In the early 60s, our big, dress-up occasions were opening night at The Copacabaña,
“the hottest spot north of Havana.”
The Copacabaña was the celebrated supper club in the cellar of the second-rate Hotel 14.
The canopied entranceway at 10 East 60th opened onto a mirrored staircase cascading down into a tropical forest of white, plaster Art Deco palm trees. When Jules Podell first took occupancy in 1940, the prevailing winds were wafting from South America, floating the fascinating rhythms of the samba.
Mom, Dad and me in the mid-50s, at the Copacabaña
The Copacabaña
Sam Cooke’s 1959 appearance was a disaster and a major setback to future performances by young rockers. At age 24, with just one hit (“You Send Me”) and little stage experience other than with his Soul Stirrers gospel group, Sam “laid a golden egg,” according to the black-owned Amsterdam News. Six years later, a savvy Sam Cooke, with a string of platinum hits and Alan Klein as his manager, returned to The Copa a big winner. Alan Klein was a little-known
“Copacabaña,” he thought, “had the right ring to it.” Jules Podell is legendary in the whispered stories of show business, but in the dozens of nights I visited The Copa, I never met, nor saw Jules Podell.
He preferred to hover in the background, barking orders, scarfing bourbon.
Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis satisfied The Copa’s preference for Italian singers and Jewish comics, a double-whammy by two bigger-than-life performers, who created pandemonium in an unprecedented 13-week engagement. Their final performance together was at The Copa, July 24, 1956, exactly ten-years to the day that they first appeared as a team at Skinny D’Amato’s 500 Club in Atlantic City. From this, Copa legend is born. Sammy Davis Jr. augmented Michael Durso’s orchestra with an entire string section that sat quietly in the dark for a full hour, waiting to fiddle for
just one song. Now that’s a star.
accountant who stepped in to renegotiate Sam’s contract with RCA, resulting in an unprecedented million-dollar advance. Klein heralded Cooke’s return to The Copa with a block-long billboard in Times Square: “The biggest Cooke in town.”
In 1960, Paul Anka at just nineteen, was the youngest performer to appear at The Copa, and the first teen idol who aspired to perform for adult audiences, opening for Sophie Tucker at The Sahara in Las Vegas and headlining Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel. Connie Francis, with her repertoire of Italian tearjerkers and bouncy pop ditties, was the perfect Copa star. In spite of her success, selling out the room to capacity crowds, Connie was almost thrown out on her ear. Her father was a major pain in the ass; “Get him out of here,” Podell screamed to her agent Ernie Martinelli, “or I’ll throw him and and Connie Francis out-a’ here!” Her father disappeared.
Jackie Wilson At The Copa, recorded during his April 1962 appearance, is Jackie’s only live performance album, offering just a hint of Jackie’s dynamic charisma. Unfortunately, an album can’t convey his epic showmanship, like Bobby Darin, he was bigger than the room, igniting a party atmosphere with infinitely more style and showmanship than any other teen idol.
The slickly-produced Motown acts should have been perfect for The Copa, but you cannot fool that sophisticated, sometime jaded, audience; this was, after all, not Las Vegas. Martha & The Vandellas and Gladys Knight & The Pips were among the first to succeed, with their razzle-dazzle hits, heavy on the horns, and spot-on choreography. The Temptations were also a perfect Copa attraction, sparked by both David Ruffin and Eddie Hendricks’ contagious energy, and, for the first time, their specially built microphone stand was introduced, with five mics on one stanchion, liberating the five Temptations to dance unencumbered.
For the debut of The Supremes, I invited their promotions director and his wife to be my guest opening night, as a token of appreciation for a recent visit to Motown. I gave them the deluxe New York treatment, sent a limo to their hotel, took them for pre-show cocktails, and then supper at The Copa. While I was wining and dining them, the room began to fill, elbow-to-elbow with the city’s top disc jockeys and their wives, all guests of Motown. Mary Wilson reported that the tab for the first show was $10,000, plus $4,000 in liquor. The Supremes were paid $2,700 a week. The tab for me: priceless.
I idolized Jackie Wilson and Bobby Darin. I am alone in my conviction that they were the same person, or by some trick of nature, identical twins. They did not possess God-gifted voices, and they lacked technique and training, but they were simply amazing entertainers, bigger than life performers, with cockiness beyond confidence, and a compulsive drive to succeed. They also shared similar onstage quirks: each walked with a swagger, danced a distinctive glide, and curled the corner of their upper-left lip in a devilish sneer. Both used their entire body to
emphasize a brass riff or to punctuate a drum accent, pumping their shoulders, popping their knees, and punching imaginary balloons with one finger. Each had one idiosyncratic move that set them apart - Bobby’s finger-poppin’ and Jackie’s dramatic drop to his knees. Jackie, severely brain-damaged from an on-stage stroke, died at age 49. Bobby died from a heart attack following a heart valve operation at age 37. I miss them both.
“Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.”
September 2001, I left Manhattan after 43+ years to settle into a remote little island on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, a "quaint little drinking
village with a fishing problem." Since I don't fish, kayak, canoe, golf or play "put-put," I decided to write a book. For the past three years I have been writing about my rock 'n' roll years (1953 - 1968), my fifteen-years of fame.
The book is now published by Morgan James, and available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders Books and all booksellers on October 1, 2009.
Marvin Gaye was still in his suave, Nat “King” Cole mode, crooning show tunes and standards, driving Barry Gordy nuts. At the Copa, Gordy would gnash his teeth and blurt out “Sing your hits! Sing your hits!” Gordy recalls, “We released an album of standards on him, The Soulful Sounds of Marvin Gaye. It contained some beautiful, classy vocals, but it didn’t do well. He was destined to be a crooner like Frank Sinatra. Whenever we approached him to do more commercial stuff, he stubbornly refused. Marvin was the most stubborn guy around.” Gordy finally turned him around with “Stubborn Kind of Fellow,” which catapulted him back onto the charts. (Marvin Gaye’s “live” Copa performance was recorded, but the album was never released – that is, until 2005. Marvin Gaye at the Copa is now available.)
