New book by Jimmy Merchant of the Teenagers (review to follow)

 

Jimmy Merchant of the Teenagers has just published the first part of a two-volume autobiography. As  the first memoir written by a member of this pioneering group, this is a significant publication; I will add a review here shortly. You can buy an autographed copy direct from Pearly Gates Publishing here, although the cheaper option in the UK seems to be to buy from a certain well-known online shop. On its facebook page the company states that "Pearly Gates publishes and promotes Christian literature by authors who empower, inspire, and educate".

In the meantime, you can read or listen to an interview which Merchant recorded at Fordham University in 2006 for the Bronx African American History Project. The book idea was already being discussed by then, and potential mainstream publishers seemingly come and gone, though it's not clear how much writing had been done: he says at one point that "the difficult part about writing the book isn’t so much putting it into a form, but reliving it".

Like Lymon, Merchant had longterm problems with addiction after his time in the Teenagers, and also had a long and frustrating struggle, along with fellow Teenager Herman Santiago, to claim his share of the songwriting credits for Why Do Fools Fall in Love. The situation as he describes it in the interview, which I presume hasn't changed since 2006, is that even though his co-authorship was acknowledged in court Morris Levy's son was ultimately able to reclaim the rights to the song after a period when Merchant had finally been receiving royalties. Merchant and Santiago then took it to the Supreme Court, only to meet ultimate defeat:

And they gave us their final statement, which said something like – we do know that Jimmy Merchant and [fellow Teenager] Herman Santiago are the legitimate writers, co-writers, of this song Why Do Fools Fall In Love? because they brought it into the office when they auditioned [for George Goldner of Gee Records], and everyone else before that said they saw them singing Why Do Fools Fall In Love? in the neighborhood, in Washington Heights. But because they can’t come up with a reason why the law of the Statue of Limitations need to be rewritten or changed, we have to continue to allow the Levy estate to have the rights to the songs – the very persons that they claim have ripped them off all these years. That’s the law .... the comfort is this, and only this: I had my day in court.

Here's a link to the page on Fordham University's website which has an abstract of the interview, and you can also download an mp3 from there.

This is the direct link to the transcribed interview.

I'd recommend going for the latter because the audio version is intermittently punctuated by loud buzzing sounds which become rather wearing. That form is also easier to navigate if you are only interested in the doo wop stuff; it's quite some time, for example, before the subject of Why Do Fools Fall in Love comes around for discussion. But there is also considerable interest in being taken into the fine detail of someone's life, discovering how Merchant slips almost accidentally into singing and is delighted by the discovery, so it's worth reading the whole thing.

 I'll report on the book itself soon.