There was a time around 1961,  when Elvis had gone off to Germany to be in the Army,  that brief time before the Beatles

High society Blue Bloods were discovering rock and roll and the youth culture needed a rock and roll twist.

Somehow a new dance craze found its home in a most unassuming spot,  the Peppermint Lounge which became “the place to be”.

The Peppermint Lounge originally opened in 1958 with a gay clientele.

It had a lengthy mahogany bar running along one side,  many mirrors and a dance floor at the back with a capacity of only 178 people.

The Peppermint Lounge happened to be the nightclub where Joey Dee performed.  Dee and Henry Glover wrote the hit song “The Peppermint Twist” which was released in late 1961.

An interesting note, Joey Dee and his band The Starlighters’ guitarist was actor Joe Pesci.   When he left the band, he was replaced by someone named Jimmy James, who later started using his real name Jimi Hendrix.

In October 1961, Dick Cami and his mob boss father-in-law Johnny Biello,  hurried home to New York to witness for themselves the mayhem that had broken out in their seedy Times Square nightclub.

The whole world had been shaken by a new dance craze called The Twist and ground zero was The Peppermint Lounge.

After a lifetime in the mob starting out as a bootlegger in Dutch Schultz’s gang and scouting Las Vegas with Bugsy Siegel, Biello suddenly found himself in the middle of Rock and Roll history.

The Peppermint Lounge was in the Theater District and one night in October of 1961,  there was a torrential downpour as the theaters were emptying and some of the theater crowd came in to get out of the elements.

“They saw the kids and some of the sailors from the Brooklyn Navy Yard dancing, so some of the society people got up and joined them dancing the Twist”.

The Peppermint Lounge was supposed to be a front for Biello’s racketeering,  but the place was jammed with socialites and celebrities, packed ass-to-elbow on the tiny dance floor,  while mounted police patrolled the crowd overflowing the sidewalk and blocking traffic.

Inside was wall to wall swinging elbows, tail-shaking to this high energetic dance craze that had taken over the club.

All of the big stars started coming to The Peppermint Lounge,  you name it they were there.

Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, Judy Garland, Noel Coward,  Frank Sinatra, Liberace, Norman Mailer, Carol Channing, Jackie Kennedy, John Wayne, Annette Funicello, Maurice Chevalier and even the reclusive Greta Garbo.

In the Twist,  it is possible to see the beginnings of everything that was the Sixties – sexual liberation, civil rights, draft protests, and the young Kennedys in the White House.

Of course Sam Cooke’s hit song “Twistin the Night Away” and the Paramount Picture film “Hey Let’s Twist” fed the momentum.

The place was mobbed up to the gills with mobsters dancing enthusiastically with kids, where Nat King Cole jammed with the house band to get a feel for rock and roll,  and where young heavyweight Cassius Clay hung around before the Liston fight.

The girls who would become The Ronettes started out at the Peppermint Lounge as rail dancers, forerunners to the cage go-go dancers of later vintage.

Artists that performed there included The Beach Boys, The Crystals,  The Isley Brothers, Chubby Checker, Liza Minnelli and the Four Seasons.

Perhaps the high point of the mob’s brush with rock and roll, occurred when after the Beatles performed for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th 1964.   They hit the town visiting the Playboy Club,  but around midnight they made their way to The Peppermint Lounge.

One of the mob’s paid killers threatened violence that night because his girlfriend was infatuated with Ringo, but this was averted when Cami assigned him to guard the band.

Afterwards mobsters lined up to buy the chairs The Beatles sat in for their kids.

Behind it all was Johnny Biello,  the gentleman mobster trying to navigate his life in a quiet and peaceful retirement.

The club lost its liquor license in 1965 and although it was only open eight years, The Peppermint Lounge will always be remembered as the epicenter of the memorable dance craze called The Twist,  which was a large stepping stone in the cultural evolution of the music industry.