ABSTRACT
Born Neil Bogartz in Brooklyn, New York, Bogartz began his career with aspirations to be a pop singer. In the early 1960s, he got a job with the music industry publication, Cash Box, as an ad salesman, and then moved on to work as a promotion man at MGM and then quickly became sales manager at Cameo-Parkway. He was hired by the new Buddah label in 1965 as the label’s general manager. There he developed several bubblegum acts, including the Ohio Express. In 1973, he went independent and formed Casablanca Records, signing the glam-rock group Kiss and, in the mid-1970s, disco diva Donna Summer. Bogart spent money like there was no tomorrow promoting his most successful acts, and also on lavish offices and drugs. The label was purchased by Polygram at the end of the 1970s for $10 million, but was by then riddled with debt. Bogart eventually was forced out, and formed one last label, Boardwalk Records, signing rock singer Joan Jett, before his death in Los Angeles from cancer in 1982.
