3 Rabbit Band

3 Rabbit Band

Monday, July 30, 2012

Roulette Records



Roulette Records is an American record label founded in late 1956 by George Goldner, Joe Kolsky, Morris Levy and Phil Khals, with creative control given to producers and songwriters Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore. Levy was appointed director. The label had known ties to New York mobsters. Levy ran the label with an iron fist. Goldner subsequently bowed out of his partnership interest in Roulette, and sold his labels Tico, Rama, End, Gone and Gee record labels to Morris Levy to cover his gambling debts. Peretti and Creatore later left Roulette Records and worked as freelance producers for RCA Records throughout the 1960s. They co-founded Avco Records in 1969.
Levy grouped Gee, Rama and Tico into Roulette Records. Some years later, Levy also bought Gone Records and End Records from Goldner. In 1958, Roost Records was purchased. In 1971, Roulette took over the catalog of Jubilee Records.

During the late 1950s, Roulette scored hits by Buddy Knox, Jimmy Bowen, The Playmates, Jimmie Rodgers, Ronnie Hawkins as well as albums by Pearl Bailey, Dinah Washington and Count Basie.
During the early 1960s, Roulette issued a number of hits connected to the twist dance craze, most notably by releasing "Peppermint Twist" by Joey Dee and the Starliters. They also released a rare album of "Twist songs" by Bill Haley & His Comets, Twistin' Knights at the Roundtable. Other major 1960s hits for the label include "Two Faces Have I" by Lou Christie, "Mony Mony", "Hanky Panky", "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells, among others. It was also on the Roulette label that, in 1964, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay first recorded together while in the nine-member A Go Go Singers, house band for the Cafe A Go Go in New York. And a group of United States Marines called The Essex recorded the hit "Easier Said Than Done" while based at Camp LeJeune in the 1960s.
According to Tommy James of Tommy James and the Shondells, during his time at the label, Roulette was a front business for the Genovese crime family. James estimates that the label kept $30 million to $40 million of the group's royalties, but afforded it total artistic freedom whereas another label would have tampered with its formula and might have dropped the group early on.








































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