GIORGIO GOMELSKY
Giorgio Gomelsky (28 February 1934 – 13 January 2016) was a film maker, impresario, music manager, songwriter (as Oscar Rasputin), and record producer. He was born in Georgia, grew up in Switzerland, and later lived in the United Kingdom and the United States. He owned the Crawdaddy Club in London where The Rolling Stones were house band, and he was involved with their early management. He hired The Yardbirds as a replacement and managed them. He was also their producer from the beginning through 1966. In 1967, he started Marmalade Records (distributed by Polydor), which featured “Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity”, The Blossom Toes, and early recordings by Graham Gouldman and Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, who became 10cc. (More from Wikipedia)
The Crawdaddy Club was founded in early 1963 in the back room of the Station Hotel in Richmond, Surrey (a suburb of London). The owner was Giorgio Gomelsky, who had previously owned the Piccadilly Club in central London. The house band in the beginning was the Dave Hunt Rhythm & Blues Band, whom Gomelsky had known from the earlier club. Charlie Watts had sometimes played drums for this band, and one of their guitarists was Ray Davies, later the founder and bandleader of the Kinks.
(January 2015/2)
