Variety (Aug 1937)

Wednesday, August 25, 1937 MUSIC VARIETY 4S Pluggers Forming Own Organization To Suppress Bribery; Natl in Scope Publishers' contact men are going through with, the plan of setting up their own organization to suppress plug bribery, despite the forthcom- ing conference' before the Federal Trade Commission on a proposed code of fair trade practices for the music industry. New organization will be Known as the Professional Music Men's Protective Association, Inc. It will be national an scope and have branches in Chicago and Los Angeles. ■ • . The instigators of the protective association feel that professional contacteers must do something dras- tic to preserve their jobs. Major publishers have threatened to reduce their professional staffs to skeleton proportions and go in for unre- stricted paying unless the bribery and free, arrangements -situation were brought under control. Professional men are pretty much agreed, say some of the better known figures in their ranks, that they must stick together on the pro.- posed course of the PMMA if their functioi)S and salaries are to be maintained. These spokesmen are confident that once the professional men-are. primed to the task, they can do away-with the evils of music ex- ploitation. It.iS the intention of the PMMA to adopt its own code and make strict adherence mandatory to continued membership in the association: Vio- lations; will be met with expulsion, and members of the association will be barred from accepting employ- GORDON and REVEL Spngs for the Smash Darryl Z«nuck-20th Century Fox Production: *^You Can't Have Everything' The swell score follows: AFRAID TO DREAM THE LOVELINESS OF YOU YOU CAN'T HAVE EVRYTHING PLEASE PARDON US— WE'RE IN LOVE DANGER— LOVE AT WORK Also, Gordon and Revel's great waltz i HUM A WALTZ from 20tb Century's "This Is My Affair" 1270 Sixth Avenue • New Vork ment with a publisher, whose prac- tice is to pay oft or make free ar- rangements. Outside of the fact that the mem- bers of one organization are eligible to join the other, the PMMA will have no connection with the already existent Professional Music Men, Inc. It will function strictly as a trade employee group, while the PMM will go on serving as a bene- volent organization. KODNTZ MOVES DP IN MPHC REORG Music Publishers Holding Corp., Warner Bros, subsid, is centralizing the printing, sales and distributing operations of all its standard and educational units, with Richard Kountz heading up the division. De- tails of the reorganization will be made known to the staffs of the var- ious units by Edwin H. Morris, MPHC's v.p. and gen. mgr., at a meeting in Chicago today (Wednes- day ). Employees have, been bi-ought on from New York and Los Angeles for the gathering. Under the previous setup, Kountz managed solely the standard and e^ducational business of M. Witmark & Sons, part of the MPHC group. His new job will extend this author- ity over the Remick, Harms, Inc., T. B. Harms and other catalogs con- trolled by Warners, with the result that the pop and standard divisions will function as distinct entities. Rocco Vocco is head man of the popular division. Reorg includes the taking on of more personnel in the standard and educational division, SAM CUMMINS TIES UP 'SERENADE' ROYALTIES Royalties due the Societa Anonima Musicale Bixio, of Milan, Italy, from Mills Music Corp., have been tied up by an order of attachment issued Thursday (19) by N. Y. supreme court. The Foreign & Domestic Music Corp. and Sam Cummins is suing Bixio for breach of contract in connection with the distribution rights in America of the • Italian firm's song, 'Violino Tzigano,' known in America as 'Serenade in the Night.' According to plaintiffs the Mills firm owes Bixio $4,350 as its share on sales of the song. Cummins claims he contracted for Foreign & Domestic in 1934 on a SO- SO basis to exclusively distribute Bixio's output in North and South America and Canada. He avers the Italian publishers ran out on the agreement in 1936 whien it signed up with Mills to handle the song, 'Violino Tzigano.' THE SEASON'S SONG SCOOP SO RARE The Sherman-Clay Hit Just Acquired by Robbins—^The Fastest Hit of the Season BOBBINS MUSIC CORP. • 799 7th Ave., New York Most Played on Air Covibinea plugs on WEAF, WJZ and V/ABC are computed for the week irom Sunday' throxLgh Saturday (.Aug. lS-21). ♦Whispers in the Dark (Famous) *1 Know Now (Remick) My Cabin of Dreams (Berlin) '"First Time I Saw You (Sfintly-Joy) So Rare (Bobbins) ■"^lave You Any Castles, Baby? (Harms) ■"That Old Feeling (Feist) Sailboat in Moonlight (Crawford) Stardust on the Moon (.Marks) It Looks Like Rain (Morris) tWhere or When (Chnppell) Gone With the Wind (Berlin) '"Can 1 Forget You (Ch.ippell) '"Afraid to Dream (Miller) '"Yours and Mine (Robbins) . Me, Myself and I (Words & Music) ■"Stop, You're Breaking My Heart (Famous) Remember Me (WltmarU) . Moon Got In My Eyes (Select) You're My Desire (Mills) Harbor Lights (Mario) Caravan (Exclusive) Satan Takes a Holiday (Lincoln) '"Penthouse on Third Ave. (ITelst) Miller's Daughter Marianne (.Shnplro) .* Indicates filmusical song. t Production Number. Robbins, Diamond Exchange Words On Stair Raids Jack Robbins and Lou DiamoncI, latter heacJing Famous Music, ex- changed some brisk language this past week over alleged raiding by the Paramount Pictures' music sub- sid of the Robbins-Metro's man- power. Famous (Par) took Elmore White from Robbins to become gen- eral professional hea4 of Popular Melodies, Inc., a Famous Music subsid, in an effort to build it up, just as Robbins-Metro has acquireil its assortment of affiliated music publishers. Famous took away Sid Goldstein from Miller Music's Chi office, the Miller firm being a Robbins subsid. Famous also allegedly was after Abe Glazer, of Miller, and Sam Taylor, of Robbins, but latter didn't switch. Bullock, Spina Scoring W for Fred Allen Hollywood, Aug. 24. Score of 'Sally, Irene and Mary' is being written for 20th-Fox by Walter Bullock and Harold Spina. Gene Markey produces with Fred Allen cast in a featured comedy role. Pubs Abandon Standard Writers Contract on Eve of SPA s Mass Meeting; Plenty Pro-Con Charges Bernstein Back With 2 Italian Pic Tunes Louis Bernstein, of Shapiro, Bern- stein & Co., has brought back from Europe a couple Italian p6p tunes which he obtained from C. A. Bixio, Milan publisher. Theiy are 'Torna Piccina,' a tango, and 'Vivere,' a if ox- trot, which is part of the score of the Metro-Italian production of the same name. Lyrics of the two songs have been passed out locally for adaptation. Irving Caesar, Songwriters Pro- tective Assn. prez, told a member- ship meeting at the Astor hotel yes- terday (Tues.) that the organiza- tion's council has decided to take its issues with the publishers to court. SPA, he said, is determined to have adjudicated for all time the question of whether the synchronization and transcription belong to the writers or the publishers. Caesar described the latest agree- ment offered hy the publishers as containing two jokers. One would have the contract extend two years beyond the present expiration date (1940) of all membership agreements with the American Society of Com- posers, Authors and Publishers, while the other seeks to have the SPA waive the rights that its mem- bers give it under Article 9 of the SPA'S by-Iaios. Writers, he stated, are no longer taking any chances on some pub- lisher group withdrawing from the Society, as happened last year in the case of Warner Bros:, and it is through the courts that the SPA hopes to establish for the writer o, definite property right in the per- forming and mechanical rights to his works; also who is the actual copy- right proprietor, the writer or the publisher, even if the latter under- ta^kes its registration' with the gov- ernment's copyright office. Publishers anticipated the general membership meeting which the Songwriters' Protective Association called for late yesterday (Tuesday) at; the Astor Hotel, New York, by abandoning the standard uniform writers contract which has been in fleet since 1932. M'^ve was made on the ground ^hat the SPA itself had violated this agreement by not re- voking its demai d that the associa- tion be invested with authority to. administer the synchronization and transcription rights of works placed by SPA writers. The demand was later incorporated into the SPA's bylaws as article No. 9. What aggravated the crisis be- tween the SPA ^nd publishers was the latters' increases resort to for- eign markets for their material, with the primary idea of getting away from doing business with SPA writ- ers. The pubs at the same time de- cided to stop making any more con- cessions to the SPA after the as- sociation's council rejected a com- promise agrej^ent pertaining to' sync and transcription rights, ^hlch had been worteed out between SPA and publisher lawyers. Under this agreement, the writers were to re- ceive half of what the publishers collected from such rights, but with the Music Publishers Protective Assn. retaining the administration of the rights. . • Pubs Claitn Begnege Publishers contend that when the standard uriiforjni contract was negotiated In 1935, Sigmund Rom- berg, Jerome Kern and others act- ing for the SPA had promised that the association would make no further efforts to obtain control over the sync and transcription rights. By reneging on this assurance, the pubs now say, the SPA has made tho uniform contrac' invalid and if SPA writ< r:: want to placf their new scripts with them It will have to be" •' done on the basis of oral under- standing or the individual publisher's own contract form. Also that the sync and transcription rights must come direct from the writers and that under no citcumstances will the SPA b'B permitted to act as go- between. Pubs assert that the SPA mem- bership is accepting any form of contract which music houses are pf- feririg them, and that the teason they fear coming out in the open on the issue is that the SPA officials, (Continued on page 46) Tops in the Music Business MY CABIN OF DREAMS Gone With The Wind The New FtKO Musical '' The Life of the Party" With This Greiit Score By MAGIDSON and WRUBEL Let's Have Another Cigarette Roses In December The Life Of The Party Yankee Doodle Band So You Won't Sin 1 Chirp A Little Ditty Irving Berlin, ine 799 Seventh Ave., New York HARRY LINK, Gen. Prof. Mgr. A COMING £V£KT OF MAJOR IMFORTANCE An Amerlcun M(inIcuI Itomnncc "VIRGINIA'^ Opening at Radio City's Centre, New York, August 31 Score by ARTHUR SCHWARTZ and ALBERT STILLMAN JUTS TO COME: YOU AND I KNOW AN OLD FLAME NEVER DIES GOODBYE JONAH IF YOU WERE SOMEONE ELSE ROBBINS MUSIC CORPORATrON 799 7th Ave., New York -I TAe Lu.i-ters of ''d^if\N\ BOAT" and 'MERRY-GO-ROUND V/«^<? you another sock Hljf Y0ll^tS5ME'^«t*DRtAAilNO REMICK MUSIC CORP. RCA BLDO ,M Y . CLIFF FRiENDfcOAVEf^ANKLlN/ • CHARLES WARREN VrohMk,^^