Tom Pergola, a highly accomplished songwriter and music producer, is currently celebrating his 60th Anniversary in the Music Industry! Concurrently, the acclaimed musician is seeking to sell his lifetime of work—a catalog nearly 400 songs and tracks strong–to a music sync company for licensing to multimedia outlets. For a sample of Tom’s songs and tracks please visit: https://tompergola.com/ and https://originalsongshub.com/
Regarding his career milestone, Tom says, “Music is my life. This has been reflected by the 60 years I’ve put into my craft, as well as through the many gifted people I have worked with, including Ricky Bell, Freda Payne and Merry Clayton. As I am getting older, I wanted to make sure that the music I made over the past six decades—some of which that has not seen the light of day in some time–gets its chance to be incorporated through sync licenses within feature films, TV shows, commercials, videogames, digital media, and other outlets. At the end of the day, if my music can reach someone’s ears and make their day better or can get into the right person’s hands who can translate my original works into a smash hit, than it will all have been worth it. Whether it’s pop, R&B, rap, or anything in between, I’ve composed and produced a track that I’m hopeful will be of interest to the next generation of content creators.”
Quick Background About Tom Pergola
A resident of Westlake Village, California, Tom, originally from New Jersey, found music at an early age, as a creative outlet–and after finding out how good he was at guitar, he began building solid industry relationships. Staring professionally as a guitarist from New York, moving to LA along the way, Tom played guitar for the iconic Latin Singer Charo, as well as creating the iconic 1960’s New York band The Pilgrims, who were signed to Mercury Records. With The Pilgrims, Tom saw much commercial success. He later worked with the same producers as those for The Jackson 5 and for Sonny & Cher, accumulating extensive recording experience and building up important relationships with key players within the music industry.
From there, Tom expanded his musical knowledge, playing and learning different instruments, including playing the congas on one of Allen Toussaint’s albums–Toussaint was later inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
As his career has gone on, Tom has worked with countless fellow collaborators: Rappers Snoop Dog and Busta Rhymes both chose two of Tom’s different rap tracks to write and record on, but due to unfortunate scheduling conflicts, were unable to finish them; in the early 2000’s, Tom charted #1 for his own song, Sweet and Mellow, on the MP3 Chart; Tom wrote and produced the Tom Pergola Project with featured Ricky Bell from the hit singing group New Edition.
And even today at the tender age of 78, Tom continues to work in the music industry. He has actively been pursuing the TV space, having written and produced the Pilot Episode for a group of 40-plus aged women, entitled, The Singin’ Mamas. In fact, Tom is currently the Songwriter and Music Producer for Singin’ Mamas star Arlette Jones. Their collaboration which features 46 brand new songs, can be found here: www.ArletteJones.com
Full Background About Tom Pergola
Starting his music career in New Jersey as an 18-year-old guitarist in 1963, Tom formed and played with various local bands. His first professional music endeavor was when he joined Rick Martin and The Showmen—that group played in New York and New Jersey nightclubs and at times backed up singing groups such as Ruby And The Romantics, The Shirelles, The Dovels, The Chantels, The Tokens, The Chiffons, and others.
Before moving to Los Angeles in 1970, Tom, along with his friend Rick Martin, played guitar for the legendary singer/entertainer Charo. Tom then created the iconic ‘60’s New York band The Pilgrims.The group had minor hits with the songs Bad Apple and Do You Love Me while signed to Mercury Records.
When Tom first came to Los Angeles, he was writing and singing his original songs. At that time, he was produced by Charlie Green of Green and Stone who also produced Sonny and Cher, Buffalo-Springfield, The Troggs and Iron Butterfly. Tom was also later produced by Marcellino and Larson, then producer of The Jackson 5
Tom created a Southern California band called Burn–they played in LA and Orange Counties and were very successful for many years.
While playing guitar for Charo, Tom learned how to play multiple Latin percussion instruments, having been taught by Charo’s band leader and percussionist Jack Del Rio. With that knowledge, Tom landed a gig playing congas on one of famed Allen Toussaint’s albums. Toussaint, songwriter, producer and piano player, was later inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Other well-known musicians played on that same album, including Dr. John. (Truly prolific, Toussaint wrote a number of hit songs for other artists, including Working On A Coal Mine, Lee Dorsey’s Ya Ya, The Pointer Sisters’ Yes We Can Can, Glen Campbell’s Southern Nights, and many more. He also collaborated with Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney.
Tom played guitar on a Jazz album by Renzo Fraiese. One of the well-known musicians on that same album was Chet McCracken of The Doobie Brothers, along with a full orchestra of horns, strings and percussion. Soon after the death of John Lennon in December 1980, Tom produced a John Lennon medley called Tell Me It Isn’t True and it was released as a 45 record by Randy Clark. Clark was a highly regarded performer in BEATLEMANIA on Broadway, RAIN, a tribute to the Beatles” – a national touring show, IMAGINE, a tribute to John Lennon” – a touring show on the East Coast, and LEGENDS IN CONCERT in Las Vegas and on Broadway.
Tom produced songs by singer Philip McKeon of the hit TV series Alice. Philip played Alice’s son Tommy in that series. Tom wrote and produced Don’t Wake Me If I’m Dreamin’ by the singing icon Freda Payne. Rappers Snoop Dog and Busta Rhymes both chose two of Tom’s different rap tracks to write and record on, but due to unfortunate scheduling conflicts, were unable to finish them.
Tom was the producer and co-writer of The Tom Pergola Project music release, and had several hits on the MP3 Chart, including the #1 R&B hit Sweet And Mellow. His album also made # 1 best-selling album in two categories of the MP3 Chart–Rhythm & Blues Radio and Urban/Radio, beating approx. two hundred and sixty thousand other songs in each category.
Tom produced and co-wrote songs on The Tom Pergola Project, Vol. 2 featuring Ricky Bell, one of the singers of New Edition and Bell Biv DeVo.
As leader, guitar player, songwriter, and producer of a 15 piece band Burn, Tom was introduced to Mark Maverick, the owner of indie 104.com, a worldwide internet radio station. The all-format station has had over eight million listeners, with over two hundred thousand listeners per hour, and is considered by the industry as being “Bigger than any FM station.” 104.com has been voted “Station Of The Year” for several years by The New Music Awards in Hollywood.
After Mark Maverick played three of Burn’s songs on 104.com during the course of just one day, Tom’s song Come Back rapidly became the number one most requested song in the history of that station. Come Back hit #1 on 104.com’s charts, where it stayed for months–Burn’s other songs followed closely behind.
Tom was the producer of the Rolling Stones rendition of Gimme Shelter featuring the famed singer Merry Clayton and sax player Joel Peskin, along with numerous other original songs. Tom was also co-writer and producer of four songs that appeared on the Ricky Bell album—Ricky was one of the singers in the groups New Edition, and Bell Biv De Voe.
Tom says, “One day, I realized that with all the Christmas parties that are held during each Christmas season, you can’t dance to any of the most popular Christmas songs such as Jingle Bells, so I arranged and produced a Christmas medley called Tommy’s Christmas Party. It consisted of 20 well-known Christmas songs, all set to a hypnotic dance beat for all to enjoy and dance to.”
In 2009, Tom granted Sirius Satellite Radio DJ Larry Flick in New York an exclusive to play one of his songs called Menu4Luv which he co-wrote with Pat Falletta. The song played worldwide along with all the other top hits at the time. More recently, Fox Radio played three of Tom’s songs on over 262 of their FM stations, in addition to stations heard across parts of Canada and Europe.
For many years, Tom had a party service called “CLOSET STARS” which entertained children and adults at his party room. They sang live and lip-synced to soundtracks on stage in wacky costumes provided by Tom. A video of the event was provided at the end of the party. Singer Tanya Ware was the winner of the CLOSET STARS poster contest before her later appearance on Star Search.
Through the years, Tom has been writing and producing many songs in his own studio, with various vocalists singing them. Most recently, Tom created and wrote all the songs for the singing group The Singin’ Mamas and was the music supervisor behind the hit musical comedy play Hot Flashin’, which received rave reviews during its LA performances in 2019. Tom wrote all 15 of the original songs that were featured within that show.
