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Chapter III. Playboy & Hef; Fred Foster & Monument Records Shortly after Mitch Miller had signed me to Columbia, he got very successful with his Sing-A-Long TV show and was unable to continue recording any of his artists, including Tony Bennett, Guy Mitchell, Jerry Vail, me, and a couple of others I can't recall at the moment. This caused me to have some problems at Columbia. The other producers there weren't too enthusiastic about recording a Mitch Miller discovery as opposed to their own artist, so things slowly began to deteriorate for me at the Columbia.  I was recruited by Playboy's
Entertainment Director Victor Lowndes to open the first Playboy Club - in
Chicago - on Feb. 29, 1960, and soon was doing three to eight shows
a
night, six nights a week at Playboy clubs around the world. I
shared the stage with unknowns like Richard Pryor,
George Carlin, George Kirby (making his comeback), Pat Morita, Hines
Hines & Dad (Gregory Hines, his father, and brother Maurice), and a slew
of others that should have made it big, comics like Simmy Bow, Joe Conti, Albert T. Berry, and singers like Hal Frazier, etc.Gregory Hines: In my opinion, after sharing the stage with him night after night, he was a perfect candidate for stardom. I got to know him and his family very well, partly because of the numerous invitations to share home cooked meals with him and his parents and brother. (A greatly appreciated invitation for someone traveling on the road.) It was a kick for me hanging out with Gregory years later when he was a BIG star. Driving around with him in a chauffer-driven limo... one of the perks he got doing the gig. Simmy Bow: There was something I always wanted to do but never got to do regarding Simmy (one who should have been a big comic star). I'd always hoped that someday he would walk into a club I was performing at and when I saw him I would immediately start doing his act. That for sure would piss him off, then after the dust settled we would have some big laughs about it together. I wouldn't do his whole act, but believe me, I could. Here's an excerpt from one of his routines I can still remember: The princess
says, "How did thee cometh here? The orchard walls are very steep and
hard to climb."
Simmy says, "With love's light wings did I o'erperched these walls." Princess: "If the king sees thee here, he will have your head cut off." Simmy: "It's been nice talkin' to ya." Pat Morita: We spent a lot of time together breaking each other up. One of his ideas of funny was: He came to see me at a gig I had in Chicago. Inbetween my shows we sat a table and talked for a while. After my shows, when we were getting ready to leave the club, he grabbed the small table lamp that was on our table and hid it underneath his sport coat. On our way out of the club, with the lamp underneath Pat's sport coat, the club manager was approaching us... just to say goodnight as it turned out, but at that point I was really sweatin'. As I introduced the manager to Pat, we kept our cool and walked out the door. Then he turned around and went back in the club and put the lamp back on the table. Years later, Pat received an Oscar for best actor in the movie Karate Kid. Now I know why, as I recollect his great table lamp performance. He used to call himself the Hip Nip. When Pat was growing up he and his family spent some years in a U.S. detention camp during the war with Japan. I think in that detention camp he developed (out of necessity) the ability to salvage whatever came his way... table lamps, humor, or whatever. Richard Pryor: He was just starting out when we worked some gigs at the Playboy clubs. I saw him bomb many times during that period, but he never did resort to the easy get-the-audience type of jokes. He stuck to his guns, believed in himself and continued on with his  unique style
and, of course, became one of the greatest comics of all time.George Carlin: (picture to right) We did shows together when he worked with a partner named Jack Burns; they were billed as Burns and Carlin and were great together. Jack was the straight man and George did all the crazy stuff. At some point when they broke up, George began doing a solo standup act. As it happened when he was breaking in his solo standup act on a two-week engagement with me at the New Orleans Playboy Club, I don't think he got any laughs at all in the whole two weeks we were there. I'd often see him sitting alone in the club looking very, very depressed. He was really having a hard time getting accustomed to working without a partner. After that I hadn't heard anything about him until someone told me he had signed up with an agent he had really pursued. From then on his career kept building and building to the point where we all got to know and love him as George Carlin!!! A comic you don't wanna miss. Albert T. Berry: A very funny guy. I always thought that he would be a great comedic character in some TV sitcom, and what do you know!! At some point I saw him in a sketch on the Carol Burnett TV show, which I'm sure helped his career a lot. Due to opening about a half dozen Playboy clubs, I got to know Hugh Hefner pretty well. One day I got talking to him about my deteriorating situation at Columbia Records and he said, "Why don't we do an album together, I'll produce it and you sing the songs." That's  how my vocal album Once In A Blue Moon with the Don Costa Orchestra came to be. Sounds simple, right?The guys at Playboy that were assigned to get my album placed on a major label didn't have much savvy about the recording business. At some point they left my album with Columbia Records! After about two years with no progress I heard a couple of cuts on the radio by Barbra Streisand - My Melancholy Baby (at a very slow tempo) and I Had Myself A True Love - which were identical to my interpretations with Don Costa's arrangements. I figured her producer at Columbia (where my album was left months before) copied (as close as legally possible) my interpretation of these two songs. I immediately contacted Hef and got permission to sell the album myself. In two weeks I sold it to Fred Foster of Monument Records. I had met Fred a few years earlier when I was recording with Don Costa and ABC Paramount and he was promoting records for ABC in and around the Washington/Baltimore area.  The photo to the left taken during one of our recording session
for this album, brings back fond memories... L-R: Hef, me,
Don Costa Fred Foster & Monument Records... Fred Foster, owner of Monument Records, bought the Blue Moon album and finally got it released. When I first met Fred, I had just signed and recorded with Don Costa & ABC Paramount. Fred was promoting records in and around the Washington/Baltimore area for ABC. He brought in a song called Pledge Of Love that was getting good airplay from a small label in his territory. Twenty minutes later, ABC had me in a studio recording it. Fred had a lot of power to get records played and sold in his territory. (This is the record that sold over 400,000 but I never made a cent on. Of course, that was par for the course in those days.) Years after I first met Fred he became very successful with Monument Records and Combine Music Publishing with artists like Roy Orbison, Kris Kristofferson, Boots Randolph, Ray Stevens, Willie Nelson, and a slew of others. MONUMENT Records Album: SLP 18036 Playboy Presents: Johnny Janis... Once In A Blue Moon (Released 1965)
If I Had You (Shapiro-Campbell-Connelly)
I Had Myself A True Love (Arlen-Mercer) Isn't It A Pity? (G & I Gershwin) Be Good To Her (Dennis-Gladstone) Young Ideas (Charlap-Sweeney) I'm A Fool To Want You (Wolf-Herron-Sinatra) My Melancholy Baby (Norton-Burnett) If You Want To Love (Hague-Roberts) Why Try To Change Me (Coleman-McCarthy) Boulevard Of Memories (Lane-Loeb) Once In A Blue Moon (Kern-Caldwell) Cryin' For The Carolines (Lewis-Young-Warren) Singles: (mid/late 1960's) Mn45-977 You're Free To Go (Robertson-Herscher) 90 Miles An Hour (Down A Dead End Street) (Robertson-Blair) Mn45-1042 A Rose Is A Rose (Mareno-Galbraith) I Hear It Now (Taylor) Mn45-1117 One Of These Days (Matthews) Anything That's Part Of You (Robertson) Mn45-1177 Walk Through This World With Me (Seamons-Savage) All The World And The Seven Seas (Walker) Mn45-1205 Distant Drums (Walker) Ride Me Donkey (Tenor) JZS7-8532-1 I'll Need You Forever (Bryant) JZS7-8532-2 No (B & F Bryant-Canche The last two singles were recorded in London. Fred had asked the great songwriter Boudleaux Bryant (Rocky Top, Bye Bye Love and other Everly Brothers hits) to write some songs for me for the sessions, and we all wound up in London together to record them. We recorded at least one additional song to the ones above by Boudleaux (For LeAnne) plus Love's Been Good To Me (R.McKuen) and Why Couldn't I? (writer??). I did some more recording back in Nashville with Fred for Monument, including four gorgeous songs by another Hall of Fame songwriter (and my good friend), Don Robertson: Image Of Your Face, Anything That's Part Of You, You're Free To Go and Lonely Alone... plus a nice vocal and guitar arrangement I had done of Somewhere My Love, from the movie Dr. Zhivago. Harold Bradley, a guitar legend in Nashville (who was just inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame) was on the session. I ran into Harold last week and he named the songs we did, even though it was 40 years ago. Unfortunately, none of these great recordings were ever released because Monument went out of business. But I'm happy to say that most of these singles have recently been released on a special product CD: Johnny Janis Sings... Beautiful Country Songs.
also for sale on CD...
If you're interested in reading more... Chapter I. Growing up in Chicago... love for Jazz guitar... drafted into the U.S. Army & stationed in Germany 1950-52 Chapter II. First recordings... Coral & Carlton labels... ABC-Paramount Records & Don Costa... national TV appearances with Jackie Gleason & Telly Savalas... Columbia Records & Mitch Miller Chapter IV. More recordings... what I'm up to these days (See My Music Store page for samples and ordering information.) |
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