#wrvr-fm

Alan Goodman, photobooth 1970's

Alan saved the day. 

”Jazz Ain’t Nothin’ But Soul” Part 2 (Part 1 here)

TThrough some dumb luck and a belief in our artist, Oblivion almost had a hit with “Jazz Ain’t Nothin’ But Soul.” To my ears, and on Van Jay’s mainstream jazz show on WRVR-FM in New York, Joe got it just right, a performance that hit it better than Betty Carter’s original or any others, with an exuberance and joie de vivre that let anyone listening that jazz was... it!

But, I had completely screwed up.

Sure, Van was playing the track like crazy, and the rest of the RVR jocks followed. We were getting calls from retailers throughout the New York  metropolitan area, they wanted to record! Yay!

Nooooo!!!!! The record I’d delivered to the radio station was a test pressing! The only copy we had. And, to add insult to injury, Oblivion was pretty much broke. I was just out of college without a job, Tom Pomposello ran a small record store that gave him enough money to shelter his young family, and Dick Pennington –our initial financial savior– didn't have any more resources for us.. We had the test pressing, but we hadn’t OK’d the pressing order at the plant because we couldn’t pay for it!

My buddy Alan Goodman  stepped in and saved the day. He provided us with some cash from an inheritance. What a friend. He was pretty much living hand to mouth himself, but after he bought himself a 16mm movie camera –Alan was in film school– he gave me the rest. It enabled us to make the pressing order.

(I never paid Alan back directly. But, I tried to make up for it, working at MTV together, changing the way people used TV in the cable era. We eventually become partners in the world’s first media branding company, and becoming brothers-in-law and lifetime friends!) 

We eventually got the records, sent them to retail, but... it was too late. We’d missed the window.