American Experience; 1964; Interview with Ron Delsener

So the Supremes, they're in ball gowns with white leather, quite kick gloves. What's Barry Gordie doing with that? What's the idea behind this surprise? I went there at 66, 65 maybe, and I went, there was a bunch of series of houses homes and I go and they say, we'll see Esther for the temptations. He got in one house, he had talked to Esther by getting dates on the temptations. I go to somebody else, Marvin Gaye and Tammy Torrell, okay, talk to this one. It was a great, great feeling being in Detroit, that era. It seemed like everybody was coming together, and Barry Gordie was just making and producing great songs. The music to have a xylophone in the background, or violin's playing across the beat, was great. And so when the Supremes came out, they were all pretty attractive chicks as they say in those days. Diana Russ was really hot, and the temptation is the same thing. They came out in a short truce cowboy uniform with beads down there, and I used to go to a palo, see them in a short truce hat, and it was about its flare, the temptation, looking

sharp, looking cool. In fact, I always did dress sharp, and I was considered sharp, Katzka, where did you get the kicks, the threads, you know, man, give me five dollars to pay them, man, I come back and dress like you, babe. You got it, brother. I did a lot of shows in Detroit, until I also had a black guy, start to say, what are you doing in Detroit? And I say, you're back, you're back by a white guy who lives in Atlanta, and you're black. Don't give me that job, you know? Right. So, that kind of kidding around on, but it was serious stuff. I know what Barry Gordie meant by that, is he, I don't think he saw the, he played the race card at all. He was just doing great music for songs for everybody. Everybody could dance to it, and his style of stuff was a huge success. Yeah, I get the feeling like that he's being careful, like he's selling black sexuality, women, he dresses him up like, bald, like, brown queens, is a way to make it acceptable, because they're saying about burning, you know, burning, you know, like, Diana Rossissing about pretty, pretty, racy stuff for 1964, you know.

It wasn't to me, it was just, it was fun, because you didn't really need to look, so you got to hear the beat, and you get caught in your dance, and you stopped to listen. Yeah, sometimes it was, mostly it was about relationships, leaving, leaving, whatever it is, usual stuff, but the songs and the beat were what overpowered you. Do you, so the rest of 1964, you were all during that year, you were working as a publicist? Well, I was also, yeah, I was helping promote, I was promoting shows at Forest Hills. I got them. It was at Forest Hills, but to open up again, there's, you know, don't even tell me about that. It's over, it's over. No, I used to go and promote it. I go do it a door and aight, I didn't take a subway at Boston, I was at work and go to the world telegram and sun, the American, the journal American, the Harold Tribune, the Danny News, the mirror at times, it was about five or six, seven papers, and I went to Sachs Fifth Avenue and I got every store window, I went by myself to push this thing, blow

ups of every artist they had in the front of a Sachs Fifth Avenue. I had photographs of this. I had Sonata, Barbara Streisand, we played Judy Garland at you, Woody Allen opened for 20 Lopez, Peter Paul and Mary, John Bayan has had Bob Bill and Oping for her, we had Ray Charles and all these big bobs, and so then I started promoting acts, I just, that's why I promoted with them, that's why I started my promotion business, we're gonna have who the agents are, I'd be on the phone with the agents, so that was my start. Yeah. What was it like, do you think, I mean, you were violent there, by the way, you know, people wanted to get into the conscious and they'd do any carry knives, I had a killing there, try to break income over the fence and one of my guards got a little upset about the guy, he was like, get him on, come on out, come on out, my guy went out, ran down the block after the guy, the guy turned around and stabbed him, he died in the street.

That was pretty bad. We had a lot of violence in those days, people carry knives, not some, Willie Carrey guns, too, but Rocky Wong was a kind of a violent, do you remember the Harlem riots? Sure. Yeah, I remember. What happened? Well, Lindsay was great, he walked the streets, he worked with, said David off, Jeffrey Cancer Brothers now, president of DreamWorks, he was one of Lindsay's guys, there was another guy, Teddy, black guy, it was pretty connected, he got killed, they'd walked the streets, they'd chill it out. Are the Harlem was kind of gone crazy? Yeah, well, I lived the world with that stuff, because like, shows went on, we did the shows, we did figure that this is just going to chill out. I had great faith in Lindsay, then the chilling amount, and they said to me, don't worry about it, parks for people, keep doing it, what you're doing, keep straight ahead, and I had a lot of cops at my places after that. This was like the first urban riot in a northern city, a black community going up and not

in smoke completely, but compared to Watts and the other ones that came later, it was not correct. But it was the first time that a community like that kind of exploded. And we live in right here, right in it, too. I live right there, right there, now it's a whole different thing. Do you remember what it felt like when that suddenly happened? Well, I always felt insecure, whenever I went to the park to do a show, I always felt people were going to watch me walk out with cash, because I have to go to the bank on my control. It was going to go out with cash, and somebody was going to get hit and mugged, I always felt bad about that. And I'd walk through the people, and I try to make everybody happy, and say, look at what I'm doing is for you, we love you, come and stay outside, don't make noise, don't heckle a people inside, bring your friends, okay, how to go out, and I could go out, I'd go out from behind the stage and go all the way outside and patrol. I didn't watch the shows, like people sit there watching, I'm always watching everybody. So no one takes money and comes in, people are trying to jump defense, people are violent,

those days, a lot of crazies, a lot of drugs being sold, blackies, beauties, blackies, greenies, uppers, downers, pot, selling all this stuff and beer. And I couldn't sell beer inside, because the city didn't want me to sell beer inside, because the people who came inside to watch the shows, they came in with horns, you know, this is the kind of thing. But they had to buy it outside from these hawkers, and the city wasn't making a nickel on tax money from these people at all, and they let it go on for years. In fact, what venue were you showing in the park? Was it all at the skating rink? Yeah, well, I'm a nice skating rink. They told me to leave in 1981, Gordon Davis, because he says they were going to put in a conservancy, which is ladies who have a lot of money, you want to take care of the park because the park has no money to take care of the park. And then five years later, the conservancy does their own shows at the summer stage up at the Serumzi playing field and sells beer. Hello. Hello. Welcome to America. Is that any different than a ryan? It's interesting. Yeah.

It's government taking over the business that I created and selling them the beer, which is the drugs, because they couldn't drink beer when they came to rock a roll show, because they're crazy anyway. It's called Reef from Madness, goes on today. You got that list? Yep. Anything else you want, because I think we're almost done. Yeah, read them off. Super sales. Top 10, 1964. I want to hold your hand. She loves you. Louis Armstrong singing, Hello, Dolly. Steve, I'm just going to. Roy Morrison. Oh, well, there. Oh, pretty woman. I get around. Everybody loves somebody. Game Martin. My guy. My Mary Wells. We'll sing in the sunshine by Gail Garnett. Last kiss, Jay Frank Wilson in the Cavaliers. Never heard of him. Where did our look go, by the Supreme? And all I got in 1977, at number 17, the Anson in the Streets, Martha and the Adele. So look at that list. It goes all over the place.

It's just music. And for all kinds of genre, all kinds of people, you don't see that today. Today is just one thing. It's electronic dance music. That's what, or rap and hip hop, it's the same type of music. You don't see songs or lyrics. What does all that diversity tell you about that year, though? What does it tell you? Just to get those names. I don't think that things are bubbling up all over the place. It was better than today, where people just don't want to know about it. Would you like to go see Van Clyburn or something? I mean, I, and when I was younger, that's what I went to see plays downtown, or Broadway. I went to see this guy, Brother Theater, when I met Midnight. You came to see me. You scum. You slam. I'd say, what are you doing here in Midnight? You did it in the yellow day. You suck. Yeah. You suck to your 30. You was the funniest thing. You don't want Lenny Bruce. We go. I'd go see Russian Ballet. Did you see Lenny Bruce in 64? I played Lenny Bruce. I'd be on the phone with him when he had his trial typing it up. He was his own defense.

Tell me about this, because he gets arrested. Yeah, we got arrested. I took him out to a club and, God, I forget the time I longed out. It walks inside. I see the boys are here tonight in the cops in the back like this. They're waiting to bust me about the 10 words. All right. Is that what you want here, boys? It's all the same. I suck around the back. That's it. End the show. That's it, folks. I take him out in the car. I'm driving him. I said, Lenny, that was a great show. Don't worry about it. I got the cash. We got $2500 before you went on. That was it. But I remember we had two shows when I had the Village Gate Theater downtown, which became the Filmora, and between shows, he says, hey, kid, take me somewhere. Well, yeah, I had my mother's car, my father's car, okay, what do you want? I want to go a couple of bucks. So we go someplace in a little brownstone on 12th Street. I don't wait till I stay asked. He's got a second show to do. He's upstairs. I'm going holy crazy. I got a second show. It comes down. Glassy heart, man. You know he was doing heroin. Took a back.

And that was the end of him. That way, because the cops were pressing wherever he went, he was restricted to play any place. In fact, we were going to do a show with him at the Concord Hotel. You know, we've taken him out of the places he should be playing like the Village Vanguard or the Village Theater or Carnegie Hall we played, too. And he had nobody who was really, really helping him. There was a few people, but the law was against them. Because there were laws about saying dirty words, which is ridiculous now, that's all they say. But you think about it. His life. He sacrificed his life. You know, Jesus died for us. He died for Chris Rock. He died for Eddie Murphy and every comic that came along after that. I think we're done. You got anything else? The only thing is when you just read the story of coming home to your mom and telling her after you came to Beatles, because that's how amazing it was. If you could just maybe say that one more time, because you're kind of like, yeah. Okay. What about that moment?

So I'm driving home from my mother's car because I live with them in the Village and after the show. And I ran out of there early, just once they came off the stage of helicopter, I got my car right out because I parked backstage. And I'm riding on the Grand Son of the Park and I'm going, I have a scene to the radio and the good guys, the W-A-B-C good guys are saying, we just came from the greatest thing you've never seen, talking about it and they're playing songs and I'm going in my head. I was your fork. I was lifted. I go, wow, I've never seen a show or anything like this in my life. This is the great. I can't wait to tell my mom. And then it happened 20, 30 years later, 20 years later, when Paul Simon and I go off and go play Central Park. And after the show, the cops said there was 500,000 people. We all gave up a number, you know. So many people fit in so many acres, it couldn't be 500,000, but whenever we were, as we said, 500, the feeling of that show, walking out of that show, Simon and Garfunkel, after it was over, and I couldn't get out, I had a walk with the crowd and you're working in it. People don't know what you are. You don't know what they are.

And let's listen to them singing and talking how great it was and what a feeling it was. That lifted me up too. Fifth Avenue was closed. We were all walking across Fifth Avenue. Everybody was together. But when you walked out of the Beatles show, you've never heard anything quite like it. No. The feeling that made me happy and the whole world was perfect. Everybody was happy. We were all feeling so good about it. How do you keep this feeling captured for the rest of your life? That's the thing that I've had twice in my life, from the Beatles and from Paul Simon and Garfunkel. Two of those. Of course, I've heard screaming, you know, for the in sync and all that stuff, you hold your ears, but he goes, eh, then it stops. Yeah, you know, this was sustained, sustained, and then it became something else singing songs, talking. And you ever seen girls behaving like that before? No. What were they doing?

Crying, holding their faces, crying so much. They were screaming, holding out posters, signs, but, you know, I bought all the, I bought all this stuff that they had in the hotel room by, by, with Wadi Airport, the Riviera Hotel. I said, I got an attorney to verify. This is the rooms they stayed in with the manager. They signed a certificate that this is where they stayed, all the rooms. I came with my dad in a big car, our car, two cars we had. And we took everything out of the room, sheets, pillowcases, dishes, dirty dishes, cigarettes, a lottery in the car. I had an auction in New York for it. And I sold the sheets of pillowcases for a dollar piece, and I put a square inch, square inch rather, taped to the affidavit, because I made many copies of the affidavit. And I sent it. I took it as a teen magazine. I got it, I got people writing from Zambia. I go to the post office, pick up bags of mail and my sister and I, my parents would cut out a piece. I want a piece of ringo sheet, or home of which sheet ringo was fine. We just got the sheet. This is ringo. You know, Paul's, Paul's pillowcase, one dollar. It was a good business for a while.

You bought the entire contents of the room? Other rooms. The Riviera Hotel. It's probably still there at a different name. And they had an auction at Cheetahs, which was a disco. And they had a Murray the K, B, the MC. And I pull up in the limo with the stuff in the car. They tacked the car. The stuff was in the car like it was a rock star coming out of the car. I go, what the, they seeming nothing new. Then finally when there's nobody around the car, we brought this stuff in. How much am I bid for the Coca-Cola bottle? That ringo star. Okay. And some of the dishes that weren't dirty, I took a regular one all over the world and smudge them up. You know, I put something on anything to make them look dirty. Who knew? But the stuff was in their room, so it weren't lying. Wow. Yeah. I got the original certificate of after David in a frame in my office. And they spent one night there. Yeah. They were going back to the UK. In 64. Mm-hmm. Anything else? I think we're good. Let's do, we got to get room town. 30 seconds of silence.

Let's throw it. Gone. This is room town for Ron Dalton. Starting now. Um. Show me where that is. And room time, well thank you, that was fantastic.