The Buckinghams Chicago's Own

The Buckinghams formed in 1965 when Carl Giammarese and Nick Fortuna of The Centuries joined up with Jon Jon Poulos and Dennis Tufano of The Pulsations. After adding keyboard player Dennis Miccoli, the group won a 'Battle of the Bands' for a Chicago TV show called All Time Hits and became regulars on the show for 14 weeks. The British invasion was happening at that time and the TV show wanted the band to have a more British sounding name. A security guard that worked for the TV station suggested the name The Buckinghams.



Landing a contract with Chicago's USA Records in 1966, the group was sent to Chess studios where they were paired with producer Dan Belloc. Their first releases were all cover versions of other artists songs: James Brown's "I'll Go Crazy", the Beatles' "I Call Your Name" and the Hollies' "I've Been Wrong Before." While these songs did well in the Chicago area, it took the wistful, Jim Holvay written, "Kind of a Drag" to break the group nationally. The song featured the powerful vocals of Dennis Tufano and a punchy, soul-styled horn section that was the brainchild of James Guercio, who would later go on to produce the band Chicago. Soon after "Kind Of A Drag" was recorded, Dennis Miccoli was replaced by Marty Grebb, the keyboard player from the Chicago folk-rock band The Exceptions.



In just a few weeks, the Buckinghams had a million-selling, chart-topper on their hands. "Kind of a Drag" did for The Buckinghams what no other act seemed to be able to do at that time...knock the Monkees' monster hit "I'm A Believer" out of the #1 spot.



After the demise of USA Records, the Buckinghams signed with Columbia Records and followed "Kind Of A Drag" with a cover version of Lloyd Price's, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" that quickly stalled at number 36. Columbia wasted no time in going back to the formula that worked so well the first time out, releasing another song co-written by Jim Holvay along with Gary Beisbier called "Don't You Care". That effort secured another top ten hit, when it reached number 6 on the Billboard chart. Not all of their singles had quite as much success though, as "Back In Love Again" topped out at #32.



Cashing in on a good thing, The Buckinghams appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jerry Lewis Show, American Bandstand, The Smothers Brothers, Entertainment Tonight, P.M. Magazine, and Classic Rock with Wolfman Jack. Between appearances, the band recorded a vocal adaptation of Cannonball Adderley's jazz standard "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," that soared to number 5.



Still in 1967, Columbia kept pushing out Buckingham singles and a Holvay / Beisbier / Guercio composition called "Susan" made it up to number 11, while "Hey Baby" (They're Playin' Our Song) went to number 12.



Despite selling millions of records and being voted "The Most Listened-To Band of 1967" by Billboard Magazine, the band's Fortunas began to decline in 1968. Their cleverly titled album, "In One Ear and Gone Tomorrow" seemed to be a forecast of things to come, as the LP couldn't produce a hit single. Several line-up changes only undermined their sound and by late 1969, The Buckinghams had decided to pack it in.



Carl Giammarese and Dennis Tufano continued working as an acoustic duo. Work was tough to find and Chicago area clubs were not interested. A demo tape for Reprise Records was turned down. Jon Poulos had started to manage local bands and tried to help. Giammarese and Tufano recorded an entire album demo for Poulos to promote, but nobody wanted to sign them. From there the pair contacted producer Jack Richardson, who worked with The Guess Who. Richardson brought in members of Poco as studio musicians and they laid down three promotional tracks. Poulos sent the demo to every major label, but got no response. He finally contacted former Mamas and Papas producer Lou Adler, who now had his own custom label, Ode Records. Two days after receiving the tape, Adler called to say that he liked the sound and Giammarese and Tufano flew to Los Angeles to audition live. Adler was even more impressed and signed them.



A self-titled Tufano - Giammarese album was released on Ode in 1973 and the first single, "Music Everywhere" managed to climb to #68 on Billboard's Hot 100. A second tune called "Rise Up" was issued the same year, but did not chart. To promote the album, Tufano and Giammarese went out on a two month, nine state promotional tour with Cheech & Chong.



Four tracks for a second album for Ode had been finished when Lou Adler took sick and had to keep leaving the sessions. A discouraged Giammarese decided he'd had enough and began doing session work. During this period, Adler's health declined to a point where he could not make records anymore, but eventually, the second album, titled "The Tufano & Giammarese Band" came together. When the subject of a third album came up, Adler said he will not do another unless he had assurance that Giammarese would stick around for the whole project. To get back on track, the pair assembled a new band, worked clubs and learned new songs. Lou Adler agreed to produce a third LP called "The Other Side". By now Ode was being distributed by Epic Records. Adler hired Hank Cicalo as an engineer and Tom Scott to arrange. On the first day of recording, Adler announced 'I cannot produce anymore, I lost my ear. I want to make movies.' Tom Scott and Hank Cicalo became the producers. The record was finished and made it into record stores, but one week later, Adler cut off the distribution deal with Epic. He wanted to be distributed by Columbia instead. Adler re-released the album, but Columbia had little interest and failed to promote it.



In 1980 The Buckinghams were invited to do a reunion by Chicago radio station WLS. Marty Grebb had to decline because he was working with Leon Russell. 32 year old Jon Jon Poulos died of drug-related causes earlier in the year. It had been eleven years since anyone had seen The Buckinghams play, but after they rehearsed, the pulled off three shows like they had never been apart. The exposure brought a lot of other offers to appear, but Tufano lived in Los Angeles and had other commitments. Carl Giammarese and Nick Fortuna however, decided to reunite as The Buckinghams.



The band toured extensively as a nostalgia act with Giammarese and Fortuna and released new recordings, the album "A Matter Of Time" and the single "Veronica" in 1985 for Red Label records. They were also a part of the highly successful Happy Together Tour which featured The Turtles, The Grass Roots and Gary Lewis. The tour was consistently one of the Top 10 grossing tours.



During the '80s and 90s, Tufano was not only involved in acting, but joined up with Elton John's songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin in a band called Farm Dogs. An album by Farm Dogs, "Last Stand In Open Country" was released in July, 1996 on Discovery Records.



The Buckinghams continued to be a very impressive band, playing festivals, concerts, casinos, cruises, and corporate dates around the world as interest in 60's hits and the bands that made them famous continued. Their clean and tight musical ability combined with trademark vocals made them a popular draw.



More recently, the latest edition of The Buckinghams released some new recordings that include, 1998's "Terra Firma" and "Made In Chicago" in 2001. In October, 2004, The Buckinghams sang the national anthem at Comiskey Park in Chicago before game one of the American Baseball League playoffs. They also toured the country with the "Solid Gold Sixties Tour" along with Tommy James, The Turtles, The Grass Roots, Paul Revere and the Raiders and Gary Puckett.

The Making of a Chicago Outfit

How six recent Columbia College grads got Hollywood muscle to help them make their mob movie

Chris Charles says he warned his star up front: "But I don't think it really registered till his first day of shooting in downtown Chicago."



Charles had cast Frank Vincent as the lead in Chicago Overcoat, an independent drama that will receive its world premiere Saturday, October 10, at the Chicago International Film Festival. Known almost exclusively for playing gangsters—including New York crime boss Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos and Billy Batts, who ends up in a trunk in Goodfellas—Vincent, 70, got to the set in October 2007 and realized that most of the crew were in their early 20s. "He's looking around like, 'Where'd all these kids come from?'" says Charles, who's now 25.



Chicago Overcoat was the first full-length feature produced by Beverly Ridge Pictures, a company formed in 2005 by six Columbia College film students, including Charles. Writer-director Brian Caunter, now 26, and writer-producer John Bosher, now 25, developed a sideline producing promotional and music videos while roommates at Columbia. Their "booty video," as Caunter calls it, for Joe Glass & IROC's "Two" got heavy rotation on BET Uncut in 2004. The next year, Caunter and Bosher joined forces with Charles, Philip Plowden, Kevin Moss, and William Maursky to form Beverly Ridge, named after Moss's far-south-side neighborhood. "The name sounds Hollywood, but it's also kind of Chicago," Caunter explains. They used Givens Castle, a Beverly landmark, as their logo. Charles directed Beverly Ridge's first production, a short adaptation of the Ray Bradbury short story "The Small Assassin."



In 2006 the six friends worked on a low-budget thriller called The Devil's Dominoes, directed by Scott Prestin, owner of the now-defunct Wicker Park bar Ginbucks. "We realized from that experience that we were more prepared than we thought to make a feature," Charles says. They were all fans of gangster films and figured they could make one without incurring a lot of extra production costs by taking advantage of Chicago locations.



"For months all we had was a title," says Caunter. His grandmother in Ohio had suggested "Chicago Overcoat," Prohibition-era slang for a coffin. The Family Secrets mob trials were in the headlines at the time and wound up providing inspiration for the screenplay.



Vincent plays Lou Marazano, an old hit man for the Chicago Outfit, who accepts his first contract in years—going after witnesses in a union pension-fund embezzlement case—to finance his Vegas retirement. Another Goodfellas vet, Mike Starr, is the underboss who exploits Marazano's money troubles. Another Sopranos alum, Kathrine Narducci, plays Marazano's old flame and alibi. Armand Assante plays the jailed boss facing trial. Chicago-based actor Danny Goldring is the alcoholic detective who's been chasing Marazano since the 1980s. And Stacy Keach does a cameo as a retired investigator pulled off the case when he got too close to city corruption.



"We were huge fans of The Sopranos," Caunter says. "We decided to write the script with Frank Vincent in mind so when he read it he'd feel like the main character is Frank Vincent. His book A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man was our character outline." The partners figured that "if we could create roles from scratch for celebrities, knowing they'd want to play something different, something challenging, we'd have an easier time recruiting them," Charles says. "We usually see Frank as a high-rolling mobster, higher on the food chain. In this film he's very humbled, very flawed, taking orders from guys younger than him."



Charles got the script to Vincent's people, and Vincent responded even though it came from unknowns in flyover country. "What appealed to me was the sensitivity of playing the softer side of a mob guy," Vincent says, "a guy who's not in control, who's looking to get the control." Vincent says he met a lot of mafiosi while touring as a drummer for Del Shannon and Paul Anka in the 1960s, helping him perfect a persona he's portrayed in Scorsese masterpieces and B movies alike. "They all have a way of looking at you, of intimidating you," Vincent says. "They're all evil. I can give a look or a stare that people read as evil."



Caunter and Charles signed Vincent at a place called Goodfellas Ristorante near his New Jersey home. "Frank walked in in a jumpsuit with a gold chain, looking like he walked off the set of The Sopranos," Charles says.



Once Vincent signed on, the other leads followed. Joe Mantegna was cast as the detective but dropped out weeks before shooting to take a role on CBS's Criminal Minds. "That was tough," Charles says. "I'd worked very hard to cast Joe." Goldring, who played the last clown killed in the opening bank heist sequence of The Dark Knight, stepped in. "They're so young, but they really got the writing for old-timers down," Goldring says.



The mother of cinematographer Kevin Moss, JoAnne Moss, who runs a real estate title insurance firm, personally invested "hundreds of thousands of dollars" and helped raise the rest of the $2 million budget, according to a report in Crain's Chicago Business. "Originally it was a smaller film. But as we found some success attaching talent, the budget increased," Charles says. "The project just kept getting bigger."



The filmmakers' youth "concerned me, absolutely," Vincent says. "They were younger than my kids. I've never experienced that before in all the films I've done, such a young team. . . . I figured if they were going to screw up, they'd screw up right away. As we progressed into the shoot, it became clear that they really knew what they wanted, and that was enough to make me confident."



Caunter, who turned 24 during the shoot, says he felt like "a chicken with its head cut off. Most of the time you have no idea what's going on. You feel like the world is going to end. You shoot for 12 hours, you come home and feel like you failed. The next day you feel like you want to redeem yourself. I think that's what makes a good movie—the struggle. If everything went your way it might feel kind of washy. I never had that experience, so I don't know."



The biggest adjustment for Caunter was learning to adapt to each actor's approach. "Frank is quite easygoing," he says. "Armand is the polar opposite. Armand would scream obscenities at the top of his lungs before the take. That alone would scare half the set, and then we'd roll the camera."



"They turned me loose," says Goldring. "That can be a dangerous thing for any actor, but they also had the good sense to rein me in. I'm a passion merchant. Doing Chicago Overcoat allowed me to let my passions out. The [character] is . . . ornery. He likes to tip back a few. Even though I don't do that anymore, I can play one on TV."



Accusations of ethnic stereotyping have dogged many of Vincent's projects. Last spring, MillerCoors pulled a series of ads featuring Vincent and Starr as mobsters after complaints from the Order Sons of Italy in America. Chicago Overcoat is no exception. After principal photography wrapped in November 2007, Bosher got an e-mail from Bill Dal Cerro of the advocacy group Italic Institute of America. Dal Cerro wrote, "It saddens—and yes, sickens me—that you are reverting to the oldest game in the book in your quest for Hollywood fame: namely, stoking prejudice against Americans of Italian descent by producing yet another pointless Italian 'mob' movie."

"I told him they can't force us to stop making movies that people want to see," Bosher says. "They have to change people's minds." Let them protest, adds Vincent, who sells "mobbleheads" of his Goodfellas character on his Web site. "It'll do the movie good."


It's going to be tough to recover the $2 million budget in today's independent film market, which is arguably in a deeper slump than the rest of the economy. Todd Slater of LA-based Huntsman Entertainment is shopping the film to distributors. "We've had a lot of offers from smaller companies," Charles says. "We've been waiting patiently for the right buyer. We want an offer we can't refuse

Courtesy of Chicago Reader.com

Guilty Plea to Tax Evasion by Reputed Mobster

Guilty Plea to Tax Evasion by Reputed Mobster, Rudy Fratto --Next time it will be jay walking  lol .. Another bullshit case!!!!


Reputed suburban Chicago mobster Rudy Fratto pleaded guilty Tuesday to evading thousands of dollars in federal income taxes.

Fratto, 65, of suburban Darien, pleaded guilty to a single charge of evading $30,052 in taxes on income of $199,595 for 2005. But he admitted in a signed plea agreement that he actually evaded $141,192 in taxes on $835,641 in income over seven years starting in 2001.

The maximum sentence on the charge is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The plea agreement, however, said the sentence could be more like 12 to 18 months under federal sentencing guidelines.

Fratto remained free on $4,500 bond pending sentencing, which U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly set for Jan. 12.

Fratto admitted in his plea agreement that he had arranged to have income funneled into the bank account of a defunct company in an effort to evade the scrutiny of the Internal Revenue Service. He received income in 2005 from jobs ranging from handyman to pasta salesman, according to the document.

Fratto's name has come up at least twice in connection with organized crime in recent federal cases.

Prosecutors introduced evidence that he was an associate of the Chicago police department's former chief of detectives, William Hanhardt, who is now serving a federal prison sentence as the leader of a mob-related jewel theft ring.

Fratto's name also came up in connection with the landmark 2007 Operation Family Secrets case -- the biggest Chicago mob trial in decades. He was listed on papers prepared by the FBI as a serious threat to the safety of the government's star witness in the case, admitted mobster and hit man Nicholas Calabrese.

Fratto's name also appears on a chart published by the Chicago Crime Commission in 1997, showing the structure of the so-called Chicago Outfit.

This Would Not Happen in Chicago !!!

They Forgot About The Code!!....Need to be Reminded ???

Despite the stereotype that mob family members never talk out of turn, Victoria Gotti is speaking up about growing up in one of America's most infamous crime families. Not only that, she says that her late father "The Dapper Don" was fine with her writing about their family secrets.

Gotti's new book, "This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti," chronicles her life as a Mafia princess, and she's talking to CBS's "48 Hours" on Saturday about her family.

She describes growing up in a life of luxury, though she had mixed feelings about the source of that luxury. She admits that she had a pretty good idea of what her dad -- late Gambino crime family boss John Gotti -- did for a living, including ordering the deaths of rivals.

Like Father, Like Son
The family is back in the news because Victoria's brother, John Gotti Jr., is on trial for the fourth time for crimes associated with his role as head of the Gambino family between 1993 and 2008. Gotti Jr. insists that he retired in 1999, and that the statute of limitations on his crimes has run out. Seven jurors on the case are said to have asked to be dismissed from the trial this past week, possibly out of fear of retribution.

Victoria, who's had some money trouble, will reportedly discuss her heartbreak over the crime legacy on "48 Hours." "My brother is not in that courtroom," she told CBS's Troy Roberts. "It is my father, always, all over again, day in, day out. It's not about what John [Jr.] did, is doing or will do. It's about John Gotti." She and two siblings talked to "48 Hours" in the hopes of helping clear their brother's name by showing the world they grew up in.

Victoria says the trial is part of what inspired her to finally write her life story, and that her father gave her his blessing to do so before his death in 2002.

A Brother Lost
One of the more notable revelations in the book is Victoria's discussion of the disappearance of Gotti neighbor John Favara, who was involved in a car accident that killed Victoria's 12-year-old brother Frank in 1980. Four months after the incident, Favara was abducted in a van and never seen again.

Victoria admits that she initially demanded that her father seek vengeance, but that he insisted she accept that it was an accident. She vehemently denies that her father was involved in Favara's death, though she admits it's likely that someone in the Gambino crime family was responsible.

Scandal Overload?!
While we appreciate the candor, we've got to ask: How is any of this shocking, exactly? That John Gotti ran afoul of the law is not exactly news. (Back in the day, he was also known as the "Teflon Don" because it took four trials to convict him, despite mountains of evidence.) Any remaining doubts about his non-involvement were more or less put to bed when he was convicted on 13 counts including murder, loansharking, racketeering and tax evasion in 1992.

Chicago Italians at Work ...... Great Book!!!!

The Book chronicles the lives of working Chicago Italians for 80 years through photography and text

For more than a century, Italian immigrants and their descendants contributed their labor and talent to building the city. Chicago Italians at Work focuses on a period from 1890 to 1970 when industry was king in this midwestern metropolis. Generations of Italians found work in companies such as U.S. Steel, Western Electric, Pullman, Crane, McCormick/Harvester, Hart Schaffner and Marx, and other large industrial corporations. Other Italians were self-employed as barbers, shoe workers, tailors, musicians, construction workers, and more. In many of these trades, Italians were predominant. A complex network of family enterprises also operated in the Chicago Italian community. Small shopkeepers generated work in food services and retail employment; some of these ma-and-pa operations grew into large, prosperous enterprises that survive today. Finally, Italians helped develop trade unions, which created long-term economic gains for all ethnic groups in Chicago. This book chronicles the labor and contributions of an urban ethnic community through historic photographs and text.

Author Peter Nicholas Pero is a teacher and writer. He has taught courses in labor studies for Roosevelt University and Prairie State College. Pero has published articles on workplace economics through travel in China, Japan, Costa Rica, and Brazil. He lives in Chicago's Little Italy and is a member of the city's Italian-American Labor Council.

To buy the book, visit www.arcadiapublishing.com