Positively Fourth and Mercer

About the Author

Allan Pepper’s career as a music entrepreneur began in his early 20s when, in 1965, he and childhood friend Stanley Snadowsky founded a non-profit devoted to expanding awareness of jazz’s contributions to American culture. Thus began a partnership that by 1974 found the two young promoters realizing a lifelong dream by opening their own nightclub, The Bottom Line. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, their 400 seat cabaret would forever change the face of live music in New York City. Over its thirty year existence, more than three million music fans witnessed often career-defining performances by an unparalleled roster of iconic and up-and-coming artists from all points of the musical compass. Along the way, Pepper and Snadowsky also produced such original shows as Leader of the Pack, which would go on to Broadway and help pioneer the “jukebox musical,” as well as the nationally touring songwriter’s series, In Their Own Words. While they took an amazing journey together, even more impressively the two remained best friends until Snadowsky’s death in 2013. Allan Pepper lives in Englewood, New Jersey.
Billy Altman is a Grammy-nominated journalist, critic, and historian whose work covering the worlds of music, popular culture and sports has appeared over the years in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Spin, Esquire, GQ, People, Entertainment Weekly and The Village Voice. A former senior editor of Creem magazine, he was a founding curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and a consultant to the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, and most recently he served as chief scriptwriter for both the National Blues Museum in St. Louis and the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville. A recipient of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, he is a longstanding faculty member of the Humanities Department at New York City’s School of Visual Arts, where he teaches courses in rock, jazz and folk music as well as non-fiction writing. He lives in the lower Hudson Valley region of Westchester County, New York.