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- Lee Gordon was an American entrepreneur and rock and roll promoter who worked extensively in Australia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Gordon's jazz and rock'n'roll tours had a major impact on the Australian music scene and he also played a significant role in the early career of pioneering Australian rock'n'roll singer Johnny O'Keefe. Many aspects of Gordon's life and career remain sketchy or obscure, and many accounts contain contradictory information. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Gordon was born in Detroit, Michigan and educated at Highland Park High School, Highland Park, Michigan and at the University of Miami, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1944. However, other sources claim that Gordon was in fact born in 1917 in Coral Gables, Florida. He began promoting jazz concerts at university; after graduating he worked in various 'colourful' business enterprises—during World War II he reportedly ran a mail-order business that operated out of Lima, Peru, and later he moved to Cuba, where he booked entertainment for the famous Tropicana nightclub in Havana. Gordon then established a chain of electrical goods stores in the USA, which eventually failed. On the advice of a friend, Detroit promoter Arthur Shergin, he came to Sydney in 1953 to investigate the possibilities of promoting concert tours there. His first Australian business venture was an early form of telemarketing, using various introduced American sales techniques, including hire purchase (a common form of consumer finance in the 1950s and 1960s) to promote a local furniture business. The marketing venture proved hughly successful and Gordon used the profits to establish a promotions company, Big Show Pty Ltd, and began promoting concert tours of Australia by leading American jazz and rock'n'roll acts. In early 1955, he brought out Frank Sinatra, Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray, who played at such venues as the Sydney Stadium. His second tour with Johnny Ray set records for ticket sales that were not surpassed until the arrival of The Beatles in 1964. Gordon's tours were also highly significant in cultural terms, as they were the first major concert tours to Australia that included leading African American jazz and rock performers like Little Richard and Louis Armstrong. In January 1957, he promoted the first Rock and Roll tour of Australia, by bringing out Bill Haley & His Comets, The Platters, Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker and Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, who were seen by 300,000 patrons in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne. In October 1957, Gordon began introducing Australian acts, starting with Johnny O'Keefe and the Dee Jays as part of a show featuring Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. In 1958, he established Lee Gordon Records Pty Ltd and recorded pop songs by Lonnie Lee, Barry Stanton, Laurel Lea and The Crescents, eventually under the Leedon label. He converted a former cinema in Kings Cross into one of Australia's first discothèques (The Birdcage, which later became Surf City and introduced the first striptease club and drive-in restaurant in Sydney. Some accounts suggest that Gordon had links with organised crime, and his connection with the Tropicana suggests some possible early involvement with the Mafia. It is also known that near the end of his life he formed a partnership with notorious Australian businessman and organised crime figure Abraham Gilbert Saffron, with whom he reportedly opened the drive-in restaurant and the strip club . Although Gordon made huge profits on some tours, others lost heavily, and by the late Fifites he was suffering from mental health and drug-related problems. He disappeared overseas for almost all of 1959, leaving his company in the hands of his executive staff, and was eventually located when his mother contacted his company to inform them that Gordon had suffered a serious mental breakdown and was being cared for in a sanatorium in Hawaii. He returned to Australia in 1960 but by this time he was deeply in debt and sold Lee Gordon Records and the Leedon label to Festival Records against the advice of business manager Alan Heffernan. In January 1962, Gordon married Arlene Topfer at Acapulco, Mexico, with Frank Sinatra as his best man. In June 1963, he was charged with attempting to obtain the pethidine without a prescription. He left Australia in July and travelled to the United States and London looking for work. He died in a hotel in Kensington, London, reportedly from a coronary occlusion. He was survived by his wife, daughter and a 45 year old son.
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