If you’re a restaurant affectionado, you’ve undoubtedly eaten at Papa’s in Culver. It’s the restaurant on the curve that has the vinyl record jackets on the wall.

Chances are many of those album jackets could have been designed by the original owner of Papa’s, Jim McCormick. Jim McCormick was an A and R man for years at V-J Records in Chicago. Look above the bar and you’ll see a Beatles jacket. Jim McCormick recommended that V-J sign the British group in the early 1960’s. An initial contract was sold for $350 to Capital and the rest, as they say, is history. His son, Brian, runs the restaurant today, and remembers how close his dad came to signing the Beatles. Continue reading →