Lots of people and groups have been wrongly neglected by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but had more or bigger hits, or a weirder journey through the underbelly of the music business, than the guy born Thomas Gregory Jackson.
James started out as Tommy Jackson, the 12-year-old frontman of Tom and the Tornadoes of Niles, Mich. He was still in high school in 1964 when his group, renamed the Shondells in honor of long-since-forgotten singer Troy Shondell, cut a song called “Hanky Panky” for a local record label. It was a regional hit, but without wider distribution it went no further and the Shondells, having graduated high school, disbanded. It wasn’t until more than a year later that a DJ in Pittsburgh started playing it at dance parties that the tune started generating buzz, and a black market for re-recordings of the single.
James didn’t learn about it until 1966, when another Pittsburgh DJ wanted the Shondells to perform live. “I had no group, and I had to put one together really fast,” James said. “I was in a Greensburg (Pa.) club one night, and I walked up to a group that was playing that I thought was pretty good and asked them if they wanted to be the Shondells. They said yes, and off we went.”
Where he went was New York, where he signed with Morris Levy, the notorious mob-connected head of Roulette Records. The roller-coaster ride that followed was the subject of James’ 2010 memoir, “Me, the Mob, and the Music,” wherein he meets some of the wise guys bankrolling his career — guys with names like “Fat Sammy” Salerno and Vincent “the Chin” Gigante. When a mob war broke out in New York, James was advised to get out of town, so he moved to Nashville and recorded the only country album of his career.
Given that this is a political blog, perhaps the most interesting story James tells is about the time he gave Hubert Humphrey a “black beauty,” the street name for a popular amphetamine. James and the Shondells played a gig at one of Humphrey’s campaign stops in August 1968 and wound up playing at Humphrey rallies until the election.
He would always call us into his suite after each rally for a big pow-wow. His doctor would be there. People would come from D.C. to visit. He was proud of us and he liked to show us off. One night he was complaining of being so tired. “I’m downright drowsy,” he complained to me when we were alone, “and I have to stay up late writing.” I told him I had what I called some ‘stay-awake’ pills in my pocket. “Well,” he asked, “do you think a thing like that would work?” I said, “I think it would, Mr. Vice President. I take it when I have to stay up late composing.” Red lights should have gone off all over the place, but he took it from me and he told me a couple of days later, “That darn thing kept me up all night.”
The song was written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, who wrote a lot of early ’60s hits. They recorded it with their own group, the Raindrops, as a B-side, which is where James heard it. It has none of the raw energy of James’ version. The lyrics are a little different because, James admitted, he was working from memory.
