THE King was in his counting house, or if not necessarily in his counting house, then in his luxury penthouse, holding court at the Las Vegas Hilton. It was the late 1960s, unwinding after another hysterical show, and Elvis was in his pomp.
Tom Jones was there, too, and so was Charles Mather (about whom we shall hear more very shortly.) The phone rang. “Sure, come on up,” said Elvis and two minutes later opened the door to a clearly inebriated Jerry Lee Lewis. The gun in his hand pointed straight at Presley.
“It’s just so you don’t forget that I’M the king of rock and roll,” said Lewis.
“Jerry,” said Elvis, “when you’re holding a Colt 45, you’re king of anything you want to be.”
Lewis threw the gun to the floor and walked away. Mather picked it up and discovered to his considerable consternation that it was loaded.
“I nearly wet myself, my life flashed in front of me,” he later recalled.
“Imagine what the Colonel (Elvis’s manager, Tom Parker) would have done to me if the bugger had pulled the trigger.”
‘Sir” Charles Mather, pictured below, was a builder’s son from Whitley Bay, a friend of the famous and of the infamous with an extraordinary tale to tell. He had also been member 001 of the Las Vegas Country Club until, after six years persuasion, selling the honour for $150,000 to his pal Frank Sinatra.
He died earlier this month, aged 85, the eulogy at his funeral last Thursday given by former Northern Echo photographer Ian Wright.
“If you didn’t know Charlie Mather in Las Vegas, you needed to get to know him pretty damn quick,” said Ian, long in Los Angeles but born and raised in Darlington.
“He may not have made the headlines, but many headlines were made because of him,” said lyricist Don Black. “To know him was to love him.”
Ian had hoped to write Mather’s biography, had enjoyed long conversations with him – “by the end he was speaking broad Geordie again” – decided there wasn’t quite enough material.
It makes for some obituary, though – and with further thanks to Ian for the photographs.
AT 14, he had got a job as a wartime bellboy at the Savoy in London, regularly watching cabaret by Noel Coward, who performed in exchange for a room at the hotel. Though it gave him a taste for show business, he at first joined the Army, becoming a PTI with 40 Commando and among the first wave of paratroopers who flew from Cyprus to take Port Said. Others included Jimi Hendrix and Mike Jeffries, manager of The Animals “He was a killer,” says Ian.
Homew a r d , and for reasons n o t wholly explained, he pitched up in Las Vegas – then little more than a village, says Ian – set up an entertainment agency and quickly built up a portfolio that included Jones, Liberace, Johnny Ray, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan, Roy Orbison and Billy Daniels. When the Colonel wasn’t about, he acted for Elvis, too, and it was he who got The Beatles their US work permit in August 1964.
“He was the ultimate professional who would walk through raging fires to protect and promote his list of talented clients,” said Don Black.
He also became a key player, 50 years ago, in the burgeoning nightclub scene in North-East England.
Las Vegas had 12 clubs, the North- East – thanks to Harold Macmillan’s liberating Betting and Gaming Act of 1963 – about 40.
One-armed-bandit king Vince Landa and his brother Michael Luvaglio were among Mather’s visitors, shipping back two crates of fruit machines from Long Beach to Newcastle.
Mather was also in with The Mob, setting up the Country Club with Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters Union and Moe Dalitz, head of the Detroit Mafia in Las Vegas.
“It was the most prestigious club in town, still is,” says Ian. “The waiting list was as long as the Strip.”
He was also sending big names on UK visits, a week in London followed by a week at La Dolce Vita – “wonderful place, the best club outside London”– in Newcastle.
They included former world heavyweight boxing champion Lou Louis, who’d developed a song and dance act. Escorted – like other Mather clients – by the Kray brothers.
“The act was horrible. I still have my photographs,” says Ian. “Unfortunately he had to be sacked after four days.”
STILL Mather prospered, Ten Per Cent of an awful lot, though his “knighthood” – he had used “Sir” since 1988 – has been the subject of speculation among fellow Commandos on a website.
None recalls high rank or social standing, the reference to “washing up in Las Vegas” not obviously affectionate.
“We all thought he was all right,” writes one former colleague, “but maybe the fact that he was paying for all the wets had something to do with it.”
The title was in fact conferred by the Knights of Malta, a Roman Catholic body said to be the world’s oldest order of chivalry.
“Sir Charles” he remained.
Though still in show business, Lord Charles was a ventriloquist’s dummy. Charles Ogle Mather was definitely nobody’s dummy, HE had founded the International Artists Management Company in 1959, lived in a six-bedroom detached house approached down a tree-lined drive next to a Las Vegas golf course, employed a maid and a butler and entertained in style.
He had married twice, his first wife from the North-East, and had three sons. He died on October 7 –“still wheeling and dealing” – condolence letters received from international stars like Tom Jones, Chubby Checker and Lovelace Watkins.
“If he hadn’t have touched upon Las Vegas,” says Ian Wright, “he’d probably have ended up down the pit.”
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