Tony Marts

 THE LEGACY OF TONY MARTS LIVES ON IN THE MUSIC 

By Bill Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com

Tony Marts, Somers Point’s legendary nightclub, hasn’t physically existed in decades, but it’s musical spirit lives on as Anthony Marotta’s son Carmen continues to produce and promote the music at the weekly free Friday night Somers Point Beach concerts and on Wednesdays at Kennedy Plaza on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

Now 67 years old, Carmen has retired from his day job at a law office and now has the time to concentrate on promoting the music that made Tony Marts famous and to write his memoirs, reflecting on his days growing up in one of the most popular nightclubs on the East Coast.

At first Carmen wanted to reach out to promote an upcoming act by The Weight Band that mainly plays the music of The Band, one of the many famous groups that performed at Tony Marts. The Weight Band schedule to play at Kennedy Plaza on the Atlantic City Boardwalk next Wednesday just happened to coincide with the episode of when The Band, as Levon and the Hawks, check into Tony Marts in the serialization of my novela Waiting on the Angels – the Long Cool Summer of ’65 Revisited.

Then Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist and front man for The Band passed away, and many if not most of the obituaries and memorials to him mention days with the Hawks at Tony Marts, giving it national attention once again. In one Robertson himself is quoted as saying, “Tony Marts was an amazing crossroads on our journey, a really important thing for us.”

“I can’t put my finger on it why that time and place was so special,” says Carmen, “but it was a combination of things – Colonel Kudlets, Conway Twitty, Levon and the Hawks, it sort of just all came together. “

Today Carmen, along with his wife Nancy, produces the Friday night Somers Point Beach Concerts along with the Somers Point concerts commitee, as they have done for three decades now,  along with the Atlantic City Boardwalk Mardi Gras AC shows on Wednesday nights, that have been on going for 12 years now . 

Last Saturday afternoon Carmen sat in his car at the Somers Piont Beach while I sat in my car at a Pine Barrens lake and we talked on the phone for about an hour, reflecting on Tony Marts and its continuing, on-going legacy.

To start at the beginning, Anthony Marotta, Sr. was born in a small village in Sicily and began his journey to America on a banana boat that took him to Panama, where he worked as a laborer for two years to earn the money to get to New York. From there he made his way to Atlantic City, where others from his hometown had previously settled, where he met the women who would become his wife, who was from the same Sicilian town as he was. And it was Carmen’s mother who provides the family connection to the famous White House Sub shop.

Marotta opened his own sandwich shop on the boardwalk and with the money earned there he purchased Schicks Hotel on Bay Avenue in Somers Point. The old hotel had been popular with the ferry travelers to Ocean City, but with the trolley and auto causeway, business was slow, and the end of World War II was the end of an era, with a number of similar establishments changing hands at the same time including Gregorys, Charlies, the Anchorage and D’Orios.

Anthony Marotta took the old German Rathskeller on the first floor and made it a nightclub that would become Tony Marts. At first he brought in bands he knew from Atlantic City, but then slowly expanded. Eventually the room held a capacity of a thousand, with six bars and three stages for continuous music, so when one band finished a set another one kicked in.

“If you asked my father what was the band that made Tony Marts famous,” says Carmen, “he would say Len Carey and the Crackerjacks.”  With a New Orleans schtick, “they threw crackerjacks into the crowd instead of beads.”

Len Carey, notes Carmen, played with Spike Jones, “who is mentioned in The Band’s song, ‘Up on Cripple Creek.’”

Tony Marts had a number of really good house bands that performed practically every night, including the Crackrjacks, the Fall Guys and Levon and the Hawks, who went on to back Bob Dylan, moved to Woodstock  before the big concert, and where they became known simpl y as The Band.

All of the house bands that played Tony Marts get a chapter in Carmen’s memoirs, as well as the special guests and featured stars like Conway Twitty, Duane Eddie, Joey Dee and the Starlighters, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels – “It’s all in the scrapbook,” Carmen says of the scrapbook of newspaper ads, reviews and glossy promotional photos of the acts that played there. “The Somers Point Historical Society copied much of the scrapbook and has it,” he notes.

And in his book now being written Carmen will try to dispell some of the myths that keep getting repeated.  “They are calling Robbie Robertson the leader of The Band, but he was the lead guitarist and handsome front man, not the leader,” Carmen says.

“My sister Tina was 17 at the time, and she remembers things better and recalls them telling dad that they didn’t have a leader and made decisions as a group.” But dad said, “you gotta have a leader, I need to pay someone.”  And since Levon had been with Rockabilly Ronnie Hawks the longest, he became the nominal leader and they were billed as “Levon and the Hawks.”

While only a young boy at the time, Carmen recalls the Hawks clearly, watching them play on the second stage, as Conway Twitty had the main stage, he sat by the railing and watched the Hawks closely, from a few feet way, recalling “Richard Manuel  was one of the top three blues and rhythm and blues singers ever, and to have three vocalist – Richard, Levon and Rick Danko in the same band was phenomenal.”

Carmen said that most of the songs they played at the time can be found on the Moondog Matinee album, he recalls on song that the crowds really enjoyed, “Little Liza Jane,” and sure enough, I found that they actually recorded a 45 rpm single of “Go Go Liza Jane” in 1965 on the Atco label, with a Robbie Robertson song “He Don’t Love You (And He’ll Break Your Heart)” on the flip side.

Among the myths that Carmen corrects concerns Dylan. “Bob Dylan never came to Tony Marts,” he says, “but the Hawks were playing there when Dylan called, and it’s probably the most important phone call in the history of rock and roll.”

Carmen says, “The call came in over the old wooden public phone booth,” but there’s some dispute over who answered the call. The consensus is that Levon answered, telling the others, “It’s Bob Dylan,” and putting his hands over the phone asked, “Whose Bob Dylan?”

As Rick Danko said he explained that Dylan was a folk music guy from the Greenwich Village scene, who wrote the song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” that was then a top ten hit covered by the California rock band “The Byrds.”  The popularity of that song probably encouraged Dylan to seek a rock band and “go electric,” as they say.

Levon recalled Dylan asking if they could play the Hollywood Bowl and Carnege Hall with him, and Levon asked “Who else is on the bill?” and was incredulous when Dylan replied “Just us.”

Carmen says his dad, “let them out of their contract that required them to play through Labor Day,” and they went on to get booed by the old fashioned folkies at Forrest Hills for Dylan plugging in and “going electric,” but his then new song, “Like A Rolling Stone,” took the electricity and rock and roll to another level.

For their replacement over Labor Day 1965, Colonel Kudlets, the Toronto based talent scout and booking agent sent Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, who then had a hit on the charts – “Devil with the Blue Dress.”

The heydays at Tony Marts, like all of the Bay Avenue clubs – Bay Shores, Steels Ship Bar, the Anchorage, was the fifties and sixties, and carried over into the early seventies, but eventually Steels burnt down and things slowed down on Bay Avenue.  When their father retired, Carmen and his brother Tony, Sr. took over management and learned how difficult it was to keep the business going.

When Robbie Robertson decided that he could no longer travel with The Band, he organized The Last Waltz concert at Winterland in San Francisco that was famously filmed by Martin Scorsese. Carmen believes and many agree that The Last Waltz is one of the best live concert documentaries ever, along with Woodstock, a close second.  Although the Woodstock concert was originally planned for the town of Woodstock, mainly because of the presence of Dylan and The Band, the town decided they didn’t want such an influx of people so it was actually held at the nearby town of Bethel, New York, where the historic marker and annual concerts are held today.  And the musical myths keep fading away.

Another myth that Carmen disputes is about Eddie and the Cruisers, the 1983 movie that was filmed at Tony Marts and captured the place for posterity on celluloid before its era ended.

“There was no band called Eddie and the Cruisers,” says Carmen, “they were a Hollywood invention,” but the music wasn’t, as it was by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown band that he calls one of the most underrated rock and roll bands from the East Coast. They had three top ten hits from that movie – “On the Darkside,” “Wild Summer Nights” and “Tender Years” but only sax player Michael “Tunes” Antunes made it into the movie, and he dies of an over dose and was replaced by sax and jazz bagpipes player Rufus Harley.  Carmen brings “Tunes” back to play the beach concerts on occasion, usually sitting in with the Billy Walton band, unarguably the best new band around.

While attending the New Orleans World Fair in 1984 Carmen went over to Bourbon Street in the French Quarter and says, “It was just like Bay Avenue in it’s hey day.”  Carmen fell in love with the place and the music, and even started his own nightclub with Levon as a partner – Levon Helm’s All American Café, that he now calls an “Ill fated” venture. It did however, give him a real taste of the New Orleans music scene and he got to know many of the musicians personally, bringing some of them back to the Jersey Shore to play, either on the beach or the boardwalk, where the Wednesday night gigs are called “Marti Gras - AC.”

One of the bands booked for both the Atlantic City boardwalk and the Somers Point beach in early September is Cyril Neville with Omari Neville of the famous Neville brothers, the first family of New Orleans.

Besides attending the annual New Orleans music festival, Carmen and Nancy also visit his family’s hometown village in Sicily, where he still has family and friends. “I took them out to dinner and 30 people showed up,” and laughs, and notes that the food there is really good.

Although Carmen doesn’t usually book tribute bands, The Weight Band, set for the AC boardwalk next Wednesday, is different, as they not only play the music of The Band, but include Jimmy Weider – the Woodstock native and lead guitarist who replaced Robbie Robertson in the post-Last Waltz Band. They also include a number of guys who played with the Levon Helm Band, including his last Atlantic City gig headlining the Borgata shortly before he passed away.  The Weight Band also plays some original tunes that have the same gritty sound as the original Band.

Band organist Garth Hudson, at 86, is now the last Hawk standing and still lives in Woodstock today. Levon’s daughter Amy Helm has her own band that tours regularly and often plays in their Woodstock barn.

Besides his main shows on the beach and boardwalk, Carmen also books bands at The Point, the quaint outdoor bayside Tiki Bar on the site of where Bay Shores and the Waterfront once stood, where the Billy Walton Band is featured every Thursday night during the summer.

While the buildings are gone, the stage is still there and Carmen says the music is still alive and really hot, and he will continue producing the music he loves as long as possible. 

Robbie Robertson RIP 1943-2023

 ROBBIE ROBERTSON RIP 

It seems like now I only get to write about music is when a musician dies, though I/m looking forward to getting out and about again checking out some live shows sometime soon. 

When it comes to music, I guess I've seen B.B. King more than any other act, and The Band comes in a close second.

I still remember when I first heard The Weight over the radio, on a Sunday night on WXPN - 88.5 University of Pennsylvania station where the student jocks played songs they wanted to, and later heard the whole album Music From Big Pink on WMMR, when they first played what they called Album Oriented Rock (AOR). Those songs got me hooked on music, and they have stayed with me. 

At Camden Catholic High School I kept a copy of an ad for the Band taped to the door of my locker. 

In the fall of 1969, while a freshman at the University of Dayton, Ohio, I drove with a carload of other students to Cleveland, where we saw The Band at an old War Memorial auditorium, the first of many concerts i would catch of them. The thing that caught me attention was how they switched instruments, and even the drummer Levon Helm, picked up the mandolin on occasion. 

Later I also saw them perform at the Academy of Music and Spectrum in Philly. 

I guess I first wrote about the Band playing at Tony Marts as Levon and the Hawks in my first music column in the late 70s in the Ocean City Broadsider Magazine, a glossy color cover city mag owned by Marion Talese, Gay's sister, and edited by Kurt Loder, who went on to fame at Rolling Stone Magazine and MTV News. 

I got the basic scoop on Levon and the Hawks at Tony Marts but Kurt added a few touches, as he actually saw them play before going to German in the Army. 

Sometime later I went looking for a story and went to Tony Marts, where I found Anthony Marotta sitting in the corner, raised bar by the front door, smoking a cigar and sipping a drink. Sure, he said, he remembered Levon and the Hawks, "the last of the gentlemen," he called them. "They were all animals who came after them." 

He instructed me to return the next day, during the day, and he would show me the Scrap Book. I went in, and followed a cleanup guy through the club with stools and chairs upside down on the bars - there were six of them, and three stages, so the music was constant. Out the back door, through a cavern of kegs of beer and cases of whisky we went into an office where Mr. Marotta sat at a desk with his back to the wall. He stood up and pulled a thick Scrap Book from a shelf and let me peruse through it, full of newspaper ads and black and white glossy photos of acts who had played there over the years, since Tony bought the place near the end of WWII in the mid-1940s. 

There was a 8 by 10 glossy black and white photo of Levon and the Hawks, with their head shots, that he let me borrow, and after I took some notes, and got some quotes, I wrote a short three page story I took over to the free weekly Atlantic City Sun newspaper in Pleasantville and presented to the editor, who also took the photo. 

The story ran at the bottom of the front page, and when I stopped by to pick up the photo to return to Tony, and pick up a $10 check, the editor told me that most people read the headlines and first sentence or two, and then drop off. But my story was good enough to hold a lot of people from beginning to end, and that takes talent. I never forgot that, so in my future columns I tried to put a unique twist at the very end, and when someone mentioned that to me, I knew they read the story from beginning to end. 

When I dropped off the photo of the Hawks at Tony Marts, I found Tony where I had met him, sitting at the elevated corner bar smoking his cigar. He motioned for me to sit down next to him, had the bartender, Doobie Duberson, give me a beer, a long next Budweiser, and slipped me a white envelop that I opened later and found a $20 bill. He said that was his way for thanking me for such a good story on the Hawks. 

From Tony Marts, the Hawks signed on to back Bob Dylan, were booed at Forest Hills in New York and everywhere they went on a world tour because the old folkies didn't like Dylan plugging in and "going electric." Levon even backed out and was replaced by the drummer for the Monkies. 

While Dylan was recovering from a motorcycle accident at his manger Albert Grossman's vacation retreat at Woodstock, New York, the rest of the group, under contract and being paid by Grossman, also moved to Woodstock, known as an "artists colony" for decades. There Rick Danko rented a large split level pink house in nearby East Saugerties, that they called Big Pink. Garth Hudson set up his organ and tape recorder in the basement garage and they met there an began recording sessions that included Dylan as he got better. 

Someone put a notebook on a table with a pen where they began to take turns writing songs lyrics, a joint project, but in the end, one for which Robbie Robertson would take major credit for and copyrighted most of the songs. Since the song writer got most of the royalities, Robertson got the credit and the royalties. 

After catching The Band a half dozen times, I didn't like the fact that they were breaking up, or so the rumors went, but glad they filmed their final performance together as The Last Waltz, which is rated one of the top concert movies of all time. 

But it turns out that it was all Robbie Robertson's idea, as he was tired of performing on the road, the drugs, the excesses and knew it had to end on a good note, and he tried. But the rest of The Band, especially Levon, wanted to carry on, and they began to tour solo and as duos, and then eventually as The Band, with a fine fill in for Robertson's lead guitar. 

Then one afternoon in the mid-1980s, I was with Jody Kish at Marks News on 8th street in Ocean City, and we talked about bringing The Band back to Somers Point for a Tony Mars Reunion. 

Camden attorney and prosecutor Harris Berman and his brother had sold a Florida hotel and had to spend the profits within a certain amount of time in order to avoid paying taxes so Berman bought Bay Shores, tore it down, and built the Waterfront, a large wood trimmed bar and restaurant that he had an architect design as a ski resort for the Poconos that was never built. 

Then Berman went across the street and made a deal with Anthony Marotta, who was basically retired and let his sons, Tony, Jr. and Carmen run the business. Berman bought Tony Marts, tore it down and built Egos, the most gregarious disco on the East Coast. 

I contacted The Band's business agent and he said they needed $7,000 plus rooms for a one night show, something we could pull off. 

Kish and I went with Berman in his limo to New York City, where we saw The Band play at the Lone Star Cafe, and convinced Berman we could four-wall it, just take the ticket money from the door. Then convinced Levon, Rick, Garth and Richard to do the show, and set a date a few months away. 

In the meantime, I attended a show that included Rick Danko and Richard Manuel as a duo at the Chestnut Cabaret in Philly, and afterwards helped them load their equipment in a van and talked to them about their Tony Mart days. Richard then went into an Anthony Marotta mode, mimiking his heavy graveled voice, "You boys stay away from the go-go girls, they're too young for youse...."

Richard said they were looking forward to the Tony Marts Reunion but unfortunately, in Florida, Richard hung himself in a motel shower, putting a real damper on everything. 

But the show in Somers Point went on, and I got to know Rick Danko the best, he stayed at my family house while we got the rest of the band rooms at Berman's boardwalk motel, but he screwed us, and didn't provide the rooms he promised, so I had to pay for them with my mother's credit card. 

It was a great show, I got country Larry Hickman to open for them, and they really kicked butt, putting on an amazing performance, but their manager took all the money, and the video tape we paid to record the show. The next day I remember reading about the show on the front page of the Press of Atlantic City while eating breakfast at the College Grill. 

While driving Rick across the causeway to Somers Point, he asked me to write the real history of The Band, and I thought it would be an honor, especially to get their cooperation, but later decided it was too sad a story to write. 

Memorial Tribute to Dr. Cheeko

 Memorial Tribute to Dr. Cheeko 

It must have been sometime in the mid-1980s in Wildwood when I first ran into Dr. Chico, as he was then known. 

I was writing a weekly Nightbeat music column for the SandPaper, mainly reviewing local live bands, when I checked out the music on the bayside deck at Urie's, then a large waterfront bar, restaurant and marina on the docks as you came into town. 

It was a Hawaiian band, led by a big bug muscled guy and complete with grass hula skirts swaying in the bay breeze. Not exactly what I wanted, so I went for a walk and hearing some faint musical notes, followed them to a motel bar attached to Urit's, but across a side street. 

Inside was dark, damp and smoky, with air conditioning and no windows, making it stuffy. At the end of the bar was a stage with Dr. Chico playing up front, decked out in his floppy straw hat and flower print shirt, and giant smile. It was an island trio, with a suit and tie electric keyboard guy to one side and a flamboyant guitarist on the other, playing some sort of reggae-calypso music, and I liked it. 

When they took a break I met Chico, with his never ending smile, and my life took a turn for the better, just knowing him. 

"What are you doing here?" I asked, meaning the soul less back bar away from the crowds. 

Chico explained that they had the main deck stage but after a few weeks this Hawaiian band came in and bumped them to the dingy, dark motel lounge. "They're really from Somoa," Chico whispered, as if it was a state secret. 

I gave them a write up in my column and kept track of where they were playing and they quickly became one of my favorite bands, where ever they played. 

Then one winter, when they were out of work for the season, I went to see Tino, the manager of the Mediteranian diner and lounge on MacArthury Blvd. in Somers Point, that is now a beach house furniture store. The diner was open 24 hours and the lounge had live music or dj most nights. I asked Tino - who was a suit and tie Greek, what the worse night of the week was in the Lounge. 

He said Monday, no music, no dj, so I asked him if I could four wall it - take the cover charge at the door and bring in a new band, one night a week. He agreed, so I took an ad out in the SandPaper and wrote up an article before hand, and put out flyers around Ocean City promoting Dr. Chico and Island night at the Med on Monday nights in January. 

At first I got a little scared, as very few people showed up early, and my brother Leo sat on a bar stool at the door taking in the $3 cover. The band took the stage, and Chico began to sing Marley, "Everything's gonna be alright," and sure enough, before the set was over the place was crowded, the dance floor was hopping and there was a line at the door. Tino was beaming a nice smile and opened a second bar. 

People got into it, with the girls wearing flower print skirts and the guys Hawaiian shirts. Chico brought out a pole and began playing the Limbo Rock and people lined up and danced under the pole, - "How low can you go?" Chico wanted to know. 

It may have been cold outside, but Chico made it hot, hot, hot inside, and people loved it - the music, the scene, the style, it just worked. Tino bought some fake palm trees for effect. 

I learned Chico was from South Jersey, but he spent a lot of time in Miami and the islands, and knew a lot of important people from down there, especially Ernest Ranglin and Sir Cedrick, who we flew up from Florida for $100 on Spirit airlines. 

While most of the people didn't recognize them or their significant roles in the development of island music, I did. Ranglin, a suit and tie guitarist from Jamaica is credited with inventing the Ska style of island music, that evolved into reggae. Island Records owner Chris Blackwell brought him to London where Ranglin arranged and produced My Boy Lolypop, the first ska song to make it to the top of the pop charts with a 17 year old Jamaican singer. Blackwell would become Bob Marley's producer and bring him into the London limelight. 

Chico picked up Ranglin at the airport and brought him to my family's Ocean City rooming house where we put him up. A quiet, easy going gentleman, Ernest let his guitar do his talking and we had one of the best Island Nights ever. And just checking, Ranglin is still alive and picking at 90 something, God Bless him. 

A few weeks later Sir Cedrick flew up from Trinidad, where he was the king of the pans - the Steel Drums, oil drums that washed ashore during World War II that were fashioned into percussion instruments by the natives. And Sir Cedrick was - is the best. Another fine Island night at the Med, and listening to Sir Cedrick play those pans with a sweet tap and swipe that can't make a bad sound. 

Island Night at the Med got so popular that summer the proceed eclipsed what Tino made on the weekends with his top forty band, so he started paying them out of the bar funds and we took Leo off the door, and there was no cover. 

When spring rolled around, Dr. Chico had a big following so it was understandable that the owner of the Waterfront on the bay, which had a huge deck, would hire Dr. Chico, who made Sunday night Island Night, and that remained popular for years, even after Chico had moved on up the coast to Point Pleasant Beach and other seaside resorts where Island music was embraced. 

Chico's band was always in flux, and Kenny, his original guitarist moved to San Diego where he began calling himself Dr. Chico and started another band with the same schick, so Chico became Dr. Cheeko, who has the cure for all your worries. 

I last saw Cheeko play on the boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach, with a really tight band behind him, one that had been with him awhile, and saw how the tourist crowd, sprinkled with locals, reacted to him the same way I did when I first saw and heard him play in the motel bar in Wildwood. 

Although I had been out of circulation for a few years, I did go out of my way to catch Santana at the Borgata, and was really glad to accidently run into Dr. Cheeko and his wife Nancy. Cheeko called me "Brother Bill," as he always did, and gave me a big hug and a giant smile. 

Nancy was the backbone of the band, booking them, keeping track of the money, paying the band, and doing all the things that a successful group needs to have done. 

Nancy worked at Fred and Ethels in Smithville, where they held a memorial tribute to Cheeko a few weeks ago, and while I couldn't make it, I have been thinking about Cheeko a lot, and how he made my life so much better - richer - and I realized I wasn't alone. 

God bless Dr. Cheeko, and may his music live on and his smile remain planted in the back of my brain.