Yearly Archives: 2021

Harold Orenstein was my friend, mentor, and music attorney. He represented just about everyone at one time or another, which is a topic we will touch on in future stories. He had a weekend house on a lake in Dutchess County and would take the train Friday afternoons from his office, which was right across from The Russian Tea Room (which is another story) in Manhattan, to upstate N.Y. where he had his car parked in someone’s one-car garage. The car was an Oldsmobile Delta 88 station wagon with fake wood sides and glass ceilings that came from a dealer in Harlem. When I eventually asked him “You bought this in Harlem?” he said “No, it was given to me” (it happened to be given to him by a great soul singer named Jackie Wilson for all the nice work Harold had done for him...this is yet another story). So, I dubbed that car as “The Jackie Wilson Mobile.”