November 7, 2023 • 31 mins
Chances are, you’ve sung or rapped along to one of the artists that guest Sal Abbatiello discovered or launched through one of his nightclubs or his record company. Sal is a legend in the music industry, and I know this episode will have my older listeners reminiscing on the early hip hop days and younger listeners excited to share their new music knowledge with their friends.
Sal reflected on his early days trying to convince the people around him to give hip hop a chance and the incredible story of how he brought hip hop into the Bronx clubs and pushed it into the mainstream. Who would’ve thought that a club night where you only charge $1/person could launch a legendary DJ’s career? (You’ll have to listen to find out who!)
Tune in now to learn all about how:
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Sal recognized the power of DJs and created a recurring platform for them
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The community was always the driving force behind Sal’s efforts
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The people of the Bronx came to see Sal as a mentor - and the generosity that he showed in return
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The second and third generations of hip hop were discovered
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Sal pushes himself to go after what he’s most afraid of losing
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And more!
Host: Daymond John
Producers: Beau Dozier & Shanelle Collins; Ted Kingsbery, Chauncey Bell, & Taryn Loftus
For more info on how to take your life and business to the next level, check out DaymondJohn.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Only community people. All my security were straight out of jail.
I would only give ex CON's jobs because they couldn't
get jobs. That was you know, people that were homeless
people lived in my club. They had nowhere to go.
And many times I had to save a life or two.
That's how critical it used to be. And when you
open seven nights a week, you might have a situation
on a Monday where somebody might be getting killed. And
(00:20):
it's only Monday. We didn't even get to the weekend yet,
you know, there's thirty three hundred nights of hip hop.
I went through. Red lights would blink through the whole
club and all the rooms knowing that the police were
coming in. So you know, I always I was just
so community based, and you know I was in I
knew I. I thought that was the chosen one. I
was the one got picked for to help this community
(00:41):
and help these people through music, through music, through music.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
What if I told you there was more to the
story behind game changing events? Get ready for my new podcast,
That Moment with Damon John will jump into the personal
stories of some of the most influential people on the planet,
from business mobiles and celebrities to athletes, and artisans. So
(01:06):
I'm here with sal Avatello, and you know, I'm gonna
believe it, and I'm going to keep bringing you interesting
people that you may or may not know, however, but
you can learn a lot from. And I really don't
have enough time to go through all of his accomplishments,
but I just want to break it down like this.
You know, he's a legend in New York City, a
legend around the world if you really look at where
what he has helped Propel has touched around the world,
(01:29):
meaning hip hop. But he's also you know, worked in
the music industry some capacity for forty five years and
he's gone through four or five genres of music, disco,
then this emerging music called rap, then freestyle, then back
to rap, and so I think that first of all,
as we get into this, we're going to be able
(01:50):
to learn or learn about how you can go forty
five fifty years of doing something you absolutely love, how
can you find out about the new things that are
going on and make it your own and push it
out there, and the lessons you can learn more importantly
from the.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Failures of what's going on. SOK. So thanks for being here,
My pleasure. You know, briefly, you know, your story is
that your dad had a club called Disco Fever and
hugely popular in the Bronx, right, And and you started
working there as a bartender, and in nineteen seventy six,
I think that you started to do other things there.
(02:27):
Now I know your history just because I'm a New Yorker,
And if you don't know your history, you're crazy. I
know that you know, disco was popular, but now all
of a sudden, there was this music that was coming
around from the streets, right, It's called rap music, and
most people didn't want to touch the stuff, right, and
you decided to embrace it. And actually, you know, you
(02:48):
were one. You were probably the number one spot where
rappers would die to go and be seen, Grandmass, Clash,
Furious five, Busy Bee, Sweet g those all those people.
And I know that at the time you being an
Italian American, most of your community said, hey, you know,
(03:09):
I can't use the word here, but you're in love.
Why are you dealing with those people? Why are you
letting them in your business, in your club? What are
you talking about? This is not wrapped today. This is
when it was very, very small, and the kids. We
looked at as just poor kids from the street who
were banging on a couple of cans. So tell me
a little bit about you know at that time, what
you were seeing happening, and you know, let's just get
(03:32):
right into it.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Well, luckily for me, I'm blessed. My father and my
ancestors came in. They they settled in in the Bronx
on was forty ninth in Washington Avenue. My mother, my father,
they helped them grocery store. So we were in the
community from the fifties. So my father decided to open
up a neighborhood bar so on one ninth and third Avenue,
(03:53):
right in the Bronx. It was called Ali's Ees. So
in there is where I got my taste of music
Motown as you know, all of that from there. I
grew up in that So being in that community, we
were one of the last white families left. So being
in a black community was not odd to me. It
was very comfortable. You know, I had uncles that were black,
you know, as growing up as a child, so being
(04:15):
you know, being around that music in that environment, I
was very comfortable in it. As we go on into
the sixties, now disco's starting to explode. Duop just finished
and we opened up a bar in on Pellham Parkway
and White Plains Road and it was more of a
like Mafia wise guy place and Chas Palmellari played did
Jo Peshi played there, Frankie Vincent played there. So I
(04:37):
was in that environment. Now now I'm like eighteen nineteen,
I'm tending bar and everything was bands back then, so
it was great, another great time during music. All of
a sudden, the DJ starts emerging in the mid seventies
and all these banded places start going out because it's
a lot cheaper to have a djil right, you know,
and you know, got to pay all his band and
(04:58):
tech and all that stuff. So now I opened up
the first disco in the Bronx on Williamsbridge Road in
Pelham Park were called Sally Abbot's Playhouse, and it takes off.
It's going great, And then disco started blowing up. And
my father had opened up a place called Cafe Peppin' Salt,
which was on one sixty ninth and Jerome in the Bronx.
Also it was a jazz place. George Benson went there.
(05:20):
The Knicks used to go there Frasier and well the
giants used to go there, the football place, so he
had a very popular place. And from that the block
he decided to open up a disco, and this is
like seventy six seventy seven. Wanted to open up a club.
Unfortunately for him, the disco music started dying at that
particular time. Got it back in. Going back now to
(05:42):
where I was, I'm in the Bronx up at that
you know, that wise guy place, and I get into
a confrontation at the disco with somebody and I wind
up getting shot twice. So my dad was like, Yo,
let's go. We got to get out of this. Let's
I'm going to open up a club in the Bronx
downtown once should come work there. So I go down there.
I'm twenty five years old and at the end of
the night, I see this guy, sweet Gee, and he's
(06:03):
rhyming on the mic. You know, it was like five
six in the morning, so at four o'clock the regular
DJ would go home, ge will come on the turn
tables and he started rhyming, and I'm watching the crowd,
the reaction He's making the whole place be like one person.
So I'm sitting there and I'm watching this from the side,
like say, oh, so now everybody who don't know each other, doctor, lawyer, pimp,
hook or a drug dealer or whatever, they're all being
(06:25):
this one person. He's bringing the club together as one,
which was a great interaction of people meeting people. So
I walked over. I was intrigued with the music. I said, we, yo,
what is this? He says, it's going on in the
streets and you know, this is what they call hip hop.
And I'm like, well, bring me somewhere. I want to
see it. So I go to the park. Me and
him go to the park. I say, grand Master Flash
in the park and he's killing it. But you know,
(06:46):
it was all teenage movement at the time. The drinking
age was eighteen, so it wasn't that bad. They changed
the law in the eighties. So I go down. I
see the reaction. I go, wow, we got to bring
this indoors. So I go back to my father, say, yo,
I found this music in the streets going hip hop,
so they knew a little bit about it. And all
his friends as all the friends my uncle's all you know,
they're all black like hell on that music. Is you crazy?
(07:07):
They ain't real music. They're spitting in the mic, they're
scratching the records. They're disrespecting the artists. They're using their music,
you know, you know James Brown's music, Jimmy Caster, like
they're ruining ever rece music. I go, Dad, there's going
to be the new movement in the Bronx. It's the
next generation. These are the children of Motown, of R
(07:27):
and B of jazz. That's there's gonna be the new movement.
So anyway, bugget for a while he was saying no.
Finally gives me a yes. I said, give me one night,
give me a Tuesday night. Let me bring it indoors.
So we bring it indoors on a Tuesday night, said
dollar to get in a dollar drink. Nineteen seventy seven,
And I convinced Grandmaster Players to DJ for one hundred
dollars with the Furious Five, with all the them are there.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
With the gar record. So they all made seventeen fifty.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Of the thing was I promised them he'd be a star.
I said, I'm going to make your star. It ain't
even about the money. Said, you're in the street, nobody's
seeing you. I'm going to give you a platform where
people come see you every night, and then you're gonna
have opportunities.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Sure enough, Why would you do that? I mean it's
a dollar a dollar a person to get in, right.
You got this crowd where really was gangsters in the streets, yes, right,
breakdancers they're doing something, you know, they breakdance.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And black black page that we're letting them.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
In for a dollar You're not gonna make a lot
of money. And a dollar a drink, You're really not
gonna make a lot of money. Why Why did that?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Because that was my opportunity to show the magnitude of
this new music, this new movie, proof of concept, right,
so I had to make it. Remember the teenagers now too.
So the drinking age was eighteen, but you know teenagers
are sneaking in fifteen.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Sixteen, sixteen high school down find out now, So you
feel that's strongly about this thing to call it aprop
of concert now for those who don't know where hip
hop genre of it started when you saw Sweet g
On at five o'clock in the morning. But the kids
ripping now who don't know hip hop At that time,
a DJ was to spend the record a MC was
(09:04):
supposed to come on and purely talk about the DJ.
He was only there to say, Hey, my DJ could scratched,
my DJ could do this. At that time, mike controls,
microphone controls, mcs really weren't the jay Z's of the world.
Weren't there. If there was a jay Z, he was
only there to say three or four words about what
the DJ was playing. Correct.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Plus he was interacting with the crowd, interact with them.
That was the biggest thing. The crowd was involved with
what they were doing, so they fell part of the night.
They were like part of the entertainment.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
But I'm trying to set the stage to show how
early you were when there wasn't technically an EMC.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Well there was no music.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
It was a DJ that was the star. And this
guy was almost like the ringing announcer at a boxing match, right, That's.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Who It was his crew, and that was the crew.
Everybody had their own crew. You know. My first DJ
was cool. Heirk. Actually he didn't even he didn't he
didn't even wrap, you know, he was just a DJ.
He was with claw Kent and they spoke on the mic.
But like you said, you know, they were all the
ones that I'm saying, were in the street. There was
no venue, there was no outlet for them to come.
I open up. It's successful, and before you know it,
(10:06):
it's seven nights a week. I got Hot DJ Hollywood,
I bring in Eddie Chie, but Reggie Wells, Lovebug Starsky Junebugs.
I started bringing in the most popular ones in the
street doing giving them their own nights, seven nights a week.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Even now, all of a sudden, hip hop starts to
(10:41):
really blow up. The record comes out, whether it's sugar
Hill Gang, then all of a sudden, Furious Five, the
Blondie Record, and all those types of people come out.
And even then it gets even to a more commercialized
level with Run DMCBC boys, Yellow Cool Channel. You are
the Mecca. You are the Apollo Theater, the Madison Square Garden.
The wind stayed in all this genre and why were
(11:03):
people now all flocking to you up in the Bronx
now coming down to downtown clubs in New York City,
coming to the Bronx where at that time, Bronce was
a very very tough era we're going through. You know,
it was a lot of gangs, A lot of the
buildings were demolished and destroyed by the landlords. Very dangerous.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yes, it was very right.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
And everybody didn't have a car.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Nobody had a car, nobody my parents didn't have a car.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Right, Why are people coming there from all around the world.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, now, remember it's it's boiling around in every borough,
in Queen's and Brooklyn's it's boiling out. But here's the
first venue where they could go to to actually see.
So now what's happening is the first record comes out
in seventy nine, Rapper's Delight, right, starts blowing up. As
that's blowing up, the club is just expanding. Russell Simmons
starts hanging out there. We become really good friends. He's like, say,
you got to start your own label. We got to
(11:52):
take this. So Russell's using the Fever because I ran
it so well. The sound system was great, you know,
held a thousand people. He's using it as an outlet
to get deals, promote deals. He's bringing up record executives,
he's bringing magazines up. I'm in People magazine, Time Magazine.
I mean, it's just blowing up. So he started off
as a booking agent and a manager. And who's he
(12:13):
bringing up? Curtis blow Curtis blowed me and him he
blows us. Yep, he blows up, and he's the first
single or rap artist to have a gold record. He's
on American Bandstand. Curtis blows on American band so on
Soul Trained. Yes, it was crazy. So now as that's
blowing up, I start opening up other venues. I will
place up the block called pepperin Salt. We make it
(12:35):
and put a DJ in. I opened up a skating
rink called skate Fever so I could cater to the
young generation, but only with the genre we played R
and B, but it was predominantly hip hop club. Now
it's growing up. So now I make my first record
in seventy nine called Heartbeat Rap with Sweet Geet. First
time I hearing my record on the radio, it's unbelievable feeling,
as you know, you know when you have something successful
(12:57):
with you're trying so hard, but you're right. The problem
was the whole Bronx was burning. There was no jobs,
thirty percent unemployment, and I become the only person that
they could look to the neighborhood for something, whether it
be charity, work United Nego College Fund, or a family
whose kid died and they're in the morgue and they
don't have money to get him out. You know, we
(13:17):
would put up signs and pay for their funerals. So
I started becoming like this go to person in the
Bronx because nobody did. I was the only white person
that they probably would trust because back then, you know,
there was you know, Martin Luther King had just got
murdered in the late sixties, and so that that carried
through through the seventies, you know, and you know, there
were still people who didn't trust me, but you know,
(13:38):
I always was straight with them. I never try to
do anything with the artists and be their managers or anything.
I was just helping up the community to keep the
club going. We started the Ideal College Fund so we
could deal with entertainment. So I wanted to deal with music,
entertainment and sports. What does that do for kids? Keep
them out of trouble? So I wanted to do those
(13:59):
three main thing. So I started the Rutgers Basketball League
in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Very famous even till today, until today or something like that.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I played in the first three games. I won the
first MVP. It was an unbelievable night. Three thousand people
show that at Mount Morris Park in nineteen seventy nine.
I did it with mister Magic, you know, rest in Peace,
who was the first DJ to get on BLS. So
we're breaking through all these things and we're given the
community something that they didn't have. The politicians were gone,
nobody would help. So I started helping and we were
(14:28):
helping ourselves.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Is you know as we talk about what power is
and a lot of people who will watch this will
be entrepreneurs with entrepreneurs, and a lot of them will
question themselves on why they're doing what they're doing every day.
Would you say that that is some of the things
that are empowering, not just the dollar. It's the fact
that you care for your community and your customer. You
realize that whether you signed up for it or not,
(14:52):
you become a mentor to whether two or two thousand
or two, you know, twenty million people. Do you find
that that is one of the things that have kept
you going through all these years?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I mean the older I get, the more I get
that you did this. If it wasn't for you, you
changed my life around. I used to take drugs, I
straightened out. You show me how to work show me
be a road manager.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
I don't know if I would have pooble if you
didn't really highlight this new music. There was a voice
of the people at that time. Because hip hop I
would later on become somebodey who's dressing the community and
take it to another level. So I guess I not
guess I owe you a great you know.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Actually when you first started, I went up because me
and LLL were pretty good friends and he has just
started working with you, and I went up to your
first place. I remember you were there. You were very young.
It had to be what early.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Nineties, was that late about ninety five? Oh?
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Was that late?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Wow, it's all one thing you've been around doing this.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Wou something years man ten years ago like that?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
So so you know, so yeah again, like you're saying,
you know, power is to understand that you know you're
you're also knowing that you have a built in responsibility
that comes with this. Now, it didn't just stop there.
Now we can we can keep going on with all
the things that you've done for the hip hop community.
But then a new music starts to come around. It's
(16:13):
called freestop, cover Girls and so many other bands come
around Lisa Lisa and all that stuff. One of the first,
you're one of the first, probably the first to really
start highlighting and pushing that. How did you make this transition?
And how did it had to be something you enjoyed
(16:35):
because you couldn't be successful. And then if you didn't
enjoy it, how did you make this transition?
Speaker 1 (16:38):
And why? Well, you know, in business you have to
reinvent yourself constantly. No matter what you have. As hot
as it could be, it could be gone tomorrow, you
know how it flips. So in the eighties, it's blowing up.
The hip hop eighty three, you know, like I said,
we're in all these magazines, TV shows or run DMC
comes out, blows up. I start my own record company
(17:00):
and I write this record called Games People Play goes
to number one. Everything's just showing up, and all of
a sudden, the fever starts getting a little old. And
it's been there eight years, nine years. And now hip
hop's going around the world and ain't in the little place.
Let's go fever beac boys that run doing concerts. Oh,
they're going to Roxies, they're going to Webster Hall, They're
going downtown. Now it's all over the country. You know,
(17:22):
the Furious Now all the original rappers, they're all falling off. Now,
the First Party Rappers, Furious five, Curtis Treacher's three, all
those guys, they're falling off now. Luckily for me. In
nineteen eighty five, Warner Brothers comes in and want to
do a movie about hip hop, about so they come
to Fever. So in eighty five they do the movie
(17:42):
Crush Groove, which I'm ready for it to give me
a second life. Unfortunately for me, it brought so much
attention to the neighborhood they wind up closing the club
up after ten years for no cabaret license. So I'm
waiting for this second goal around. Oh god, now the
whole world's going to know about the Fever, you know,
I mean, even though they did know, but now it's
going to reincarnate it again. Okay, and we get closed
(18:04):
the last night filming of Crush Groove, we get shut down.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Pad so so no Cara, meaning that everybody they're doing
a production up there. It's a movie being shot. Yes,
So now the city, the police, the film department, the
Arts department are all looking at you and they're going,
you know what we gotta be careful because there's some
potential legal issues. You don't have a caparet license, meaning
people can't realize that you can dance. Correct.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yes, entertainment live and the same.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
You had your bar and everything.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Else, but everything was labor.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
They're ready for this because it's kind of like those
people are going shark Tank and they're going, all right,
I'm gonna air next month. Let me get a gazillion
dollars with the inventory. All of a sudden, unfortunately, a
natural disaster happens and that Friday night that they were
going to air, they don't air. They get pre emptied
because something else. You have to shut down at what
you felt was the next bite of the apple.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
The next I'm like, wow, I'm going to get another
ten year run. And that was very community minded to it.
It meant a lot to me. I had one hundred
and eighty to two hundred people working for me at
one point in nineteen eighty three, and only community people.
All my security were straight out of jail. I would
only give x CON's jobs because they couldn't get jobs.
That was you know, people that were homeless. People lived
(19:16):
in my club. They had nowhere to go. They would
drive the train. So anyway, I'm like, wow, this is
great for me. Now I could like go to the
next level. And you know, it was people were coming
out of that a little bit now in the mid eighties.
So now Crushcroove comes out, the club gets closed, and
unfortunately I'm depressed. I'm sitting in a park one day
and I'm contemplating on my next move, and I see
(19:38):
a bunch of these Puerto Rican kids breakdance. And I'm
sitting there and I see this DJs plugged up to
the light pole, just like Flash was, and I went, oh, wow,
Latin hip hop, Latin hip hop, second generation Puerto Ricans. Oh,
it's going to happen again. But now were Puerto Ricans.
So go over to the kid who is Louis Vega.
I don't know if you have ever heard of him, but
(19:58):
it's very popular. Just want to grab me. A few
years ago, I go over to him. I said, Yo,
what's your name, Little Louis Vague? I go, I said,
we got to do this. What is this? He says, no, no,
We'll just break dance. And there was no music yet,
you know. So now, luckily for me, I was involved
with the music with the hip hop. So I said, well,
I'm going to be the first one to make this music.
So my father happened to have another club that we
(20:19):
were partners on. It was a salsa club called Voices
in the Bronx. Ralph mccarto legendary salsa, did the Garden,
did all the big ones, had La India, Marc Anthony T. Danievis,
he's the promoter there. Thousand people a week, were doing
every week and he gets a gig at the Palladium
in the city. We go from a thousand people to zero. Now,
(20:39):
I thought, I got dad telling you I just found
Latin hip purpose. Like I don't want nothing to do
with hip hop. I'm telling you this is the next movement,
Latin hip hop. The community of the Puerto Ricans are
coming into you know, in the Bronx heavily, I said,
this is going to be the next movement English speaking
of the SASA generation. Anyway, he has no choices, no customers,
(21:00):
Bring Louis and Boop two. A thousand people immediately act.
So it's the next movement, street movement. Luckily for me,
I seen those movements before they were happening.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, you could say looky if you show those movements
before those happening, or lucky for you, you have your
eyes open and your antennas are up. Because how many
of us see our kids or on Snapchat or doing
something new and we go what is that crap? Instead
of going no, what is that right? You know that
that shows that there's a lot of aspects of of
(21:30):
business that the gut right has your gut always given you?
You know, some vision or or made you. What made
you follow your gut during all these times.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
I have a lot of common sense, and I'm a
people's person. I go by vibe. People vibes, you know,
how they how they react to stuff. I always think
of the other person in their position in their life,
what they're going through. And music is the soothing place
that everybody retreats to when they're in trouble, when they're
when they're unhappy, when they're lonely, when they need some
(22:01):
kind of guidance, or they want to just forget and
plug in. So, like I said, so when I saw
that and brought it indoors, so now I said, I'm
going to make the first record. Disco was dead already,
so I was doing a block party in the Bronx
and free party for about five thousand people. And I
find this young lady singing in my skating ring called Naobi.
(22:22):
Now she had a thirty second skit and crushed groove,
unbelievable singer Latina. So I put her with this young
kid and they never were again. With my gut, she
never sang she's fifteen. He never produced the record, he's nineteen.
I put him together. I told my partner, I said,
I think this is going to be the next music.
Was it called I'm calling that Latin hip hop? That's
(22:43):
what I called it back then we put it out.
The record was called Please Don't Go immediate smash. The
kid becomes a hit. On the other side of town,
Full Force is producing a young lady called Lisa. Lisa.
She was a little more R and B. They were
R and B. But I put out that Latin sounding
dance record, dance record, dance record. When I put out
(23:20):
that Latin sounding dance record, and then before you know it,
the club took off, the music took off, and I became.
Luckily for me, I was one of the pioneers of
hip hop. This Luckily, I was the pioneer of freestyle
which came to be doing.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I gotta thank you again. You know, listen, my wife
our first date, she said, I can only take her
on a date if I took her to a freestyle concert. Really,
uh you know, and and you know, uh so so
thanks for hosting me up. Well so all right, So
so now all of a sudden, you know you're going
(23:54):
through all that. You started two music genres when you
were part of when you actually started, and then you
return back to hip hop. Well you never really left it.
Everybody always has had a love and respect for your
your you know, your love and respect to hip hop.
But I see you started doing stuff with Fat Joe.
You had a big single Fat Joe and various other things.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, well I opened up another fever in ninety two. So,
like you said, I went back to hip hop. So
on Tree Mount Webster, the Old Devil's Nest, which was
the freestyle place, I go back and I start again.
So now I'm third generation hip hop. So now I
discover Woon Tang Clan. They did their first show there.
Run DMC does their comeback album. I got John ay
(24:37):
Fouji's did this show that Biggies did his very first
New York appearance there, Fat Joe is the promoter. I
became Fat Joe's manager, NAS did his first album there.
I mean, I have all the fliers, everything's documented, and
now I'm back in the game again with third generation
hip hop. So they knew me from the original pioneers,
(24:57):
and now they know me from now. I'm like become
a legendary in the genre. And that took off and
Joe and I mean, all of these guys became stars
now naught by nature, everybody.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
I listen, you're behind a lot of those people. But
I want to I wanted let's let's take a moment
to be really candid about this. You know, it sounds
great and dealing with all these artists that that have
motivated a lot of us around the world, but the
music industry very nasty industry. A lot of these ares
are very very hard to deal with. And the twenty
(25:29):
eight year old sal probably had a lot of love
for it. Now a little bit of an older one,
older soalm more mature, who maybe didn't want to deal
with all this crap, still deals with it and still
finds the love and a value for what kept you here,
Because you know, in my career, and it hasn't been
(25:50):
along with yours. I got tired of dealing with the
elements around the music industry. I'd rather just listen to
it right, right, Why do I gotta work with that
right all the time? I found very few people, like
the lls of the world, who I can really depend on.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
What kept you going through it, even though you know
you went to all that crap. You know, I know
you went through some crap.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Well we didn't. We could talk about that for another
two hours. What went on in the street. What I
had to deal with the street, even with the artists,
because no matter how big the artists were, the street
was still in control of them. They were still the bosses.
And many times I had to save a life or two.
That's how critical it used to be. And when you
open seven nights a week, you might have a situation
(26:31):
on a Monday where somebody might be getting killed. And
it's only Monday. We didn't even get to the weekend yet.
You know, there's thirty three hundred nights of hip hop
I went through, so picture three thousand.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Nights in.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
The Bronx unmonitored. You know, we were They wouldn't even
go in and anyway, I had the placeholl set up
where nobody ever got arrested.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
There.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
We had a light. You'd hit the button, it would red.
Lights would blink through the whole club and all the
rooms knowing that the police were coming in. So, you know,
I always I was just so community based, and you
know I was in I knew I. I thought that
was the chosen one. I was the one got picked
for to help this community and help these people through music,
you know, sports and education. So now how did I
(27:13):
stay at it? I just loved what I do. I mean,
I still do is forty seven years later, I just
did a big hYP hop concert at Barkley.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
You just you just hosted you know, the your on
TV RAPS thirtieth anniversary. Google named you one of the
most influential and or, let me get it straight, the
pioneers of hip hop want when they celebrated, you know,
the forty fourth anniversary of the birth of hip hop music.
You're still you know, very respecting in value. Where do
(27:41):
you find power and the motivation in your personal life
and your business life to keep going because you could
have always just given it up. And honestly, there's so
many people that would love to have you consult with
them for the new genre of anything coming around. So
you understand the way that that youth think and you
want to you see something before everybody else is on it. Well,
(28:03):
where do you find the power every day to get
up and do this in your personal life and your
business life.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I don't know. I just love what I do. And
when hip hop died, I mean when freestyle died in
the mid nineties, again trying to reinvent, and I see
all the drama all those young people went through. They're
only in their early thirties and their careers are over. Ready,
it's over. The original rappers are over. And all these
(28:27):
people used to look up to me, and I would
still try to go to venues in the mid nineties,
in the late nineties, till finally in the year two thousands,
I realized they weren't worth anything alone anymore. But if
I put them together as a group ten twelve, fifteen
num together, it meant something. They became one big rock star.
So again in the two thousands, I reinvent the musics
(28:50):
that died. And when I say the music's the original
hip hoppas and the freestyle groups I start combining them
together in venues like Masisquere Garden, Radio City. You know,
it was very exciting bringing these artists. Now it blew up.
I love the eighties, I love the nineties. They're performing more.
Dougie Fresh is doing like two hundred shows a year,
the Free Stock, Stevie b Or at least Elsa there
(29:13):
were headliners. Now they're packing venues all around the country.
And I fought through the two thousands to keep it alive,
and then I reinvented again combining everybody together in major venues.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
So it's not like you found power and bringing people
together and helping them out and letting them understand their
value of togetherness, whether it was a community, whether it's
a genre. And today, as we see the researchers of
nineties culture coming around, what do you think about the
scene today? And tell me a little bit more about
what do you think about the scene today? If you
talk about hip hop or music in general, I mean
(29:45):
you can talk about DM as well. Put your stances
on that.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Well, the scene today, I mean old School looks like
New School actually at the moment, because they're the ones
packing in all these concerts. But I mean I love
hip hop through all the years. I mean, eminem jay Z,
I love the way to I like that they got
to the point now where, especially you and I watch
your show all the time, it's not even music no more.
It's selling products. I'm so happy for everybody. They sell vodka,
(30:10):
they sell clothing, they sell other things. Now that the
music fuels the money for the real money for the
other stuff. And that's great because it's supplying jobs. And
it was just a triple trickle effect that it got
to this point. And you know, some people are reaching
out to me about my life story and how it
started and getting to this point. But I love the
way it's going. You know. I love that they mixed
it with R and B music, all these artists a
(30:31):
collect Look at this Carly Bee girl from the Bronx.
I love them so proud of you know, look where
she came from. That's the great, that's the love of them.
That's what was so great about music.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
That's why we do, that's why we do.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
We do.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
That Moment with Damon John is a production of the
Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black
Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or
have you listened to your favorite show and don't forget
to subscribe to and rate the show, And of course
you can all connect with me on any of my
(31:08):
social media platforms. At The Shark, Damon spelt like Raymond,
but what a d
Only community people. All my security were straight out of jail.
I would only give ex CON's jobs because they couldn't
get jobs. That was you know, people that were homeless
people lived in my club. They had nowhere to go.
And many times I had to save a life or two.
That's how critical it used to be. And when you
open seven nights a week, you might have a situation
on a Monday where somebody might be getting killed. And
(00:20):
it's only Monday. We didn't even get to the weekend yet,
you know, there's thirty three hundred nights of hip hop.
I went through. Red lights would blink through the whole
club and all the rooms knowing that the police were
coming in. So you know, I always I was just
so community based, and you know I was in I
knew I. I thought that was the chosen one. I
was the one got picked for to help this community
(00:41):
and help these people through music, through music, through music.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
What if I told you there was more to the
story behind game changing events? Get ready for my new podcast,
That Moment with Damon John will jump into the personal
stories of some of the most influential people on the planet,
from business mobiles and celebrities to athletes, and artisans. So
(01:06):
I'm here with sal Avatello, and you know, I'm gonna
believe it, and I'm going to keep bringing you interesting
people that you may or may not know, however, but
you can learn a lot from. And I really don't
have enough time to go through all of his accomplishments,
but I just want to break it down like this.
You know, he's a legend in New York City, a
legend around the world if you really look at where
what he has helped Propel has touched around the world,
(01:29):
meaning hip hop. But he's also you know, worked in
the music industry some capacity for forty five years and
he's gone through four or five genres of music, disco,
then this emerging music called rap, then freestyle, then back
to rap, and so I think that first of all,
as we get into this, we're going to be able
(01:50):
to learn or learn about how you can go forty
five fifty years of doing something you absolutely love, how
can you find out about the new things that are
going on and make it your own and push it
out there, and the lessons you can learn more importantly
from the.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Failures of what's going on. SOK. So thanks for being here,
My pleasure. You know, briefly, you know, your story is
that your dad had a club called Disco Fever and
hugely popular in the Bronx, right, And and you started
working there as a bartender, and in nineteen seventy six,
I think that you started to do other things there.
(02:27):
Now I know your history just because I'm a New Yorker,
And if you don't know your history, you're crazy. I
know that you know, disco was popular, but now all
of a sudden, there was this music that was coming
around from the streets, right, It's called rap music, and
most people didn't want to touch the stuff, right, and
you decided to embrace it. And actually, you know, you
(02:48):
were one. You were probably the number one spot where
rappers would die to go and be seen, Grandmass, Clash,
Furious five, Busy Bee, Sweet g those all those people.
And I know that at the time you being an
Italian American, most of your community said, hey, you know,
(03:09):
I can't use the word here, but you're in love.
Why are you dealing with those people? Why are you
letting them in your business, in your club? What are
you talking about? This is not wrapped today. This is
when it was very, very small, and the kids. We
looked at as just poor kids from the street who
were banging on a couple of cans. So tell me
a little bit about you know at that time, what
you were seeing happening, and you know, let's just get
(03:32):
right into it.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Well, luckily for me, I'm blessed. My father and my
ancestors came in. They they settled in in the Bronx
on was forty ninth in Washington Avenue. My mother, my father,
they helped them grocery store. So we were in the
community from the fifties. So my father decided to open
up a neighborhood bar so on one ninth and third Avenue,
(03:53):
right in the Bronx. It was called Ali's Ees. So
in there is where I got my taste of music
Motown as you know, all of that from there. I
grew up in that So being in that community, we
were one of the last white families left. So being
in a black community was not odd to me. It
was very comfortable. You know, I had uncles that were black,
you know, as growing up as a child, so being
(04:15):
you know, being around that music in that environment, I
was very comfortable in it. As we go on into
the sixties, now disco's starting to explode. Duop just finished
and we opened up a bar in on Pellham Parkway
and White Plains Road and it was more of a
like Mafia wise guy place and Chas Palmellari played did
Jo Peshi played there, Frankie Vincent played there. So I
(04:37):
was in that environment. Now now I'm like eighteen nineteen,
I'm tending bar and everything was bands back then, so
it was great, another great time during music. All of
a sudden, the DJ starts emerging in the mid seventies
and all these banded places start going out because it's
a lot cheaper to have a djil right, you know,
and you know, got to pay all his band and
(04:58):
tech and all that stuff. So now I opened up
the first disco in the Bronx on Williamsbridge Road in
Pelham Park were called Sally Abbot's Playhouse, and it takes off.
It's going great, And then disco started blowing up. And
my father had opened up a place called Cafe Peppin' Salt,
which was on one sixty ninth and Jerome in the Bronx.
Also it was a jazz place. George Benson went there.
(05:20):
The Knicks used to go there Frasier and well the
giants used to go there, the football place, so he
had a very popular place. And from that the block
he decided to open up a disco, and this is
like seventy six seventy seven. Wanted to open up a club.
Unfortunately for him, the disco music started dying at that
particular time. Got it back in. Going back now to
(05:42):
where I was, I'm in the Bronx up at that
you know, that wise guy place, and I get into
a confrontation at the disco with somebody and I wind
up getting shot twice. So my dad was like, Yo,
let's go. We got to get out of this. Let's
I'm going to open up a club in the Bronx
downtown once should come work there. So I go down there.
I'm twenty five years old and at the end of
the night, I see this guy, sweet Gee, and he's
(06:03):
rhyming on the mic. You know, it was like five
six in the morning, so at four o'clock the regular
DJ would go home, ge will come on the turn
tables and he started rhyming, and I'm watching the crowd,
the reaction He's making the whole place be like one person.
So I'm sitting there and I'm watching this from the side,
like say, oh, so now everybody who don't know each other, doctor, lawyer, pimp,
hook or a drug dealer or whatever, they're all being
(06:25):
this one person. He's bringing the club together as one,
which was a great interaction of people meeting people. So
I walked over. I was intrigued with the music. I said, we, yo,
what is this? He says, it's going on in the
streets and you know, this is what they call hip hop.
And I'm like, well, bring me somewhere. I want to
see it. So I go to the park. Me and
him go to the park. I say, grand Master Flash
in the park and he's killing it. But you know,
(06:46):
it was all teenage movement at the time. The drinking
age was eighteen, so it wasn't that bad. They changed
the law in the eighties. So I go down. I
see the reaction. I go, wow, we got to bring
this indoors. So I go back to my father, say, yo,
I found this music in the streets going hip hop,
so they knew a little bit about it. And all
his friends as all the friends my uncle's all you know,
they're all black like hell on that music. Is you crazy?
(07:07):
They ain't real music. They're spitting in the mic, they're
scratching the records. They're disrespecting the artists. They're using their music,
you know, you know James Brown's music, Jimmy Caster, like
they're ruining ever rece music. I go, Dad, there's going
to be the new movement in the Bronx. It's the
next generation. These are the children of Motown, of R
(07:27):
and B of jazz. That's there's gonna be the new movement.
So anyway, bugget for a while he was saying no.
Finally gives me a yes. I said, give me one night,
give me a Tuesday night. Let me bring it indoors.
So we bring it indoors on a Tuesday night, said
dollar to get in a dollar drink. Nineteen seventy seven,
And I convinced Grandmaster Players to DJ for one hundred
dollars with the Furious Five, with all the them are there.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
With the gar record. So they all made seventeen fifty.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Of the thing was I promised them he'd be a star.
I said, I'm going to make your star. It ain't
even about the money. Said, you're in the street, nobody's
seeing you. I'm going to give you a platform where
people come see you every night, and then you're gonna
have opportunities.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Sure enough, Why would you do that? I mean it's
a dollar a dollar a person to get in, right.
You got this crowd where really was gangsters in the streets, yes, right,
breakdancers they're doing something, you know, they breakdance.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And black black page that we're letting them.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
In for a dollar You're not gonna make a lot
of money. And a dollar a drink, You're really not
gonna make a lot of money. Why Why did that?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Because that was my opportunity to show the magnitude of
this new music, this new movie, proof of concept, right,
so I had to make it. Remember the teenagers now too.
So the drinking age was eighteen, but you know teenagers
are sneaking in fifteen.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Sixteen, sixteen high school down find out now, So you
feel that's strongly about this thing to call it aprop
of concert now for those who don't know where hip
hop genre of it started when you saw Sweet g
On at five o'clock in the morning. But the kids
ripping now who don't know hip hop At that time,
a DJ was to spend the record a MC was
(09:04):
supposed to come on and purely talk about the DJ.
He was only there to say, Hey, my DJ could scratched,
my DJ could do this. At that time, mike controls,
microphone controls, mcs really weren't the jay Z's of the world.
Weren't there. If there was a jay Z, he was
only there to say three or four words about what
the DJ was playing. Correct.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Plus he was interacting with the crowd, interact with them.
That was the biggest thing. The crowd was involved with
what they were doing, so they fell part of the night.
They were like part of the entertainment.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
But I'm trying to set the stage to show how
early you were when there wasn't technically an EMC.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Well there was no music.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
It was a DJ that was the star. And this
guy was almost like the ringing announcer at a boxing match, right, That's.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Who It was his crew, and that was the crew.
Everybody had their own crew. You know. My first DJ
was cool. Heirk. Actually he didn't even he didn't he
didn't even wrap, you know, he was just a DJ.
He was with claw Kent and they spoke on the mic.
But like you said, you know, they were all the
ones that I'm saying, were in the street. There was
no venue, there was no outlet for them to come.
I open up. It's successful, and before you know it,
(10:06):
it's seven nights a week. I got Hot DJ Hollywood,
I bring in Eddie Chie, but Reggie Wells, Lovebug Starsky Junebugs.
I started bringing in the most popular ones in the
street doing giving them their own nights, seven nights a week.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Even now, all of a sudden, hip hop starts to
(10:41):
really blow up. The record comes out, whether it's sugar
Hill Gang, then all of a sudden, Furious Five, the
Blondie Record, and all those types of people come out.
And even then it gets even to a more commercialized
level with Run DMCBC boys, Yellow Cool Channel. You are
the Mecca. You are the Apollo Theater, the Madison Square Garden.
The wind stayed in all this genre and why were
(11:03):
people now all flocking to you up in the Bronx
now coming down to downtown clubs in New York City,
coming to the Bronx where at that time, Bronce was
a very very tough era we're going through. You know,
it was a lot of gangs, A lot of the
buildings were demolished and destroyed by the landlords. Very dangerous.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yes, it was very right.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
And everybody didn't have a car.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Nobody had a car, nobody my parents didn't have a car.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Right, Why are people coming there from all around the world.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, now, remember it's it's boiling around in every borough,
in Queen's and Brooklyn's it's boiling out. But here's the
first venue where they could go to to actually see.
So now what's happening is the first record comes out
in seventy nine, Rapper's Delight, right, starts blowing up. As
that's blowing up, the club is just expanding. Russell Simmons
starts hanging out there. We become really good friends. He's like, say,
you got to start your own label. We got to
(11:52):
take this. So Russell's using the Fever because I ran
it so well. The sound system was great, you know,
held a thousand people. He's using it as an outlet
to get deals, promote deals. He's bringing up record executives,
he's bringing magazines up. I'm in People magazine, Time Magazine.
I mean, it's just blowing up. So he started off
as a booking agent and a manager. And who's he
(12:13):
bringing up? Curtis blow Curtis blowed me and him he
blows us. Yep, he blows up, and he's the first
single or rap artist to have a gold record. He's
on American Bandstand. Curtis blows on American band so on
Soul Trained. Yes, it was crazy. So now as that's
blowing up, I start opening up other venues. I will
place up the block called pepperin Salt. We make it
(12:35):
and put a DJ in. I opened up a skating
rink called skate Fever so I could cater to the
young generation, but only with the genre we played R
and B, but it was predominantly hip hop club. Now
it's growing up. So now I make my first record
in seventy nine called Heartbeat Rap with Sweet Geet. First
time I hearing my record on the radio, it's unbelievable feeling,
as you know, you know when you have something successful
(12:57):
with you're trying so hard, but you're right. The problem
was the whole Bronx was burning. There was no jobs,
thirty percent unemployment, and I become the only person that
they could look to the neighborhood for something, whether it
be charity, work United Nego College Fund, or a family
whose kid died and they're in the morgue and they
don't have money to get him out. You know, we
(13:17):
would put up signs and pay for their funerals. So
I started becoming like this go to person in the
Bronx because nobody did. I was the only white person
that they probably would trust because back then, you know,
there was you know, Martin Luther King had just got
murdered in the late sixties, and so that that carried
through through the seventies, you know, and you know, there
were still people who didn't trust me, but you know,
(13:38):
I always was straight with them. I never try to
do anything with the artists and be their managers or anything.
I was just helping up the community to keep the
club going. We started the Ideal College Fund so we
could deal with entertainment. So I wanted to deal with music,
entertainment and sports. What does that do for kids? Keep
them out of trouble? So I wanted to do those
(13:59):
three main thing. So I started the Rutgers Basketball League
in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Very famous even till today, until today or something like that.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I played in the first three games. I won the
first MVP. It was an unbelievable night. Three thousand people
show that at Mount Morris Park in nineteen seventy nine.
I did it with mister Magic, you know, rest in Peace,
who was the first DJ to get on BLS. So
we're breaking through all these things and we're given the
community something that they didn't have. The politicians were gone,
nobody would help. So I started helping and we were
(14:28):
helping ourselves.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Is you know as we talk about what power is
and a lot of people who will watch this will
be entrepreneurs with entrepreneurs, and a lot of them will
question themselves on why they're doing what they're doing every day.
Would you say that that is some of the things
that are empowering, not just the dollar. It's the fact
that you care for your community and your customer. You
realize that whether you signed up for it or not,
(14:52):
you become a mentor to whether two or two thousand
or two, you know, twenty million people. Do you find
that that is one of the things that have kept
you going through all these years?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I mean the older I get, the more I get
that you did this. If it wasn't for you, you
changed my life around. I used to take drugs, I
straightened out. You show me how to work show me
be a road manager.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
I don't know if I would have pooble if you
didn't really highlight this new music. There was a voice
of the people at that time. Because hip hop I
would later on become somebodey who's dressing the community and
take it to another level. So I guess I not
guess I owe you a great you know.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Actually when you first started, I went up because me
and LLL were pretty good friends and he has just
started working with you, and I went up to your
first place. I remember you were there. You were very young.
It had to be what early.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Nineties, was that late about ninety five? Oh?
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Was that late?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Wow, it's all one thing you've been around doing this.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Wou something years man ten years ago like that?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
So so you know, so yeah again, like you're saying,
you know, power is to understand that you know you're
you're also knowing that you have a built in responsibility
that comes with this. Now, it didn't just stop there.
Now we can we can keep going on with all
the things that you've done for the hip hop community.
But then a new music starts to come around. It's
(16:13):
called freestop, cover Girls and so many other bands come
around Lisa Lisa and all that stuff. One of the first,
you're one of the first, probably the first to really
start highlighting and pushing that. How did you make this transition?
And how did it had to be something you enjoyed
(16:35):
because you couldn't be successful. And then if you didn't
enjoy it, how did you make this transition?
Speaker 1 (16:38):
And why? Well, you know, in business you have to
reinvent yourself constantly. No matter what you have. As hot
as it could be, it could be gone tomorrow, you
know how it flips. So in the eighties, it's blowing up.
The hip hop eighty three, you know, like I said,
we're in all these magazines, TV shows or run DMC
comes out, blows up. I start my own record company
(17:00):
and I write this record called Games People Play goes
to number one. Everything's just showing up, and all of
a sudden, the fever starts getting a little old. And
it's been there eight years, nine years. And now hip
hop's going around the world and ain't in the little place.
Let's go fever beac boys that run doing concerts. Oh,
they're going to Roxies, they're going to Webster Hall, They're
going downtown. Now it's all over the country. You know,
(17:22):
the Furious Now all the original rappers, they're all falling off. Now,
the First Party Rappers, Furious five, Curtis Treacher's three, all
those guys, they're falling off now. Luckily for me. In
nineteen eighty five, Warner Brothers comes in and want to
do a movie about hip hop, about so they come
to Fever. So in eighty five they do the movie
(17:42):
Crush Groove, which I'm ready for it to give me
a second life. Unfortunately for me, it brought so much
attention to the neighborhood they wind up closing the club
up after ten years for no cabaret license. So I'm
waiting for this second goal around. Oh god, now the
whole world's going to know about the Fever, you know,
I mean, even though they did know, but now it's
going to reincarnate it again. Okay, and we get closed
(18:04):
the last night filming of Crush Groove, we get shut down.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Pad so so no Cara, meaning that everybody they're doing
a production up there. It's a movie being shot. Yes,
So now the city, the police, the film department, the
Arts department are all looking at you and they're going,
you know what we gotta be careful because there's some
potential legal issues. You don't have a caparet license, meaning
people can't realize that you can dance. Correct.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yes, entertainment live and the same.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
You had your bar and everything.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Else, but everything was labor.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
They're ready for this because it's kind of like those
people are going shark Tank and they're going, all right,
I'm gonna air next month. Let me get a gazillion
dollars with the inventory. All of a sudden, unfortunately, a
natural disaster happens and that Friday night that they were
going to air, they don't air. They get pre emptied
because something else. You have to shut down at what
you felt was the next bite of the apple.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
The next I'm like, wow, I'm going to get another
ten year run. And that was very community minded to it.
It meant a lot to me. I had one hundred
and eighty to two hundred people working for me at
one point in nineteen eighty three, and only community people.
All my security were straight out of jail. I would
only give x CON's jobs because they couldn't get jobs.
That was you know, people that were homeless. People lived
(19:16):
in my club. They had nowhere to go. They would
drive the train. So anyway, I'm like, wow, this is
great for me. Now I could like go to the
next level. And you know, it was people were coming
out of that a little bit now in the mid eighties.
So now Crushcroove comes out, the club gets closed, and
unfortunately I'm depressed. I'm sitting in a park one day
and I'm contemplating on my next move, and I see
(19:38):
a bunch of these Puerto Rican kids breakdance. And I'm
sitting there and I see this DJs plugged up to
the light pole, just like Flash was, and I went, oh, wow,
Latin hip hop, Latin hip hop, second generation Puerto Ricans. Oh,
it's going to happen again. But now were Puerto Ricans.
So go over to the kid who is Louis Vega.
I don't know if you have ever heard of him, but
(19:58):
it's very popular. Just want to grab me. A few
years ago, I go over to him. I said, Yo,
what's your name, Little Louis Vague? I go, I said,
we got to do this. What is this? He says, no, no,
We'll just break dance. And there was no music yet,
you know. So now, luckily for me, I was involved
with the music with the hip hop. So I said, well,
I'm going to be the first one to make this music.
So my father happened to have another club that we
(20:19):
were partners on. It was a salsa club called Voices
in the Bronx. Ralph mccarto legendary salsa, did the Garden,
did all the big ones, had La India, Marc Anthony T. Danievis,
he's the promoter there. Thousand people a week, were doing
every week and he gets a gig at the Palladium
in the city. We go from a thousand people to zero. Now,
(20:39):
I thought, I got dad telling you I just found
Latin hip purpose. Like I don't want nothing to do
with hip hop. I'm telling you this is the next movement,
Latin hip hop. The community of the Puerto Ricans are
coming into you know, in the Bronx heavily, I said,
this is going to be the next movement English speaking
of the SASA generation. Anyway, he has no choices, no customers,
(21:00):
Bring Louis and Boop two. A thousand people immediately act.
So it's the next movement, street movement. Luckily for me,
I seen those movements before they were happening.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, you could say looky if you show those movements
before those happening, or lucky for you, you have your
eyes open and your antennas are up. Because how many
of us see our kids or on Snapchat or doing
something new and we go what is that crap? Instead
of going no, what is that right? You know that
that shows that there's a lot of aspects of of
(21:30):
business that the gut right has your gut always given you?
You know, some vision or or made you. What made
you follow your gut during all these times.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
I have a lot of common sense, and I'm a
people's person. I go by vibe. People vibes, you know,
how they how they react to stuff. I always think
of the other person in their position in their life,
what they're going through. And music is the soothing place
that everybody retreats to when they're in trouble, when they're
when they're unhappy, when they're lonely, when they need some
(22:01):
kind of guidance, or they want to just forget and
plug in. So, like I said, so when I saw
that and brought it indoors, so now I said, I'm
going to make the first record. Disco was dead already,
so I was doing a block party in the Bronx
and free party for about five thousand people. And I
find this young lady singing in my skating ring called Naobi.
(22:22):
Now she had a thirty second skit and crushed groove,
unbelievable singer Latina. So I put her with this young
kid and they never were again. With my gut, she
never sang she's fifteen. He never produced the record, he's nineteen.
I put him together. I told my partner, I said,
I think this is going to be the next music.
Was it called I'm calling that Latin hip hop? That's
(22:43):
what I called it back then we put it out.
The record was called Please Don't Go immediate smash. The
kid becomes a hit. On the other side of town,
Full Force is producing a young lady called Lisa. Lisa.
She was a little more R and B. They were
R and B. But I put out that Latin sounding
dance record, dance record, dance record. When I put out
(23:20):
that Latin sounding dance record, and then before you know it,
the club took off, the music took off, and I became.
Luckily for me, I was one of the pioneers of
hip hop. This Luckily, I was the pioneer of freestyle
which came to be doing.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I gotta thank you again. You know, listen, my wife
our first date, she said, I can only take her
on a date if I took her to a freestyle concert. Really,
uh you know, and and you know, uh so so
thanks for hosting me up. Well so all right, So
so now all of a sudden, you know you're going
(23:54):
through all that. You started two music genres when you
were part of when you actually started, and then you
return back to hip hop. Well you never really left it.
Everybody always has had a love and respect for your
your you know, your love and respect to hip hop.
But I see you started doing stuff with Fat Joe.
You had a big single Fat Joe and various other things.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, well I opened up another fever in ninety two. So,
like you said, I went back to hip hop. So
on Tree Mount Webster, the Old Devil's Nest, which was
the freestyle place, I go back and I start again.
So now I'm third generation hip hop. So now I
discover Woon Tang Clan. They did their first show there.
Run DMC does their comeback album. I got John ay
(24:37):
Fouji's did this show that Biggies did his very first
New York appearance there, Fat Joe is the promoter. I
became Fat Joe's manager, NAS did his first album there.
I mean, I have all the fliers, everything's documented, and
now I'm back in the game again with third generation
hip hop. So they knew me from the original pioneers,
(24:57):
and now they know me from now. I'm like become
a legendary in the genre. And that took off and
Joe and I mean, all of these guys became stars
now naught by nature, everybody.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
I listen, you're behind a lot of those people. But
I want to I wanted let's let's take a moment
to be really candid about this. You know, it sounds
great and dealing with all these artists that that have
motivated a lot of us around the world, but the
music industry very nasty industry. A lot of these ares
are very very hard to deal with. And the twenty
(25:29):
eight year old sal probably had a lot of love
for it. Now a little bit of an older one,
older soalm more mature, who maybe didn't want to deal
with all this crap, still deals with it and still
finds the love and a value for what kept you here,
Because you know, in my career, and it hasn't been
(25:50):
along with yours. I got tired of dealing with the
elements around the music industry. I'd rather just listen to
it right, right, Why do I gotta work with that
right all the time? I found very few people, like
the lls of the world, who I can really depend on.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
What kept you going through it, even though you know
you went to all that crap. You know, I know
you went through some crap.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Well we didn't. We could talk about that for another
two hours. What went on in the street. What I
had to deal with the street, even with the artists,
because no matter how big the artists were, the street
was still in control of them. They were still the bosses.
And many times I had to save a life or two.
That's how critical it used to be. And when you
open seven nights a week, you might have a situation
(26:31):
on a Monday where somebody might be getting killed. And
it's only Monday. We didn't even get to the weekend yet.
You know, there's thirty three hundred nights of hip hop
I went through, so picture three thousand.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Nights in.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
The Bronx unmonitored. You know, we were They wouldn't even
go in and anyway, I had the placeholl set up
where nobody ever got arrested.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
There.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
We had a light. You'd hit the button, it would red.
Lights would blink through the whole club and all the
rooms knowing that the police were coming in. So, you know,
I always I was just so community based, and you
know I was in I knew I. I thought that
was the chosen one. I was the one got picked
for to help this community and help these people through music,
you know, sports and education. So now how did I
(27:13):
stay at it? I just loved what I do. I mean,
I still do is forty seven years later, I just
did a big hYP hop concert at Barkley.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
You just you just hosted you know, the your on
TV RAPS thirtieth anniversary. Google named you one of the
most influential and or, let me get it straight, the
pioneers of hip hop want when they celebrated, you know,
the forty fourth anniversary of the birth of hip hop music.
You're still you know, very respecting in value. Where do
(27:41):
you find power and the motivation in your personal life
and your business life to keep going because you could
have always just given it up. And honestly, there's so
many people that would love to have you consult with
them for the new genre of anything coming around. So
you understand the way that that youth think and you
want to you see something before everybody else is on it. Well,
(28:03):
where do you find the power every day to get
up and do this in your personal life and your
business life.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I don't know. I just love what I do. And
when hip hop died, I mean when freestyle died in
the mid nineties, again trying to reinvent, and I see
all the drama all those young people went through. They're
only in their early thirties and their careers are over. Ready,
it's over. The original rappers are over. And all these
(28:27):
people used to look up to me, and I would
still try to go to venues in the mid nineties,
in the late nineties, till finally in the year two thousands,
I realized they weren't worth anything alone anymore. But if
I put them together as a group ten twelve, fifteen
num together, it meant something. They became one big rock star.
So again in the two thousands, I reinvent the musics
(28:50):
that died. And when I say the music's the original
hip hoppas and the freestyle groups I start combining them
together in venues like Masisquere Garden, Radio City. You know,
it was very exciting bringing these artists. Now it blew up.
I love the eighties, I love the nineties. They're performing more.
Dougie Fresh is doing like two hundred shows a year,
the Free Stock, Stevie b Or at least Elsa there
(29:13):
were headliners. Now they're packing venues all around the country.
And I fought through the two thousands to keep it alive,
and then I reinvented again combining everybody together in major venues.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
So it's not like you found power and bringing people
together and helping them out and letting them understand their
value of togetherness, whether it was a community, whether it's
a genre. And today, as we see the researchers of
nineties culture coming around, what do you think about the
scene today? And tell me a little bit more about
what do you think about the scene today? If you
talk about hip hop or music in general, I mean
(29:45):
you can talk about DM as well. Put your stances
on that.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Well, the scene today, I mean old School looks like
New School actually at the moment, because they're the ones
packing in all these concerts. But I mean I love
hip hop through all the years. I mean, eminem jay Z,
I love the way to I like that they got
to the point now where, especially you and I watch
your show all the time, it's not even music no more.
It's selling products. I'm so happy for everybody. They sell vodka,
(30:10):
they sell clothing, they sell other things. Now that the
music fuels the money for the real money for the
other stuff. And that's great because it's supplying jobs. And
it was just a triple trickle effect that it got
to this point. And you know, some people are reaching
out to me about my life story and how it
started and getting to this point. But I love the
way it's going. You know. I love that they mixed
it with R and B music, all these artists a
(30:31):
collect Look at this Carly Bee girl from the Bronx.
I love them so proud of you know, look where
she came from. That's the great, that's the love of them.
That's what was so great about music.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
That's why we do, that's why we do.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
We do.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
That Moment with Damon John is a production of the
Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black
Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or
have you listened to your favorite show and don't forget
to subscribe to and rate the show, And of course
you can all connect with me on any of my
(31:08):
social media platforms. At The Shark, Damon spelt like Raymond,
but what a d
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