the recording, which were sold in Pennsylvania stores. James first learned of all this activity in April 1966 after getting a telephone call from Pittsburgh disc jockey "Mad Mike" Metro(vich) asking him to come and perform the song. James attempted to contact other members of the Shondells, but they had all moved away, joined the service, or gotten married and left the music business altogether. There remains disagreement over the role of Metrovich in the recording. In his book Me, The Mob and the Music, James credits Pittsburgh dance promoter Bob Mack and never mentions Metrovich. In April 1966, James went by himself to make promotional appearances in Pittsburgh in nightclubs and on local television. He recruited a quintet that was playing at the Thunderbird Lounge in Greensburg called the Raconteurs -- Joe Kessler (guitar), Ron Rosman (keyboards), George Magura (saxophone), Mike Vale (bass), and Johnnie Hogg (drums) – as the new Shondells. "I had no group, and I had to put one together really fast," recalled James. "I was in a Greensburg, PA club one night, and I walked up to a group that was playing that I thought was pretty good and asked them if they wanted to be the Shondells. They said yes, and off we went." With a touring group to promote the single, James went to New York City, where he sold the master of "Hanky Panky" to Roulette Records, at which time he changed his last name to James. With national promotion, the single became a No. 1 hit in July 1966. He signed with Leonard Stogel and Associates for management. In 1967, Kessler and Hogg were forced to leave after a dispute when planned monies were not remitted to them by Roulette, a label closely associated with organized crime, and whose head, Morris Levy, was the inspiration for the Herman "Hesh" Rabkin character on The Sopranos. They were replaced by Eddie Gray (guitar) and Peter Lucia (drums); Magura departed as well. Tommy James and the Shondells At first, Tommy James and "his" Shondells played straightforward rock and roll, but they soon became associated with the budding bubblegum music genre. James disputes this, saying that Super K Productions "bubblegum" producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz approached his record company (run by Morris Levy) looking for songwriting jobs. Levy spurned Kasenetz and Katz, so they went elsewhere and became successful with such bands as the