[Excerpt
about Jewish enterepreneurs in the music world, and Black talent, from Chapter
24]
Decades ago, Jews also began gravitating
to an entrepreneurial exploitation of the Black cultural scene and jazz music.
As Burton Peretti notes:
"Aside from the hazards of the mob
[organized crime] environment,
the exploitation faced by jazz players
was rather typical for this era
[1930s and 1940s]. Jazz, like minstrels
and ragtime before it, came
under the control of professional
promoters who sought to make music
profitable. [They adapted] the
technique of advertising, song plugging,
and vaudeville ... Some promoters, like
Joe Glaser (who managed Louis
Armstrong in the thirties) were
associates of organized crime who left
the underworld when prohibition was
repealed. Glaser apparently had
overseen Al Capone's profits from the
Sunset Cafe and a prostitution
ring before he became Armstrong's
manager in 1935. Many more
promoters, however, were veterans of
Tin Pan Alley, Manhattan's
song-publishing industry, including
Irving Mills, a former singer and
songwriter who managed Duke Ellington's
and other black bands in
the thirties." [PERETTI, p. 147]
Glaser ran the Associated Booking Corporation, often "the exclusive agent for
many of the top Black performers. He became a close associate of many of the
top underworld figures in Chicago and New York, whom he met through his
band-booking agency." [MOLDEA, p. 14]
Glaser had been an early partner in the company with eventual MCA chief Jules Stein. In 1962, mob-linked attorney Sidney Korshak,
also Jewish, gained control of the ABC company. [MCDOUGAL, p. 141]
Mills and Paddy Harmon, owner of
Chicago's Dreamland Cafe,
"sought and gained spurious renown, as Mills took partial credit for many
Ellington compositions and Harmon patented and gave his name to a trumpet mute
that had long been popular among Joe Oliver and other black players."
[PERETTI, p. 148] The rip-off of Black
artists was a norm for the era. As Al Silverman notes in the case of Fats
Waller:
"In his time Fats wrote the
melodies to over 360 songs. Not that many
bear his name today, unfortunately,
because when money was needed
he'd write the music and sell all
rights to unscrupulous Tin Pan Alley
characters." [SILVERMAN, p.
129-130]
"That practice of show business
share-cropping ... in the 1920s and 1930s," notes the director of Harlem's
Apollo Amateur Night, Ralph Cooper, "existed right on through the fifties
and sixties. Its bitterness still exists among many performers to this day -- a
bitterness from the theft of their songs, their sound, their talent."
[COOPER, p. 199]
Jews were also prominent in the
overseeing of the Black community's jazz life, including the control of musical
clubs in Black neighborhoods in a variety of American cities. "The
invasion of the Black community by organized crime lords with connections to
downtown money," notes Ted Vincent, "was certainly the most
sensational contribution to the loss of Black oversight of neighborhood dance
halls and theatres." [VINCENT, p. 176] "Slumming resorts" served
a largely non-Black audience and "were noted for their riverboat decor,
fake magnolia plants, and nearly nude dancers ... Perhaps the nationwide
pioneer in the resorts was Isadore Shor's Entertainment
Cafe." [VINCENT, p. 78] In Harlem, such clubs included Connie's Inn (owned by Connie Innerman)
and the famed Apollo Theatre.
"From the opening of the [Apollo] building in 1912 until 1934," notes
Vincent, "the theatre was a showcase for white [i.e., largely Jewish]
vaudeville burlesque shows, with white strippers coming to be the main
attraction." [VINCENT, p. 189] The Apollo
was eventually sold by "Burlesque Kings Hurtig and Seaman" to Sid
Cohen and Morris Sussman, and then to Frank Schiffman and Leo Brecher. Brecher
also owned the Douglas, the Roosevelt, the Lafayette Theatre ("the prime showcase for black talent in
America") [COOPER, p. 44], and the Harlem Opera House located a block from the Apollo. [VINCENT, p. 189-192]
Jay Fagan, and Moses and Charles Gale (Galewski), founded the popular Savoy Ballroom in 1926.
Samuel Charters and Leonard Kunstad note
the situation of another famous nightclub:
"The Cotton Club had opened at 142nd St. and Lexington Ave. in 1922
with a strict policy of white only. The
owner, Bernard Levy, had pressed
his policy, despite loud protests from
the Harlem community. He used
Negro orchestras and a Negro revue and
ran it as a tourist attraction for
society people who wanted to see a
little of 'Harlem life' ... The club was
forced to admit colored patrons during
the next winter, but the prices he
kept high and it remained predominantly
a tourist attraction until the
Depression." [CHARTERS, p. 217]
New York's Latin Quarter club (with eventual branches in other cities) was
also owned by a Jew, Lou Walters, father of famous newscaster Barbara Walters;
Monte Kay was the founder of the famous Birdland
jazz club. He too was Jewish. Mobster Morris Levy later controlled the place.
As Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway notes
about a common undercurrent in such night life:
"Jewish Gangsters frequented
nightclubs ... In fact, Jewish underworld
figures owned many nightspots and
speakeasies. In New York, Dutch
Schultz owned the Embassy Club. Charley 'King' Solomon owned
Boston's Coconut Grove. In Newark, Longy Zwillman owned the Blue
Mirror and the Casablanca Club.
Boo Boo Hoff owned the Picadilly
Cafe in Philadelphia. Detroit's [Jewish] Purple Gang owned Luigi's
Cafe, one of the city's more opulent clubs. Jewish singers and
comedians, such as Al Jolson, Eddie
Cantor, Fanny Brice and Sophie
Tucker played in the mob clubs."
[ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 205]
Upset with outsider exploitation and
degradation of the Black community (where many night clubs were located), there
was an effort by the Marcus Garvey African-American movement as early as the
1920s to institute Black-owned Liberty Halls "where the musical offerings
would be part of an overall effort at community uplift and not just a
profit-oriented business." [VINCENT, p. 114]
(From France, even the international
jet-set luxury playground/resort of "Club Med" was founded by Gerard
Blitz, and built to power by Gilbert Trigano. Both are also Jewish. By 1999 the
firm had 116 sites in 36 countries, now headed by Gilbert's son Serge.)
[REGULY, E., 4-25-88, pl. 24; MCDONELL, E., 5-1-99, p. D10]
Jews have of course been prominent over
the years as musical performers. These included three of the most influential
band leaders of the 1930s -- Benny Goodman ("the King of Swing"),
Harry James, and Artie Shaw (Arthur Arshansky). More recent popular names
include Leonard Bernstein, Andre Previn, Arthur Fiedler, Stephen Sondheim, and
many others. As noted earlier too, by
the 1930s MCA (Music Corporation of America) was a powerful talent agency, founded
by Jules Stein and built later to power by Sidney Sheinbein and Lew Wasserman,
who ultimately became one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Ronald
Brownstein observes that:
"By the mid-1930s, MCA controlled many of the country's
most popular
bands, from Tommy Dorsey to Artie
Shaw." [BROWNSTEIN, p. 181]
For years, MCA's Jules Stein, adds Michale Pye, "ran the music business
so toughly that no dance hall would stand against him." [PYE, p. 18-19] In
a 1946 antitrust trial that MCA lost,
a Los Angeles federal judge "declared that MCA held a virtual monopoly over the entertainment business."
The presiding judge also stated that MCA
was "the Octopus ... with tentacles reaching out into all phases and
grasping everything in show business." [MOLDEA, p. 2, 3]
For years MCA increasingly interfaced with Chicago's Mafia and other
underworld personalities. Seemingly omnipresent in Hollywood was lawyer Sidney
Korshak. "A close friend of Stein's and Wasserman's," says Dan
Moldea, "Korshak quickly became one of the most powerful influences in the
entertainment industry and in California politics ... [MOLDEA, p. 5] ... Korshak ... has been described by federal
investigators as the principle link between the [Hollywood] legitimate business
world and organized crime." [MOLDEA, p. 2]
And rock and roll? The Jewish foundation
continued. "The most famous and important [rhythm and blues disc
jockey]," note Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo, "was ... Alan
Freed, the father of Rock 'n' Roll ... Freed was credited with co-writing
fifteen rock and rock hits including Chuck Berry's 'Maybelline,' but he did
little more than promote any of them." [CHAPPLE, p. 56-57] A biography of Freed notes that "by
1956, there was no bigger name in rock and roll than Freed, except Elvis
Presley." [JACKSON, p. ix]
(Another of America's best known early disc jockeys was also Jewish,
Murray the K, aka Murray Kaufman). In 1960, Freed was indicted for accepting
$30,000 in bribes to play songs at his radio station. "[Freed] grabbed the kids and led them to the great rock
candy mountain," says Albert Goldman, "He named their music, coined
its us-against-them rhetoric, created rock show biz, including the package tour
... Alan Freed is really one of the principal exhibits in the Rock 'n' Roll
Hall of Ill Fame ... [He] was not only a crook but a self-righteous hypocrite.
Even [Freed's manager] Morris Levy [with deep ties to the criminal underworld,
particular the Mafioso Gigante family] had to concede that the 'Father of Rock
'n' Roll' was not a nice man. Speaking as one Jew to another Jew about a third
Jew, Levy said simply: 'He could have been another Hitler.'" [GOLDMAN, p.
519-520]
In a book about the Atlantic Records empire (later swallowed by Warners), Dorothy Wade and Justine Picardie noted Morris Levy and
the kinds of people that populated the rock and roll industry: "The truth
is, with or without mob connections, Morris Levy was much more typical of the
new music moguls than either [non-Jewish] Ahmet Ertegun or [Jewish] Jerry
Wexler ... The world in which Atlantic
had to survive was populated largely by hoodlums and hustlers." [WADE, p.
57] As Syd Nathan, the owner of King
Records, once said, "You want to be in the record business? The first
thing you learn is that everyone is a liar." [WADE, p. 60]
"To the general public," notes
Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo, "the music business seems to have a
tremendous amount of corruption." [CHAPPLE, p. 226] "I think in
Hollywood," media psychologist Stuart Fischel of California State
University at Los Angeles told the Los Angeles Times in 1993,
"people get into a kind of mind meld. You can come in as a relatively
moral and ethical person, but eventually [Hollywood] produces a re-socializing
of a subculture with different norms and ethics based on hedonism and
materialism. It's hard to know what's going to breach the bounds of acceptable
criminality in Hollywood." [ELLER, p. B8, B11] Aside from drugs,
prostitution, and all the other extracurricular norms of the interrelated
music, film, and television worlds of Hollywood, just at the most basic
business level, "payola [bribery] has been a key factor in the
establishment of major artists," says Roger Karshner, "the evolution
of publishing dynasties and the creation of recording empires. Payola, layola,
and taking care of business are the ABC's of the music industry past and
present. It has taken many forms, and many publishers, artists, managers, and
record people at all levels have participated in payola practices."
[KARSHNER, p. 39]
Probably the most important early rhythm
and blues recording company was Chess
Records, founded by Leonard and Phillip
Chess, Jewish immigrants from Poland. They started out with a scrap metal
business in the ghetto, then moved into the liquor business, eventually owning
several bars in the Black neighborhoods of South Chicago, including the large
Macamba Club, which was "reputedly a prime center for prostitution and
heavy drug dealing." [DIXON, p. 78] The Chess brothers soon recognized a
profitable opportunity open to them with the many Black musical acts that
played at their nightclubs; the entrepreneurs soon embarked upon a recording
business, eventually producing blues, gospel, and rock and rock music. Seminal
Black artists who signed on to the Chess label included Bo Diddley, Howlin'
Wolf, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Etta James, Chuck Berry, and many others.
Berry's songs were among the most influential in rock and roll history.
"Some people have called Leonard and Phillip Chess visionaries who
recognized the potential in the visceral blues of post-World War II Chicago,
"says Don Snowden, who co-wrote the auto-biography of bluesman Willie
Dixon, "A far greater number have branded the Chess brothers as exploiters
who systematically took advantage of the artists who created that music."
[DIXON, p. 78] The Rolling Stones even
found seminal bluesman Muddy Waters still painting the Chess's home when they
came to record in Chicago. [WADE, p. 71]
Frank Schiffman, owner of a number of
musical venues in New York's Harlem area, "was a ruthless competitor who
would do anything, including take advantage of his black employees and exploit
the great black artists who worked for him, in order to increase his profits
and beat down the opposition." [COOPER, p. 44] "Remember [Black singer] Little Eva Boyd?" asks Ralph Cooper,
"She worked as a babysitter for two Tin Pan Alley [Jewish] rock and roll
writers, Carole King and Gerry Goffen. They wrote a song called 'Loco-Motion'
and they asked her to sing it ... Now [1990] she lives in North Carolina, where
her people are from. She's a working mother on welfare. She works in a barbeque
kitchen as a cook." [COOPER, p. 196]
In 1997, Black singer Darlene Love won a
lawsuit for back royalties against famous Jewish musical producer Phil Spector.
(Originally awarded $263,000, it was later dropped down to $130,000.) Love was
the anonymous lead singer on a number of 1960s-era Spector productions,
including He's a Rebel, Da Do Ron Ron, He's Sure the Boy I Love, and other hits. In the early 1980s Ms.
Love found herself cleaning toilets for a living, but her singing career later
flourished anew. [WILLMAN, C., 10-15-88, CALENDAR, p. 10; WARRICK, P., 11-2-98]
"I didn't know anything about the
record business," said early rock and roll sensation Little Richard (of
"Tutti Frutti" fame) about his rock and roll career. " I was
very dumb ... I was just like a sheep among a bunch of wolves that would devour
me at any moment. I think I was taken advantage of because I was uneducated. I
think I was treated inhumane ... I think I was treated wrong and many people
got rich out of the style of music I created. They are all millionaires, writ
many times, and nobody offered me nothing." [WADE, p. 74] Dorothy Wade and Justine Picardie note
Little Richard's lamentation, then add: "To which many, if not most, of
his black musical contemporaries would add: Amen." [WADE, p. 74] Among others, Richard had in mind the Jewish
owner of Specialty Records, Art
Rupe, who many years ago bought the rights to his songs for a paltry $10,000.
Chuck Berry remembers being cheated by the
Chess brothers:
"[Phil Chess finally acknowledged]
in writing that no songwriter
royalties had been paid for three years
on my Chess Records
product ... [And in a review of Chess documents] I was
surprised to learn that I had been paid
the same songwriter
royalties for an LP as I was receiving
for a single record.
Chess
claimed to be unaware of this 'mistake,' as if they had
never noticed that LPs had between eight
and ten songs on
them." [BERRY, C., p. 246-247]
In 1972, Martin Otelsberg became the
manager of African-American musician Bo Diddley. Suspecting in later years that
he had been swindled, Diddley filed suit against Otelsberg's estate in 1994 and
recovered $400,000. As Diddley's lawyer (also Jewish) John Rosenberg noted, "This
is a typical story that's happened time and again to musicians like Bo."
[MORSE, S., 6-18-94, p. 28]
The Jewish agent-producer exploitation of
Black recording artists in the early rhythm and blues era of the 1940s and
1950s (and later) was predominant and widespread, entrenching a Black hostility
to their Jewish financial controllers to the present day. The following Jewish
entrepreneurs were among those who founded record labels featuring mainly Black
talent: Herman Lubinsky (Savoy Records);
the Braun family (DeLuxe Records);
Hy Siegal, Sam Schneider and Ike Berman (Apollo
Records); Saul, Joe, and Jules Bihari (Modern
Records); Art Rupe (Specialty
Records-- its biggest hits were those of Little Richard); Lev, Edward, and
Ida Messner (Philo/Aladdin Records);
Al Silver and Fred Mendelsohn (Herald/Ember
Records); Paul and Lilian Rainer (Black
and White Records); Sam and Hy Weiss (Old
Towne Records; Sol Rabinowitz (Baton
Records -- Rabinowitz eventually became vice president of CBS International); and Danny Kessler
(head of OKeh Records, a
"cheap" branch of Columbia
Records). Sydney Nathan controlled both the King and Federal record
labels and Florence Greenberg owned the Mafia-influenced Scepter Records (featuring the Shirelles and Dionne Warwick).
"Those illiterates," Hy Weiss of Olde Towne once said about his recording artists, "they would
have ended up eating from pails in Delancey Street if it weren't for us."
[WADE, p. 70]
In Philadelphia, in 1984 lawsuits were
swirling around WMOT, a company that
"developed a reputation as an aggressive independent record producer
specializing in the 'Philly sound.'" Formerly owned by Steve Bernstein,
Alan Rubens, and David Chacker, it was acquired by Michael Goldberg, Allen
Cohen, and Jeff and Mark Salvarian. Lawsuits even named Israel's Bank Leumi among defendants in a scheme
to use the record company to launder drug money. The central player in this
accusation was Larry Lavin, who was indicted as the "kingpin of a
13-member [drug] ring that allegedly sold $5 million of cocaine a month."
[DAUGHEN, 1984]
By 1978 president Oscar Cohen of the Associate Booking Corporation presided
over "the country's biggest black talent booking agency." [SHAW, A,
p. 419, p. 133] Recurrent,
"mobbed-up" Morris Levy even eventually owned Birdland in its heyday, the famous jazz club. [WEXLER, p. 130] Levy also controlled the Roulette Record label. Nat "the
Rat" Tarnopol headed the Brunswick label
(Jackie Wilson was one of its most prominent African-American stars). Tarnopol
was indicted twice in the 1970s "for using payola, drugola, and strong-arm
goons to get radio airplay for Brunswick
recording artists." [MCDOUGAL, p. 366]
An early and important supporter of disc
jockey Alan Freed and his own empire was Leo Mintz, who owned a large record
store near Cleveland's Black ghetto. Even earlier, Eli Oberstein founded Varsity records in the 1930s, Joe Davis
launched Beach records in 1942, and
"Jake Friedman had Southland,
one of the biggest distributing outfits in the South." [SHAW, A., Honkers,
p. 236]
"The whole history of rock 'n'
roll," noted the London Guardian in a review of Jewish author
Michael Billig's book about the subject, "has been portrayed as white
artists 'ripping off' black music. Only now [with Billig's volume] has the
major Jewish contribution been acknowledged." [ARNOT, C., 10-4-2000, p. 6]
…..
Joseph Heller, formerly of Heller-Fischel, booked acts like Styx,
the Electric Light Orchestra, Boz Scaggs, and a variety of others. Stretching
out as dangerously as possible to make a buck, Heller eventually gravitated
towards a relative goldmine in the Black ghetto-based "gangsta rap."
He cofounded Ruthless Records and
managed the pioneer rap group NWA (Niggaz With Attitude) from early in their
careers. The musical genre of gangsta rap, notes Jory Farr, "thrives on
misogyny, as well as homophobic and race-baiting rage ... [It] was the perfect
music for [a] lifestyle loaded down ... with warnings of betrayal, murder,
revenge, and a short life." [FARR, p. 70] "I believed that rap would
become the most important music of the nineties," said Heller, "...
[But] you can't sell two million rap records to kids in the inner city. That's
a way to sell 200,000. You have to market it to the white kids." [FARR, p.
68, 71]
Heller hired Ira Selsky as his corporate
attorney and an Israeli-born security chief named Michael Klein to ward off
angry, exploited Blacks who quite literally walked into his office threatening
to kill him. Rap star Ice Cube even threatened Heller in one of his recorded
songs, prompting the Anti-Defamation League to flag it as anti-Semitic. Ruthless Records released a Jewish rap
duo called Blood of Abraham. As Chuck
D, the lead vocalist for the Black rap group Public Enemy, noted, "There's
no way to get trained on the seamier elements of the music business being on
the street -- that element is reserved for boardrooms." [D, CHUCK, p.
85] Those in Chuck D's reminiscences
about "boardroom" behavior include Lyor Cohen (manager of Rush Productions, and an Israeli); Al
Teller, an executive at MCA whose
parents died in the Holocaust; Steve Ralbovsky of CBS; Bill Adler (a publicist); and Rick Rubin of Def Jam Records. (Jewish diamond dealer
Jacob Arabo has made the news as a favored jewelry merchant to the Black rap
crowd that seeks to symbolize wealth and power, or, as the New York Times put
it, "the jeweler who gives most of today's leading rappers their
shine." [CENTURY, p. 1]
Then there is former tax attorney Joe
Weinberger who drives a Jaguar S-200, wears a diamond-studded Rolex watch and
"fat gold rings," and carries a "9mm automatic pistol tucked in
his pocket." As the Miami New Times notes about his rise to power
in the African-American rap music world,
"In the early Nineties, Miami's
reigning booty-rapper, Luther Campbell,
hired Weinberger away from the carpeted
hallways of a swash Brickell
Key law firm to help manage a growing
musical empire and its attendant
lawsuits. Within five years Campbell was
bankrupt and Weinberger
had purchased the rights to his music.
Rather than return to the
comfortable confines of his former life,
the 42-year old lawyer, who
is single and childless, opted to launch
his own label, Lil' Joe ... In a
post bankruptcy fire sale overseen by
Richard Wolfe [Weinberger's
lawyer/partner, also Jewish], Weinberger
bought the rights to 2
Live Crew music for about $800,000, plus
the outstanding money he
claims Campbell owed him." [KORTEN,
T., 8-10-2000]
Weinberger has even been accused of
ordering a car bombing and directing death threats against an employee.
Then there is Canada-born Bryan Turner,
who founded Priority Records in 1985; he is also Jewish. [JEWHOO, 2000] By
1998, Priority had yearly sales of
$250 million. As the Los Angeles Times notes:
"When the pioneering gangster rap
group N.W.A. was looking for its
first record deal, it found a distributor
in Priority Records, which
released an album so obscene it prompted
a letter of complaint from
the F.B.I. When Ice-T left Warner
Brothers Records after police groups
and the company's shareholders objected
to his song 'Cop Killer,' he
found a new home at Priority. When Suge Knight, the imprisoned head
of Death Row Records, who is known for
his pugnacious business
tactics, was looking for his first deal, Priority gave it to him. Through
all the violence and controversy of
hardcore rap music -- from its roots
in N.W.A to its current resurrection with
Master P -- the Los Angeles
label Priority Records has been a major player." [STRAUSS, N., 9-3-
98, sec. E, p. 1]
And as the Times noted on another
occasion:
"When Time Warner first parted ways with rapper Ice-T after the 'Cop
Killer' flap and then with rapper Paris
over a song that portrayed an
assassination fantasy of President Bush,
Turner wasted little time
signing deals with both artists."
[HOCHMAN, S., 7-30-95, CALENDAR,
p. 82]
Yet another major Jewish rap entrepreneur
is the aforementioned Rick Rubin, who, says Jory Farr, found his "biggest
stars were former gangsters who used beats and rhymes to glamorize wealth,
dope, and violence. Deciding who to sign could be a moral quagmire ... but
Rubin wasn't one to be bothered by the trivia of social responsibility."
[FARR, p. 126] "I could do anything I wanted," Rubin once said about
his own family life in New York, "We were always upper middle class. We
were wealthy for the community we lived in. In a sense I was spoiled."
[FARR, p. 119]
Rubin's record company Def American is now called American Recording; at one time Geffen Records distributed Rubin's
material. Earlier in his career he had signed bands like Slayer (whose lyrics
exhorted "everything from virgin sacrifice and satanism to sadistic
mutilations and the atrocities of Auschwitz" [FARR, p. 109]) and the Geto
Boys, who "pushed misogyny and sadism to new depths." [FARR, p. 108]
Rubin's own star rose so high that he
eventually produced albums for Mick Jagger and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Troubles, however, came from a lawsuit against him by Adam Horowitz of the
Beastie Boys and threats from the Meir Kahane-founded Jewish Defense League.
Outraged by Rubin's promotion of violently anti-Jewish lyrics by Black ghetto
groups, the Jewish group reportedly came looking to beat him up. Rubin couldn't
understand their anger. He told an interviewer that
"They should've talked to me and
found out what I felt before coming to
attack me, because I was a JDO [Jewish
Defense Organization]
supporter.
When I was at NYU I saw [right wing rabbi] Meir Kahane
speak and he blew me away -- he was amazing ... After hearing him
speak, I wanted to pack my bags and go
to Israel ... I called the JDO
several times, wanted to join, but they
never returned my calls." [FARR,
p. 123]
Among the most controversial
"gangsta rap" labels was Death Row Records (including Tupac Shakur,
Dr. Dre, and Snoopy Doggy Dog). A noted earlier, Death Row products were
distributed by the Jewish-dominated Time-Warner
company until "pressure from stockholders after an outcry over the
flagrantly violent and misogynist lyrics" of its stars. Time-Warner dropped the label, but
eighteen months later it was picked up (for $200 million) by the Universal Music Group, a subsidiary of
the Jewish Bronfman family's Seagram company.
Universal too eventually abandoned
the controversial label, only after "pressure from stockholders and
regulators." [HELMORE, E., 8-29-97, p. 10]
And lastly for the music scene, the
president and CEO of the Recording
Industry Association of America --- a lobbying group (with a staff of 72)
for the big record companies -- is also Jewish, Hilary Rosen, who was described
in 1997 by the Washington Post as "a powerful woman in an industry
dominated by men. One of the most influential yet least known players in the
U.S. entertainment behemoth." [WEEKS, p. C1] Rosen became the CEO when another Jewish executive, Jason Berman,
stepped down from the position.
C. Delores Tucker, the founder of the
National Political Congress of Black Women, has singled out Rosen's
organization for special condemnation:
"In terms of children, the RIAA is
the most destructive lobbying force in
America. It is incomprehensible that
anyone with an ounce of concern
for children would be demanding the
promotion, distribution, and sale of
gangsta/porno rap to children." [WEEKS,
p. C1]
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