JACQUES FRED PETRUS & MAURO MALAVASI The rise and fall of Little Macho Music Co.

 Disco tycoon Jacques Fred Petrus (February 22th 1948 - June 8th 1987) was one of the more enigmatic music figures in the early 1980s whose uprising and downfall has intrigued many devotees of R&B and dance music up to this day.
Fred Petrus traveled a long road to achieve recognition in the United States and the global music industry. He was a Frenchman, though lived a major part of his life in Italy and the United States where he established an international career in music production. Fred Petrus was born in the French archipelago of Guadeloupe, located in the eastern Caribbean Sea and belonging to the Lesser Antilles group of islands. In the beautiful seaside town of Sainte-Anne on Grande-Terre Island he spent a happy childhood surrounded by four brothers and one sister: Frantz (Joachim) Petrus (°1945), Jean (José) Petrus (°1952), Lucien Petrus (°1957), Alex (Maximin) Middleton (°1961) and Evelyne (Félix) Middleton (°1959). They lived in Rue du Stade in the area called Cité Valette (photo below). A nice neighborhood near the omnisports stadium Valette and close to some of the the most magnificent beaches in the world (photo below: Caravelle Beach or Plage de la Caravelle in Sainte-Anne).
From an early age onwards Fred Petrus was hooked on music. He used to collect records and developed a fascination with funk, Rhythm & Blues and soul music, a passion that would determine his professional life journey. After finishing technical school in 1963, at the age of 15, Fred Petrus worked as a qualified diesel-engine mechanic on a cargo ship for a spell. In 1965, as a very young man of 17, he relocated to Paris and moved in with relatives. While residing in the French capital, he developed friendships with people involved in importing American pop music to France. Already looking smartly to his future, he took up courses of business administration and also bravely pursued his dream of becoming a celebrated deejay.

One of his first significant gigs in Paris was at the legendary Club Saint-Hilaire ran by François-Patrice, a chic venue situated in Rue de Rennes. The club was frequented by the rich and famous of that time like Aristoteles Onassis, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner and many French stars and starlets. His next stop in the Paris nightlife was the White Chapel club at Place Mabillon. During summertime in 1969 and 1970 he performed as a deejay in Spanish discotheques like Club Pilote or Tiffany’s in Marbella, alternating with Paris according to the season. Paris was only home for a short time however, and before long Petrus was drawn to Italy, permanently.
In 1971 Fred was hired by a discotheque in Messina, Sicily, where he acquired contacts that led to new opportunities in Rome during wintertime. In Rome Fred Petrus handled the turntables at the Staco Matto jet set club, callig himself "DJ Petrus". Later he would become resident deejay at the Good Mood in Milan until 1977. It wasn't unusual that he showed up at the Good Mood in a Bentley. Fred Petrus had always been an exhibitionist and liked to be seen as important. So travelling around in expensive cars was obvious. The prosperous city of Milan with its sophisticated fashion appeal and exuberant nightlife was the ideal place for Petrus to settle down in 1972 and spread his wings. Incidentally, Milan, the economic and financial heart of Italy, would become the capital of Italian dance music production later on. In this industrious Italian metropolis, there were importers, exporters, record shops, offices, studios, labels, and businesses.
To make a decent living, Fred Petrus also used to work during the daytime. And not surprisingly, he landed a job as a shop assistant in a mondaine Fiorucci fashion store in Milan. The Fiorucci company was aware of the impact of Disco culture and would hybridize with this sophisticated and escapist life style by means of targetted marketing campaigns. In 1977 the exclusive fashion brand embraced the Disco momentum and organized the grand opening of what was to become another Manhattan and global Disco landmark: Studio 54. So it occurred that Disco retailer Jacques Fred Petrus and his associate Franco Donato got the opportunity to set up a Goody Music outlet inside two of the Fiorucci stores in Milano. 

 Fred Petrus achieved an established reputation as top resident DJ at trendy clubs and eventually began to import music as he quickly understood how to respond to the needs of his Milanese fellow DJ’s. He also realised he couldn’t keep on doing the job of a DJ for the rest of his life. The entrepreneurial spirit awoke resolutely. "When I first came to Italy in 1972," Petrus recalled, "I immediately saw that the market for American music there was wide open, virgin territory. Nobody in Italy was importing dance records and I stepped into that vacuum."
In the early days Petrus used to order two packages a week. The demand as well as his funds were limited. He mainly sold imports to his deejay friends spinning at discotheques like the Primadonna, Nepentha and the Charly Max in Milan and Rome's Easy Going, Bella Blu, Jackie O' and Number One clubs. Wishing to further his links within the disco community, he slowly began importing records from America on a larger scale, starting a widely used but expensive service for discotheques across the country. He also supplied music to the huge clubs on the touristic Adriatic coast, like the glamorous Baia Degli Angeli –capable of holding 2.000 people– and L'Altromondo Club; as well as exclusive clubs such as Il Paradiso. 

 

  His commerce gradually increased as also snobbish club-goers got interested in buying fancy and exclusive dance music that only the coolest DJs had access to. At one of the high society venues where Petrus was deejaying he met a nightclub customer in late 1974 who helped him start up his first record shop in 1976, situated on Via Francesco Carrara No.19 in Rome. This sponsor was Franco Donato and the place where they bumped into each other was the club Good Mood in Milan. Due to his close ties with the discotheque Good Mood, Freddie baptized the business "Goody Music". With the unconditional help of his Maecenas and business partner Franco Donato, Goody Music would later bloom into a production company and record label.