Film a Big Surprise; Rights & Royalties a Bigger Mystery
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 By Sally Deering Â
The story starts with two brothers and a couple of friends from Bayonne who wrote and recorded a song called Bim Sala Bim back in the 1970s. They took the title from “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson†when Carson played fortune teller Carnac the Magnificent. He and Ed McMahon would say “Bim Sala Bim†as a greeting to each other.
Lou Gomez wrote the lyrics and his brother Richie Gomez wrote the melody and Ralph Cohen wrote the arrangements to Bim Sala Bim when they were in the 70s band “Hudson Countyâ€. The band eventually broke up, but the song lives on. Fast forward to 2016, Gomez finds out from a friend that Bim Sala Bim is on the soundtrack to the new Robert DeNiro movie, HANDS OF STONE.
“The group became known for its funk sound,†Gomez says, from his home in Sayreville. “We were signed to RCA records by Warren Schatz and asked to produce some material for a compilation album and a single release. Our single was “Heaven’s Here on Earth” and we were told it would be released at the same time Vickie Sue Robinson was to release Turn the Beat Around. At that time we also recorded Bim Sala Bim. Forty years later I get a call from a friend that Bim Sala Bim is a big underground hit in Europe especially Greece and Italy. It was later found out that the song was bootlegged by some unknown group called Fantastic Soul Inventions who just slapped their name on our recording.†Continue reading WHOSE SONG IS IT ANYWAY?Songwriter Lou Gomez’s BIM SALA BIM surfaces in new Robert DeNiro Flick
 
The reasons for its enduring popularity aren’t easy to pin down. Of course, Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpieces, “The Godfather” and “The Godfather, Part II,” brought a swarm of new readers, but the book had already sold millions of copies before the first film was Âreleased in 1972.
