Peppermint Twist

September 3, 2012
In the years just before a new dance called the Twist turned popular music around and created new audiences for rock and roll, Johnny Biello, famed mobster, bought a rundown club in midtown Manhattan as a front for his businesses, and put his son-in-law, Dick Cami, who had already devoted some of his career to the music business, in charge of booking acts for the club. When Cami suggested that they book rock and roll acts, Biello and his gang had some misgivings, but soon the new Peppermint Lounge was pulling in teenagers, socialites, mobsters, and celebrities, all drawn like a moth to the burning flames of rock and roll, and especially the Twist. Through lackluster storytelling and over-the-top pronouncements (“The seeds to everything that became the sixties can be seen in the coming of the Twist”), journalists Johnson and Selvin along with Cami attempt to recreate the few months in 1961 and 1962 when the Peppermint Lounge became the hottest night club in New York, opening a second club in Miami. The narrative totters unevenly between a long, dull dual biography of Biello and Cami before finally launching into a brisk and abbreviated chronicle of the club and its famous denizens, who ranged from Truman Capote, Marilyn Monroe, Shelley Winters, and John Wayne to rhythm and blues moguls Berry Gordy and Ahmet Ertegun and rockers from the Beatles to Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes. Superficial and meandering, the book offers few compelling insights into the history of the Peppermint Lounge or its success.

October 1, 2012
True crime meets pop-music history in this history of the Peppermint Lounge, the Twist and the Mafia's unwitting role in starting a national craze. In 1960, Dick Cami's father-in-law, Johnny Biello, a high-ranking Mafioso, bought an off-Broadway dive as a favor to a friend, and Cami suggested having rock 'n' roll music in the place. Within months, the Peppermint Lounge became the hottest club in the country, as New Jersey teens mixed with such celebrities as Norman Mailer, Ava Gardner and even the Beatles--all doing the Twist. "The Twist hit like an atomic bomb and the Peppermint Lounge was ground zero," write veteran journalists Johnson (co-author: Blood Brothers: The Inside Story of the Menendez Murders, 1994) and Selvin (Summer of Love: The Inside Story of LSD, Rock & Roll, Free Love and High Times in the Wild, 1994, etc.). All of this surprised Biello, who saw the place as a nice front for his loan-sharking and gambling rackets. However, not one to pass up a buck, he let Cami make the place legit and even opened a second lounge in Florida. The authors go back and forth between telling the stories of Biello's rise in the Mafia and his constant attempts to get out and the rise of the Twist. Biello's tale is one of Mafia intrigue and Runyonesque figures such as his younger brother Scatsy, while the tale of the Twist is one of the early rise of youth culture, which would soon become a revolution. It's also the story of a young singer named Chubby Checker, who, once spotted by pop-music king Dick Clark, made a career out of the song "The Twist" (originally recorded by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters) and how every singer from Sam Cooke to Frank Sinatra made a Twist record. The two stories shouldn't fit, but they do. A fun and fascinating read.

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October 1, 2012

In October 1961, a sleepy little dive in Manhattan suddenly became the hottest club in town, beloved by teenagers and socialites alike. What happened? The dance craze called the Twist happened, and the Peppermint Lounge was the place in New York to do it. Little did their patrons know that, not only was the place mobbed, it was mobbed up: the owners were mafiosi who used it as a front for their illegal enterprises. The sudden popularity brought unwanted police attention, and the owners weren't pleased, but a legend was born. In this entertaining history-cum-memoir, journalist Johnson and Selvin (Summer of Love), with Cami, son-in-law of mobster Johnny Biello, tell the story of the club, the music, and the Cosa Nostra names behind the Peppermint. While the stories in the book are slightly disjointed, they embody the spirit of the era and pull the reader along with them. VERDICT This consistently entertaining account of the famous and infamous in rock 'n' roll history will be of interest to music nostalgia fans as well as true crime buffs.--Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH

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