Levy, Morris (27th August 1927-21st May 1990)

One of the early pioneers of rock and roll music, and certainly one of the most controversial, Morris Levy was born Moishe Levy in the Bronx, New York. He grew up around mobsters and quit school after allegedly assaulting one of his teachers.

Slumming in nightclubs in his teens, he eventually opened a jazz club called Birdland, one of the most famous of its time. When an ASCAP rep came to him and informed him of his obligation to pay them a monthly fee (a practiced standard for such venues) Levy asked his lawyer about it, thinking the rep was a member of the mob, trying to muscle in on his business. The lawyer informed him that it was perfectly legit, and thus began the infamous and very lucrative music publishing history of Morris Levy.

He formed his own publishing company which afforded him the rights to any songs that debuted at his club, including “Lullaby of Birdland” which he commissioned George Shearing to write.

The advent of rock and roll was very good to Levy. It was a relatively new genre when he started Roulette Records in 1956. Before long he started gobbling up smaller labels like Gone Records. He also realized that if he slapped his name on the songwriting credits of a record (which was certainly not a new practice at the time) he could further protect his copyright interests. A famous example of this is the Morris Levy-Frankie Lymon “collaboration” “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” which resulted in a dizzying series of lawsuits.

Levy’s most (in)famous lawsuit involved the late John Lennon. When Lennon lifted a lyric from Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” and used it in “Come Together”, it was Levy’s turn to sue. In the interest of settling out of court, Lennon agreed to record three songs that Levy owned the rights to on his next album. He was already working on Rock And Roll at the time, and it would be no bother to tweak the album and include songs from Levy’s catalogue. Lennon was so enamoured of Levy’s collection that he wound up picking more than three. Everything would have been okay if Lennon had not released Walls and Bridges next. Levy had lunch with Lennon and wanted to know why the delay on the Rock and Roll album. Lennon explained there had been production problems (Phil Spector apparently got so enraged he fired a gun in the studio and stole the unfinished tapes which EMI/Capitol was eventually able to retrieve) but that he was still working on it. Levy innocently asked Lennon to give him the tapes so he could listen to them, then promptly went out an released them on an album called Roots. The sound quality was horrid and the album cover even worse, with an ugly yellow background and a picture of Lennon on not his best day. Another lawsuit followed. Lennon sued Levy for releasing Roots and for damage to his reputation. Lennon had to pay a comparatively small stipend for plagiarizing the Chuck Berry lyric, but was awarded approximately $144,700 in damages. Ironically, a copy of Roots in mint condition is now worth $2000. (Beware of imitations, though.)

In the 1970s, Levy jumped on the rap music bandwagon and helped Joe and Sylvia Robinson launch Sugar Hill Records. They were responsible for the first rap song to become a top forty hit, “Rapper’s Delight”.

In the late ’80s, Levy was arrested for extortion and sentenced to ten years in prison. He died of cancer while awaiting an appeal on 21^st May 1990. A colourful character, to say the least, Morris Levy was supposedly the inspiration for another colourful character, Hesh Rabkin, on The Sopranos.

Diana Ross recordings
Why Do Fools Fall In Love (Morris Levy/Frankie Lymon)

Sources:

Levy, Morris (27th August 1927-21st May 1990)

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