The Jukebox Tune

"If you want to be in business tomorrow, you better go today and purchase your records at Lormar." That, testified a witness at last week's Senate McClellan committee hearings into jukebox racketeering, was the slogan of Chicago's Lormar Distributing Co.--and not even Madison Avenue could have sharpened its message. Chicago jukebox operators, anxious to stay 1) healthy and 2) in business, bombarded Lormar with orders; a rival wholesale record firm in one year lost $800,000, or 90% of its trade. Principal reason: Lormar's was the property of Charles ("Chuck") English, a Chicago hoodlum and acquaintance of top mobster Tony Accardo.

Of course, testified witnesses, Lormar offered certain competitive advantages. While other distributors sold top-label records for 65-c- apiece, Lormar offered a cut rate of 55-c-. Eventually buyers discovered that the records had been pirated from genuine big-name platters and counterfeited in Cincinnati down to the color and code numbers of the label. Top hit on the counterfeit parade: You Can Make It If You Try, with 86,000 bogus copies in circulation.

"These Things Can Be Dangerous." In addition to buying records from Lormar, operators were forced to pay $3.60 per jukebox per year in protection money. In return they received the combined services of 1) Local 134, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, run by a business agent named Fred Thomas ("Jukebox Smitty") Smith, and 2) the Commercial Phonograph Survey Co. Commercial, assisted by Jukebox Smitty and a staff of ex-convicts, kept track of operators and their jukebox locations, ostensibly kept peace by preventing raiding. Estimated total shakedown cost to Chicago's operators: $100,000 a year.

So strong were Chicago mobsters in the jukebox trade that they even pushed certain singers. Record Distributor Ted Sipiora said that he was once ordered to stock Crooner Tommy Leonetti's newest record. Protested Sipiora: "It isn't good enough to get on the boxes." As his caller talked, he fingered and tossed "what we felt was a bullet," and said: "These things can be dangerous. They penetrate flesh." Soon afterward, said Distributor Sipiora, he began getting calls for the Leonetti record from operators who had heard the same sales pitch.*

Cemented Partnership. The jukebox musclemen never hesitated to take direct action. Brooklyn Jukebox Operator Sidney Saul sobbed as he recalled the night two years ago when a trio of ex-convicts fed nickels into one of his own machines to drown out his screams, and thoroughly thumped him until he agreed to split his profits. The bulk of the beating was administered by a workmanlike hoodlum named Ernest "Kippy" Filocomo. Said Saul: "He began punching me in the head and face. When I pleaded for him to stop, they kept saying to each other, 'This fellow's an actor. This fellow's an actor.' It got to the point where I could hardly hold my head up."

Similarly, in Elgin, 111. an ex-con and Capone mobster named Rocco Pranno decided to cut himself in on the jukebox operations of young Ralph Kelly. To persuade Kelly of the wisdom of hiring him as "business adviser," Pranno drove him through the countryside with cement weights tied to Kelly's legs, threatening to drop him over a bridge. Committee investigators reported that Kelly's annual jukebox profit before Pranno was $16,000; afterward it dropped to $7,000.

With Pranno glaring a yard away, Kelly last week stared at the committee's mahogany table, refused to answer questions. This provoked North Carolina's courtly Sam Ervin Jr. to a rare outburst. "It is a tragic state," said he, "to see a man who comes in the shadow of the Capitol of his country who cringes in fear."

*Leonetti , said Committee Counsel Robert Kennedy, was unaware of his shady backing, later got a different manager and a growing reputation. Nonetheless, ABC, apparently un nerved by the Washington testimony, yanked Leonetti from a scheduled appearance last week on the Dick Clark Show.

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