mean, it’s just so amazing to me. You just have your body of work available, and it gets used.
I have a new deal with Sony now, and Sony is representing us in movies and film and commercials and television soundtracks. They’re using our catalog of masters. I get asked a lot of times, for example, by young bands, what to do. And so many young bands want to go immediately for a record label. And the truth is, I think that the greatest thing that a young band can do, the fastest way to make it and the best way, is write about 20 or 30 songs, demo them, and then go for a publishing deal first, rather than a record deal, with a major publisher like Sony or EMI, and have the publishing company go into business with you on your songs. I think going to a publishing company is much smarter today than trying to go to a record company. Because first of all, the record labels aren’t signing anybody, and secondly, they’re not selling music. So, that’s just a little tidbit there.
Do you have any ideas for things you want to work on after your most recent album is released?
Well, there’s going to be a soundtrack album for the movie, obviously, and we’ll have some new songs on that. As we write, we put out material. It’s as simple as that. We have our own label now, so we can put out product all over the world. Because of downloading and streaming and other things, you’re not really as captive to a piece of plastic anymore. You really can put out your music in so many different forms now. There are so many different ways of delivering music now. You can get music to everybody all the time. You can release everything you have all at once. It doesn’t have to be one album at a time anymore.
Catch Tommy James performing with Felix Cavaliere on Saturday, June 20 at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in New Jersey, and on tour around the US. For the latest on his other projects and new album, visit tommyjames.com.
