Key Figure in Payola Case Again Promoting Records : Entertainment: Ralph Tashjian said he’s indirectly handling some labels once represented by his former boss, Joseph Isgro, who is on trial.

As prosecutors pursued their payola trial against former record promoter Joseph Isgro, a former Isgro lieutenant and key government witness admitted Tuesday in U.S. District Court that he has re-entered the promotion business, handling some of the labels that Isgro represented in his heyday.

Ralph Tashjian, who last year was sentenced to 60 days at a government-run halfway house after pleading guilty in May, 1989, to payola-related charges, said he “indirectly represents” several labels’ promotional activities, including Warner Bros., Atlantic, Electra and Island through his company, Modern Music Marketing. He did not describe the nature of his relationships with the record firms or how much they are paying him.

Tashjian, an admitted cocaine user who has had bouts with alcoholism, served as head of promotion for Isgro’s company in the mid-1980s and is a key figure in the government’s case against Isgro. Outside the courtroom he admitted that he had erred in the past in his promotion practices but said “everyone deserves another chance.”

Isgro, one of the most powerful and controversial record promoters of the 1980s, is charged along with two other defendants in a 57-count indictment. The government claims that Isgro made “illicit and illegal payments” to radio stations in California and Texas and supplied cocaine to several station program directors in exchange for promises to broadcast certain records promoted by Isgro. Isgro has pleaded not guilty on all charges. If convicted, he faces 200 years in prison and $1.4 million in fines.

Broadcasters and the $6.5-billion-a-year record industry have been following the case closely since Isgro was indicted Nov. 30 out of concern that the government’s case might touch them.

Several industry observers have contended that record companies used independent promoters to distance themselves from allegations of payola. But the government has indicated that its allegations would not extend to the firms themselves.

The government’s allegations include charges that Tashjian, with Isgro’s consent, supplied cocaine and paid program director Johnny Lee Walker, then of KYNO-FM in Fresno, $200 for each song added to his station’s play list.

Also in testimony Tuesday, Isgro’s bodyguard, David Michael Smith, said that between 1983 and 1985 he made weekly cash payments of $3,000 to $5,000 to George Wilson Crowell, former program director of KIQQ-FM, in exchange for his station playing records promoted by Isgro. The Los Angeles station is now called KQLZ-FM.

Smith said he was instructed by Isgro to deliver the money to Crowell in the restrooms of several Southland bars where the two met.