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. 

 

Somers Point Beach Concerts 

Here's who's performing at the 27th Annual AtlantiCare Concert series in Somers Point. (Courtesy Suasion Communications Group)

SOMERS POINT, N.J. — Somers Point's free beach concert series begins June 21. All concerts take place on William Morrow Beach on Bay Avenue and begin at 7 p.m.

Limited snacks and non-alcoholic beverages will be available. In the event of inclement weather, concern venue changes or cancellations will be posted to the Somers Point Facebook page at www.facebook.com/somerspoint.

Here's the lineup for the 2019 AtlantiCare Concert series:

June 21: Kick-off with Jethro Tull’s Martin Barre

Martin Barre, Jethro Tull’s founding lead guitarist, celebrates Tull’s 50th anniversary. For more information, visit www.martinbarre.com.

 Wainwright and The Train

From Southern Hospitality to Boogie Woogie Rock & Roll. For more information, visitwww.victorwainwright.com.

July 4: 4th of July Spectacular

Featuring Billy Walton’s Jersey Shore Rock and Soul Revue, starring Michael “Tunes” Antunes from Eddie & The Cruisers. Also perfoming is Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez from Springsteen’s E Street Band, and the Billy Walton Band.

July 5: ‘Eagles Country’ Tribute to The Eagles with Hawkins Road

With their premier performance of “Eagles Country”, the Hawkins Road Allstars will pay tribute to the Eagles, with special guests Dan Burke, “Big Bob” Ernano, Rosie O’reilly, Heather “Lil’ Mama” Hardy. For more information, visit www.hawkinsroad.com.

July 12: Bobby Campanell’s “Summer of Love”

Bobby Campanell will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Woodstock with his “Summer of Love” concert from 1969. The evening will also mark the debut performance of The Deck Band. www.facebook.com.

July 19: Pittsburg’s Queen of Blues
Jill West and Blues Attack. Additional artists TBA. For more information, visitwww.jillwestandbluesattack.com.

July 26: Will Power

Tribute to Tower of Power and the hit songs What is Hip?, Down to the Nightclub, andStill A Young Man.

August 2: Multi-Grammy Award-Winning Phantom Blues Band

Premier appearance by one of the world’s greatest ensembles, who have performed with Joe Cocker, Bonnie Raitt, BB King, Etta James, Jimi Hendrix, and Taj Mahal. For more information, visit www.thephantombluesband.com.

August 9: The Jeremiah Hunter Band

Featuring original members of The Soul Survivors and Full House. For more information, visit www.kennyjeremiah.com.

August 16: New Orleans’ Funky Brassy Rock of Bonerama

Performing a Led Zeppelin Tribute.

August 23: The Dane Anthony Band

A premier Northeast party dance band. For more information, visitwww.daneanthony.com.

August 30: “BEGINNINGS”

A world-class tribute to Chicago, this is BEGINNINGS premier performance at the Somers Point Beach Concerts.

Sept. 1: Labor Day Weekend Holiday Show

Performers TBA.

Sept 6: Living Legacy of Louisiana Zydeco

Multi-Award Winning aritists CJ Chenier and The Red Hot Lousiana Band. For more information, visit www.officialcjchenier.com.

Dr. Cheeko Summer of 2021 Schedule

Dr. Cheeko's Island Sounds 

Dr. Cheeko Band - Frankie Gibson on bass and vocals; Dennis Mathew on keyboard, Eddie Gafftney percussion; Evelyn Acevedo vocals; Vickie Austin vocals and Dr. Cheeko on percussion and vocals. 

July 3rd - Ocean Casino Poolside - 4pm 

July 4th - Hard Rock Beach Bar - 1 pm 

July 7th - Richland Park 7:30 

July 10th -Laundromat Bar Morristown N.J. 7 pm 

July 11th - VFW - Bricktown - 3pm 

July 18th - VFW - Bricktown - 3 pm 

July 24th - Vineland Concert 

July 25th - Hard Rock Beach Bar (rain date July 31) - 3:30 -7 pm

August 8th - Hard Rock Beach Bar - 3:30 - 7 pm 

August 14th - Normandy Yacht Club - Lavallete - 7 pm 

August 15th - VFW - Bricktown - 3 pm

August 22nd - VFW - Bricktown - 3 pm 

August 29th - Hard Rock Beach Bar - 1 pm 

September 3rd - VFW - Bricktown - 3pm 

September 4th - Ocean Casino Poolside 

September 12th - VFW - Bricktown - 3 pm 

September 26th - VFW - Bricktown - 3 pm 

MORE TO COME - STAY TUNED HERE 

We Were Brothers - Robbie Robertson and The Band

Were Brothers – New Documentary on The Band

By Billkelly3@gmail.com

I was looking forward to seeing this film in a real movie theater, but fate intervened. So I put out $7 to rent it for 48 hours and listened to it on my phone and then watched it on my laptop via Youtube, and needed the diversion and distraction from the current reality.

It’s a very good film for those who are familiar with The Band and their story, but it was kind of sad for me because of my personal association with them, that is all of them except Robbie Robertson, the only original member of this Band of Brothers who I have not met.

This is basically Robbie Robertson’s side of the story, a sort of prequel to Martin Scorese’s The Last Waltz, some say the best concert movie ever produced.

The first article I had published in the now defunct Atlantic City Sun newspaper was about how Levon and the Hawks, before they were The Band, played Tony Marts nightclub in Somers Point, NJ for six weeks in the summer of ’65. It was at the time they hooked up with Bob Dylan, then went on his first “electric tour,” were soundly booed at every venue, and then retreated to the artists colony of Woodstock, New York, before it was famous.

I first saw The Band in downtown Cleveland in 1969, then at the Spectrum in Philly a few times, and then more than once when they backed Dylan. I also caught them at a small club off the Black Horse Pike in Berlin and at a Bowling alley in Pennsauken when Blondie Chaplin and a blues harpist Paul Butterfield joined them.

Then after the Last Waltz, I booked them myself (for $7,000) in the mid-1980s to play a Tony Marts Reunion concert at Egos nightclub, the site of the former Tony Marts.

Attorney and former Camden prosecutor Harris Berman and his brother apparently sold a Florida hotel and had a few million they had to burn, so they purchased the old, dilapidated Bay Shores, tore it down and built the Waterfront. Then went across the street and purchased Tony Marts, tore it down and built Egos, a classy disco.

Jody Kish owned Mark’s News on the corner of 8^th and Central Ave. in Ocean City, a central community junction for decades. In 1985 Jody and I decided to bring The Band back to Somers Point, and asked Berman if we could use Egos, as the former site of Tony Marts. He wanted to see The Band for himself, so a bunch of us piled into his limo and drove to New York City where we caught The Band at The Lone Star Cafe, a Country-Western bar in the East Village.

Renoun jazz bassist Jaco Pastoris was there, and I got a good picture of him with his guitar covering one eye, but he was too drunk and high to jam with The Band that night. But Berman liked the music, and agreed to let us four wall it, and we got Levon and the boys to agree to play for us a few months later for $7,000. And I got to know Rick Danko better as we sat and had a few beers together and talked.

A few weeks later I caught Rick and Richard Manual do a duo show at the Chestnut Cabaret in Philly, and helped them carry their equipment out to the curb. Richard said he was really looking forward to returning to Somers Point, as he had some good times there, and seeing Tony again. Rick then imitated Tony Marotta’s deep husky Tom Waits type voice, “You boys stay away from the dance girls now….”

Then we all laughed.

But as Robbie Robertson says in Once Were Brothers, - “It was a beautiful thing. It was so beautiful it went up in flames.”

Between the Chestnut Cabaret show and the Tony Marts reunion, Richard hanged himself in a Florida motel shower, The Band’s manager Albert Grossman, who took Dylan and them to Woodstock, and Tony Marotta, Sr. himself died.

But the show went on. Garth needed a Hammond B3 organ that we rented, and drove down in a rented car from Woodstock. The rest of The Band showed up, and despite Harris Berman’s agreement to put them up in one of his boardwalk motels, I had to put their rooms on my mother’s credit card. Rick stayed at my house, and when I was driving him over the Ocean City-Somers Point causeway he asked me to write the true history of The Band.

And while I thought seriously about it, the story is too sad for me to put into words. And Robbie’s film Once Were Brothers reaffirms that opinion.

As Robbie Robertson put it, “I was an only child, and this brotherhood thing was so powerful.”

His mother, Dolly, was an Indian from the Six Nations and his father Alexander Klegerman, who died before he was born, was Jewish, and he was raised by an abusive step father. When he went to visit his mother’s family on a reservation, he says, “When the sun went down the instruments came out.”

Robbie got a little guitar with a cowboy on it and learned to play, then rock and roll exploded – Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis – “For me it was a life altering moment. A revolutionary moment.That’s it. I don’t know what you people are going to do, but I know what I’m going to do. Within a week I was in a band. It was like having your own bowling alley.”

Opening for Rockabilly Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, Robertson was totally impressed, especially with drummer Levon Helm. After the show Robbie says, “I just hung around to let them rub off on me.”

After overhearing Hawkins say, “I got to do a record and need some new songs,” Robertson ran home and locked himself in a room until he had written two songs that he gave to Hawkins.

When a guitar slot opened in the Hawks, Robertson sold his prized ’56 Stratocaster and took a train to Arkansas in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the fountainhead of rock and roll and home to Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, James Cotton, Levon Helm – “so many great musicians came out of there, down and dirty and heavy, just like the air.”

And he got the job, telling Hawkins that “you will never have to tell me to work harder.”

As for money, Hawkins said, “Don’t worry about money, you will get more pussy than Frank Sinatra.”

The fifteen year old Robertson bonded most closely with drummer Levon Helm, and they became like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.  Robbie wrote many of the songs, while Levon arranged them. They were soon joined by other Canadians – Rick Danko on bass, Richard Manuel on keys and Garth Hudson on organ. Garth was the best musician of the bunch, and Danko, Manual and Helm all sang.

When they finally got jammnig, Hawkins said, “They hit me like a bolt of lightning.”

They went on the road, mainly playing the Southern “Chitlin’ Circuit,” and continued on the road for years. Finally, in 1965, Hawkins got married and went home to settle down as the group continued on the road as Levon and the Hawks.

Eventually they told their Canadian manager, Colonel Kutlets, that they wanted to settle down too, and needed a steady gig, and he arranged for them to be the house band for the summer at Tony Marts in Somers Point. Just across the bay from dry Ocean City, N.J., Somers Point had over a dozen bars and most of them featured live music. The two biggest bars were Bay Shores on the waterfront and across Bay Avenue was Tony Marts Café – A photo of place is in the movie Once Were Brothers – around 26 minutes into the film, and there’s also a photo of them sitting on stools by the bar, dressed in black suits and ties.

They played three sets a night, six days a week, and had Mondays off, when most of the bartenders and musicians from the Bay Avenue juke joints played a game of softball with the local policemen – the Hangover League they called it. And when Conway Twitty was the headliner while the Hawks were there, he was a ringer as a former professional ballplayer.

Rather than play ball, Robbie Robertson went to New York City where he went to Tin Pan Alley, the home of songwriters, and hooked up with John Hammond, Jr., a white blues player who took Robertson to the Columbia recording studio where his father, John Hammond, Sr. worked as a talent scout. Having “discovered,” Robert Johnson, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, Hammond, Sr. had four aces in his hand.

At the studio, Robertson heard Dylan play a recording of his new song, “Like A Rolling Stone,”  and a few weeks later Dylan decided he wanted to go on the road with a real rock and roll band as that song requires. Sitting in his manger Albert Grossman’s office, Dylan asked about putting a band together, comlete with drums, electric guitars and keyboards. Grossman’s secretary, who happened to be from Toronto, recommended the Hawks, and John Hammond, Jr. reminded Bob that he had met Robbie Robertson from the Hawks.

Dylan called Tony Marts and talked to Levon, who was not familiar with folk music or Dylan, though he had heard the Byrd’s version of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and liked it. Before “Murder So Foul,” the Byrd’s version of Dylan’s song was the only number one hit Dylan had.

Robertson returned to New York and jammed with Dylan, and when Dylan asked him to go on tour with him, Robertson explained that he was in a band, and they had to stick together.

So Robertson returned to Somers Point and explained to Tony that they had a big opportunity in New York and wanted to get out of the last week of their contract – Labor Day week, the biggest week of the summer. Tony said that they were the best band he’s ever had, and later said, “they were the last of the gentlemen.”

Tony called Colonel Kutlets and asked for another good band for the Labor Day week and Kutlets sent him Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, who had a hit on the charts at the time – “Devil with the Blue Dress.”

Dylan was roundly booed at the Newport Folk Festival when he brought out his electric guitar, Levon and the Hawks  - Levon and Robbie backed Dylan in New York, where they played outdoors at a tennis stadium, and were booed again.

As Robertson put it, “We would go in and set up and play and they would boo. Everywhere we went.I thought it was a strange way to make a buck.”

Levon got tired of it, quit playing and went down to Louisiana to work on an off shore oil rig, being replaced by Micky Jones of The Monkeys fame.

They did a tour of Europe, and were booed again, mainly by the folk music crowd, but the general public bought “Like a Rolling Stone” and it shot up the charts to Number Two, cut off from the top spot by the Beatles.

Then when they returned to the States, Dylan went to Woodstock to stay at Grossman’s house, and had a motorcycle accident, so he stuck around there to recuperate. Meanwhile, Dylan and Grossman had put Robertson, Manuel and Danko on permanent retainer, so they didn’t have to work, and Danko rented a large pink house in West Saugerties, just outside of Woodstock they called “Big Pink.”

Robertson had met a fellow Canadian in Paris, the vivacious Dominique, and they lived in Woodstock together, and they all began to meet at Big Pink where they would write songs on a type writer they put out, and Garth set up a recording studio in the garage-basement where they would jam and record new songs, and eventually Levon returned to fill out The Band, the name that the local townsfolk called them.

Big Pink 

As Bruce Springsteen says, “There is no band greater than the some of the parts than The Band. Just the name says it all.”

They went out on the road together, introduced as, “Ladies and Gentlemen,” The Band to promote their first two albums that included “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” et al., and then backed Bob Dylan on a number of tours that really rocked.

They played the first Woodstock festival in 1969 without Dylan, but Grossman their manager wouldn’t let them be included in the film. The song “The Weight” became a big hit after it was included in the film “Easy Rider,” but once again, it was a cover version as Grossman didn’t want them in the popular record of that cult movie.

Eventually, at some point, as Robertson puts it, “Then it was broken, fractured, like glass, and it was hard to put back together.

Alochol, drugs, cocaine and heroin did them in, except for Garth, the musical mainstay of The Band, and with Robertson, the last survivor.

Garth’s classic song “Chest Fever” includes the lines “Going down to the Dunes with the Goons,” that I think is a reference to the old all night rock joint The Dunes, where the bouncers were known to be brutal.

Robertson wanted out, and wanted to go out with a bang, so he arranged for Martin Scorsese to film a concert at Winterland in San Francisco, where Bill Graham had arranged for them to play their first show as The Band, and  they called it “The Last Waltz.”

For Robertson it was, but for the rest of The Band, they eventually kept going. I saw them with and without Robertson, dozens of times over the years, besides booking them myself for the Tony Marts Reunion.

In 1990 I saw them practice and then play in Roger Walter’s The Wall at the Berlin Wall when they were dismantling it. I got a picture of Rick and me, and me and Ronnie Hawkins – the original Hawk, but they are color slides and I don’t know how to convert them to digital, yet.

It was quite sad though, because Rick had a babysitter that wouldn’t let him have a drink with us, or even socialize with anyone. A few years later Rick brought his own band to Somers Point to play the Good Old Days Picnic on the Saturday after Labor Day and my brother stopped by on his bicycle as he was riding in the Maloney’s bike a thon. We stood next to the stage, and Rick played and sang well, as a video of the show indicates, but Rick looked terrible, overweight and puffy, and I felt sorry for him, though we hugged each other like old friends.

Rick’s teenage son had died of an overdose, Richard hung himself, Rick drank himself to death.

Levon continued on however, and played Somers Point’s Bubba Mack Shack often, bringing along his daughter. After a bout of cancer when he couldn’t sing, he came out on the road again like the good old days, playing and singing, and even got a headliner gig at an Atlantic City casino, opening for the Black Crows that I caught.

I took this photo of Levon with a Tony Marts T-shirt I gave him at Bubba Mack Shack 
That's Howlin' Wolf's guitarist Hubert Sumlin sitting behind him 

Levon also wrote a book, “This Wheels on Fire,” in which he berated Robbie Robertson for copyrighting most of the songs, when he arranged them and the whole band played and sang and deserved some of the royalties that only Robbie was getting.

That’s the way the music copyright law works – whoever writes the song gets the dough. When organist Gary Booker – who makes Procol Harum’s “A White Shade of Pale” a classic song sued to get some of the royalities, a judge agreed his original instrumental organ is a defining part of the song, and gave it to him.

When Kris Kristopherson wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” while he was working as a janitor at the Columbia studios in Nashville, he overheard one of the session musicians Fred Foster mention Bobby McGee, wrote the song, and then gave Foster co-author credit and half the royalties just for saying “Bobby McGee.”

While Levon may have been right in that songs were a group effort, Robbie penned most of the words, and he gets the credits and royalties. 

And now with Levon dead, Robbie gets to put out his side of this story, which is beautiful, yet sad.

When I get out of isolation and my Honda Odyssey is back on the road, and I have a few bucks to play with, I'm going to take a ride up Highway 9 to New York State and visit Woodstock, the artists colony that's thirty miles from the site of the original Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in Bethel. I hope to visit Big Pink, Garth and Levon's daughter Amy, and get their side of the story. 

Seeing this film stimulated me to go back and revive a Roman a Cleff novela I wrote in 2015, fifty years after the events occurred – Waiting On the Angels – the Long Cool Summer of ’65 Revisited, which includes the story of Levon and the Hawks at Tony Marts and how they hooked up with Bob Dylan, all based on real people and true events. Coming soon, so stay tuned.

Bill Kelly - Billkelly3@gmail.com

Robbie Robertson's Chapter on Tony Marts from his book: 
Jersey Shore Nightbeat: Robbie Robertson Remembers Tony Marts - The Summer of 1965

Video of Robbie singing his new song We Were Brothers 

We were Brothers song - - - Video Search Results

We Were Brothers - Song Lyrics 

When the light goes out
And you can't go on
You miss your brothers
But now they're gone

When the light goes out
We go our own way
Nothing here but darkness
No reason to stay

Oh, once we're brothers
Brothers no more
We lost a connection
After the war

There'll be no revival
There'll be no one cold
Once were brothers
Brothers no more

When that curtain comes down
We'll let go of the past
Tomorrow's another day
Some things weren't meant to last

When that curtain comes down
On the final act
And you know, you know deep inside
There's no goin' back

Waiting On the Angels - Part 1

WOTA

Preparing for the Post Apocalypse World

Preparing for the Post Apocalypse World


  Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce - The Boss


Others committed to the show

By Bill Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com

If you would have told me two months ago that there would be no St. Patrick's Day Parade, March Madness, Broadway plays, the boardwalks, beach, live music and the bars, restaurants and most businesses would be closed, including the State Parks, where I had been taking refuge, I would have only thought that there must have been a nuclear holocaust.

I never considered a biological virus attack on our whole society, though one hundred and three years ago my grandmother, my mother's mother, died of the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918, a year after my mother was born.

And while  compiling a 100 year history of Camp Dix - now Joint Base McGuire Dix Lakehurst (JBMDL), I edited reports that indicated that flu ravished the base for about a year, killing more soldiers than those who died in combat in World War I. So I was quite aware of what such an epidemic could do.

I had also wrote about the U.S. Army Inspector General's Report on the Use of Human Subjects in Chemical Agent Research, which detailed how they tested different chemicals and biological agents on soldiers, students and prisoners. One major Army contract for such testing went to Hannahaman Hospital, which is now closed. Just last week, when they asked the owner of the building to reopen to handle Corona19 cases, he wanted a million dollars. So much for greed and human kindness.

The year I got that report, the Bicentennial summer of '76 - I worked with Bill Vitka, New Director of WMMR radio, who interviewed those in Philadelphia who were named in the report, and I think he won an award for his work.

That same  year I read a short item in the newspaper that said some biological warfare agents were missing from Fort Detrick, Maryland, where they do most of the chemical-bio warfare testing for the military, and shortly thereafter the Legionnaires Disease broke out at a veterans convention at the Bellview Stratford Hotel, the swankiest hotel in town at the time. It has symptoms very similar to Corona19 and attacks the lungs through the air.

I also worked with the Army at Fort Dix helping to train the soldiers before they are deployed overseas, and three of the dozens of scenarios we ran involved responding to chemical and biological warfare, and some units are trained and designated just for those types of operations.

The military has a contingency plan for every conceivable type of scenario, and they must have one for this pandemic, which is a foreign agent attack on our entire system and society.

I'd like to know if Corona19 is a naturally produced product or man made?

I find it strange that the city in China where the disease first surfaced is the home of one of only a few Level Four Labs that are built to study such harmful biological toxins.

During this crisis I thought of three movies that are worth mentioning - Bruce Willis in 13 Monkies, Andromeda Strain and On the Beach.

12 Monkies was filmed in Philadelphia and some of my old Camden neighborhood and features Willis as a time traveler sent back to Philadelphia to try to prevent the accidental release of biological toxins developed in a lab. It includes some interesting scenes of old Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden including some of the whore house motels and bars that are no longer there - thanks to Christie Whitman, who thought them obscene as the first thing you see when driving into New Jersey.

Then there's the old Met - Metropolitan Opera on North Broad street, where the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded, but in the film it is all falling apart, as it was for real, but only recently restored into a magnificent theater it once was, a musical venue that I hope we will be able to enjoy again soon.

Andromeda Strain is about a doctor and scientist who is called from his black tie party by some MPs who merely tell him "We have a fire," the key words that requires him to get a Hazmat Suit on and retrieve an airborne biological toxin that a military satellite brought back from outer space, crashed in the Nevada desert and was opened by a country doctor killing everybody around except an old man and child.

The movie gives a good view of a Level Five Lab, and how it is run - under an Agricultural Research Station and reached through an elevator disguised as a janitor closet.

I hope our Level Five Labs are all busy trying to figure out how to deal with Corona19, as I am sure they are at Fort Detrick.

And finally, On the Beach stars Gregory Peck as a 1960s era nuclear sub captain who retreats to Australia in a Post-Apocalyptic world to get away from the radio active fallout after a nuclear war, that nobody seems to know how or why was fought. How you live and what you do with the knowledge that eventually you are doomed, seems too much like today.

The Aussie outback song "Waltzing Matilda" can be heard throughout the film, which made me look it up and it just happened to be "Waltzing Matilda Day" as the song was first performed in April 1895, and I've been playing Tom Waits song, "Tom Traubert's Blues," that's based on the Waltzing Matilda melody.

As prolific Ocean City music hall concert promoter recently posted, music being recorded at home by musicians and singers is one of the highlights of being stuck in this rut.

I am Facebook friends with a number of musicians who have been gathering large followings by posting their performances on line - Hillary Klug, the Nashville fiddle player and Buck Dancer in boots is one. A young violinist who isn't a teenager yet is another.

And Billy Walton is the best. He has been presenting makeshift songs from his living room at home for a while now, placing his cell phone on a table, playing guitar and piano (I didn't know he could play the piano so well!), and sometimes having his son and daughter accompany him on drums and keys. Billy had to postpone a UK Tour because of this shit, and I know he is anxious to get back into performing live again with his full band.

Carmen and Nancy Marotta of Tony Marts fame are also doing a bang up job of booking really great talent for the Somers Point Beach Concerts and at Kennedy Park on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, just across from the old Convention Hall. I hope they can keep these acts together, and by summer we can get these shows underway.

But at this point in time I am very pessimistic, as things appear they will get worse before they get better, and we all have to stay healthy to live in the Post-Apocalypic World, whenever that comes and whatever it brings.

I'm pretty sure that before we will be all out and about, and go to bars, restaurants and concerts again, we will have a lot more of the remotely produced live streamed from home shows that we can only enjoy on our home computers, laptops and cell phones.

I think that the Casino Reinvestment Authority should financially back all of the casinos in making every theater in the city remotely accessible over wifi, so people can enjoy the shows from home or their phone and car, after all people now gamble from home and their phones, why not create remote entertainment venues that anyone can enjoy.

One problem will be to figure out how to make money from such remote shows - as I used to get paid for writing my Nightbeat Column for print, while  now I just post this blog without any income, even though I get hundreds of hits a day. How do you convert those hits to cash, that is the question?

One way is to buy their albums and CDs, as Billy Walton has a new one out that is really fantastic.

I'm sure we will figure it out, once the wildfire is out, but while we have so much time on our hands we can at least think about it, and give a hats off and salute not only to the health care workers on the front lines, and store clerks, but the musicians and entertainers who are trying to continue to make us happy, as we were before.

And next Wednesday, April 22 at 7 pm . New Jersey rockers will put together a benefit concert to raise money to fight the Corona 19 virus - a show that should include Bon Jovi, Bruce the Boss, Southside Johnny and probably Billy Walton, and other stars and celebrities - all live streaming from their homes, the new norm.

Organized by Governor Murphy's wife Tammy - a friend of Bon Jovi, the Fund has already raised $18 million that is being distributed to non-profits in the state. To contribute go to:
Home - NJ Pandemic Relief Fund

Bon Jovi's whose album 2020 and tour has been delayed by fate, wrote a new song - Do What You Can 
Jon Bon Jovi talks Jersey 4 Jersey, ‘Do What You Can,’ and being a social-distancing meme


JERSEY 4 JERSEY FUNDRAISER For NJPRF - New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund

Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Halsey to Perform for New Jersey Benefit

Jon Bon Jovi talks Jersey 4 Jersey, ‘Do What You Can,’ and being a social-distancing meme

Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Danny DeVito, more to play big Jersey 4 Jersey special


BK NOTES: I will try to add more links to this when I can