Free Here Comes the Night by Joel Selvin

being apart with his hands,” the FBI overheard his gangster uncle Dominick Ciaffone (Swats Mulligan) tell another boss.
    What Alan Freed did in New York City, Dick Clark would take across the land. The Philadelphia after-school TV teen dance party host went nationwide on the ABC-TV network in August 1957. After a four-week trial run, American Bandstand was being carried by sixty affiliates and watched by millions of viewers. ABC-TV added the show to its permanent daytime schedule.
    Freed and Clark were a study in contrasts. Sunny, squeaky-clean gentile Clark took over the local afternoon show in July 1956, after the original host was arrested for drunk driving. The twenty-six-year-old broadcaster quickly began to extend his tendrils into the music business. A grateful local label gave Clark a piece of the copyright to “Butterfly,” a hit by Philadelphia rock and roller Charlie Gracie, and introduced Clark to the publishing game. Gracie made twenty appearances on Bandstand before he sued his label for back royalties. He got a small settlement but never again appeared on Bandstand .
    As with the New York independents and the Freed show, a thriving Philadelphia independent record scene, with ready access to thenational exposure Bandstand afforded, grew up around the show—Cameo-Parkway, Swan, Jamie—and Clark had a piece of them all. He didn’t play the Danny and the Juniors record “At the Hop” until he owned half the publishing. When he did, the record was an instant smash. Clark played “Sixteen Candles” by the Crests on the Coed label only four times in ten weeks. But after the publishing was assigned to January Music, another one of Clark’s pubberys, he slammed the side twenty-seven times in thirteen weeks.
    With Freed and the rest of New York radio leading a nationwide surge, rock and roll was paying off big-time for the New York independents. Levy sabotaged Goldner’s Tico label when he advised his top record seller, Latin bandleader Tito Puente, to sign with RCA Victor in 1956 (where Puente would that year record his classic album Dance Mania) . Levy decided to enter the record business and took George Goldner as a partner, along with two other shady characters, Joe Kolsky, who had a piece of Goldner’s labels, and his brother Phil Kahl, who had been running Levy’s publishing. Together they started Roulette Records.
    Right out of the box in January 1957, they hit it big. Picking up a local master out of some oil blotch in Texas, Roulette released both sides of the original single separately and scored two huge rock and roll hits—“Party Doll” by Buddy Knox, which went all the way to number one, and “I’m Sticking with You” by Jimmy Bowen. By April 1957, trade magazines noted that Goldner had left the label and also sold his interests in the Gee, Rama, and Tico labels to Levy, failing to mention that Goldner was paying off gambling losses and that he was, at age thirty-nine, practically washed up.
    Down but never out after leaving Roulette, Goldner moved across the street and opened up Gone and End Records in 1650 Broadway. He had not lost his knack for finding hit acts. Five girls calling themselves the Chantels, who grew up singing together at St. Anthony of Padua School in the Bronx, all dressed alike and, after days of rehearsingtwo songs written by lead vocalist Arlene Smith, went downtown and presented themselves at Goldner’s office because he produced Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. Although Goldner frequently auditioned groups who dropped by—there were often lines waiting in the hallway outside his door—he wasn’t there that day.
    The girls shifted strategy and, a week later, stood outside the backstage door at the Brooklyn Paramount after one of the Alan Freed shows and performed an impromptu audition for the Valentines as they left the building. Richie Barrett immediately took the group under his wing and rehearsed them for weeks before presenting the group to Goldner.