Variety (March 1959)

Wed&eeday, March 4,1959 PfifsiETr MUSIC 45 DISK CRITICS VS. B.O. (POPS) *> Ph<my Disks & Copyright Act Talks at Impasse, Radio Panel Asks Revelations at the Senate rackets committee probe of wide¬ spread counterfeiting of hit platters by midwest gangster elements (see separate story) has pointed up the lack of Copyright Act pro¬ tection for disks. While the 1909 Act provides for general dam¬ ages and criminal proceedings for willful counterfeiting of sheet music, there is no similar provision for mechanical reproducton. At the present time, disks are not regarded as copyrightable pub¬ lications. The music publishers have been battling for a long time for a rewrite of the Copyright Act to remove the exemption of juke¬ boxes from performance licensing and for more protection for platters. Julian T. Abeles, .general counsel for the Music Publish¬ ers Protective Assn., is now drafting proposed changes for sub¬ mission-to Congress. While the move to license jukeboxes is a source of controversy between publishers, who favor it, and disk companies, who oppose it, the campaign to put disks under the protection oLthe Copyright Act via criminal proceedings is expected to get universal support from the diskers, artists, retailers, etc., all of whom are hurt by phony records. At the present time, counterfeit disks can be combatted only in the state courts under civil proceedings, except in a very few states which provide criminal penalties. Under a Federal statute, sheet music infringements. are quickly punished with $250 fines per offense, if the infringement is done “innocently.” An addition¬ al factor is the comparative speed with which the Federal courts . work in such cases. Masters and Material as Servants Of RCA to Strengthen Pop Market In a bid for a stronger hold, on the pop market, RCA Victor’s art¬ ists & repertoire department is opening its door wider to, allow in all comers with material and mas¬ ters. According to Steve Sholes, head of Victor’s a&r setup, the company wants new voices and new songs and to get them we’re open to all new ideas. “Any man¬ ager, 1 ’ he added, “with an exciting but still untried artist will find our door open. And any publisher with fresh material wil find a hearing for it.” Of especial interest to the trade in Victor’s new pitch is diskery’s bid to acquire masters. Although Sholes admits that Victor has had a few flings at master-purchases, it’s not been generally known that the company was available for such deals. The policy of buying mas¬ ters wil continue full-scale from now on. _ As part of the pop buildup, both albums and singles will reeeive more intensive individual support. In a make every disk count, Sholes has been streamlining Vic¬ tor’s release schedule. First step in that direction has been to put the pop albums on a weekly, rather than the conventional monthly, Telease basis, so that each one will get maximum attention. Another effort in the pop drive will be a series of country-wide trips by a&r staffers to acquaint themselves with the problems on the road and to meet with the dis¬ tributors, deejays and dealers, and to prowl for new talent. Sholes spearheaded “operation road’* by taking off late last week for Los Angeles where he will attend the opening of Victor’s new Hollywood studios. He'll then go on to San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Chicago. Sholes also pointed’ out that Vic- (Continued on page 50) 50$ RCA Wax to Be Produced On Coast In 2 Yrs.; Bow Site Hollywood, March 3, RCA Victor will produce 50% of its recording product in Hollywood within two years, a 42% increase over present Coastal output, it waA disclosed yesterday (Mon.)* at open- ing of new $1,000,000 Music Center r here. Diskery also will make two new recording studios available on a rental basis to indie labels and packagers. Company likewise is accelerating its stereo program, prepping sales and merchandising campaigns to follow the stereo pattern. It will go all out in production of stereo disks, according to W. W. Bullock, v.p. in from N. Y., but has delayed expansion program on stereo tape- cartridges until figured to* have better chance commercially. . Les Brown’s Date With Air Acad’s First Grads Chicago, March 3. „ Les Brown orch has been given the plum of playing the new Air Force Academy’s first graduation ball June 2. President Eisen¬ hower tentatively has accepted an invite to the affair. Deal was handled by Associated Booking. C-Day (Creditors) At Sam Goody’s On FrL (6); 0.0, Prices A final decision on the future of Sam Goody’s New York disk-phono retail operation is due to be made Friday (6) when over 200 creditors, representing both big find small companies, will meet to ratify pro¬ posals of the * 13-man creditors’ steering committee. Goody, who has had difficulty meeting his hills recently is voluntarily cooperating with the creditors in order to stave off any court action to collect the $2,400,000 outstanding debt. The creditors’ steering commit¬ tee has okayed future purchases by Goody, but it has not yet . arrived at a proportion of purchases to sales. Another problem facing creditors is Goody’s price-cutting operation. While it’s expected that Goody will still be permitted to sell at a discount, the creditors are split on how far Goody can be per¬ mitted to slice prices. Since the creditors’ committee began functioning two weeks ago, Goody has voluntarily cut back his payroll by $25,000 monthly. Some 35 employees have been laid off and the situation is uncertain with regard to additional dismissals. A spokesman for Goody said, how¬ ever, that the situation is “hope¬ ful’* as to getting the store back on its own feet, since assets are at least as much as the liabilities, even though the cash reserves to pay off the debts are not on hand. Among Gbody’s current major problems is the fundamental of meeting the competition. In actuality, the average manufac¬ turer wouldn’t care if the retailer gave the merchandise away so long as the record company got its full wholesale price. However, good buiness dictates that no $3.98 LP should be sold under $2.98. Goody’s -sold many at $2.50. (Liberty Mu¬ sic Shops, for example, In a .pioneering store-wide sale. Is sell¬ ing many albums at $2.47, anob- . (Continued on page 48) The disk biz may be grabbing a gratifying amount of newspaper and mag space for reviews, but the critical accent: has been on the wrong syllable, according to* many industry * execs. At the present time, the longhair LPs amount to 10% of the total packaged market, but this category of disks captures around 90% of the review space. Milt Gabler, Decca artists & rep¬ ertoire chief, pointed out that the great majority of dailies and the mags are passing over the disk in¬ terest of the average consumer for the more esoteric stuff in the classi¬ cal, folk, spoken word, children and jazz field. A balance of re¬ views weighted more in the direc¬ tion of pop albums would be an important service not only to the industry, Gabler said, but to the reader as well. Gabler pointed out that some reviewers, like Ralph ! Gleason, in the San Francisco Chronicle, do give adequate, at¬ tention to the pops. The brushoff to the pop product is mystifying since the sales figures reveal that the newspaper reader cannot be persauded to buy classi¬ cal albums despite the newsprint barrage. A typical pop album, of the mood music variety, regularly outsells the classical standards. It takes an exceptional case like Van Clibum’s bestselling Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto recording for Vic¬ tor to point up the rule. Although the disk companies spend an estimated $25,000,000 a year on consumer ads, there has been no move on the part of the industry to get the dailies and mags to shift their critical stance more in the direction of pops. Some pri¬ vate conversations have gone on to accomplish this on various im¬ portant papers, but with no results to date. One disk exec stated that the disk was the only entertainment or communications medium to get this sort of treatment. A comparable situation would be if the news¬ paper book reviews would only focus on poetry and ignore the bestselling novels, or if the film reviewers only covered the “art” pictures and forgot about the box- office favorites. Mantovani $14,600 New High for Culture (In Troy) at U.S. Kickoff Troy, N.Y., March 3. Mantovani & His Orchestra es¬ tablished a new “cultural high*’ Sunday afternoon, (1) at the R.P.L Field House, where they attracted 6,348 paid admissions and grossed $14,600, at $1.50 to $4. Because the performance was “cultural,’* In the college arena, there was no tax on tickets. The take not only surpassed last March’s figure of $10,377 for Man¬ tovani but cracked a record es¬ tablished by the Boston Symphony Orchestra some seven years ago. Managing director H. L. (Jack) Garren reported that tickets for this year’s engagement started moving as early as November; that he had $13,000 in the house before the concert started. Bleachers in the rear supplemented floor and side seats. Audience reaction, on a perfect-weather day, was highly enthusiastic. The Troy date was the second on a 62-stop tour which will take Mantovani as far west as California I and into Canada. After a concert in Winnipeg, the 45-piece orch (four of whom are “key” English Instrumentalists and the others Americans recruited for the trans¬ continental swing), the group will ! fly to Montreal for a final date on May 3. The field House has rebooked Mantovani for September, 1960. George Erllck, Me r’ "s man¬ ager ahd agent, rep v.Ilout (some 3,000) In a t. ..j: date at Milford, Coiul, Saturday (28). Court to Fix 'Reasonable ASCAP Fee Bob Raising Hob at Coral In Corralling ’Em to Dot Coral Records artists are appar¬ ently playing follow the leader with Bob Thiele, former artists & repertoire boss at .Coral. Thiele, who’s now veepee-a&r chief at Dot, has been luring a flock of diskers away from Coral into the Dot stable. Latest to join the parade is Ed¬ die Lawrence, who waxed a comedy album for Thiele last week. Pre¬ ceding Lawrence from Coral-to-Dot have been Don Cornell, Steve Al¬ len, Lawrence Welk and Debbie Reynolds. ASCAP U.S. Melon Stout $23,261,000 Vs.’58 Rise in Nut Hollywood, March ,3. Total income of the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers last year was $28,441,- 000. This was 4% above the 1957 take, according to the report of comptroller George Hoffman to approximately 700 members at the Ambassador Hotel last week* (25). !■ Hoffman’s report disclosed that ; ASCAP’s take was a record high in spite of the increase in expenses. Receipts for license fees in 1958 totalled $28,234,000; interest on U.S. Treasury Notes $119,000; mem¬ bership dues, $87,000, with the org’s total expenditures estimated around 18% of" this amount. Of this, 10% was for salaries and 8% for general expenses. The total 1958 expenses were $5,180,000— $2,860,000 for salaries and compen¬ sation, including legal salaries and retainers; and $2,319,000 for others. The increase in expenses over 1957 is about two-fifths of 1%. The increase in salaries and the cost of analyzing and tabulating per¬ formances caused the slight up¬ swing. The domestic melon distribution for 1958 totalled $23,261,000 but the foreign distribution split will be disclosed at a meeting in May. The foreign melon will include roy¬ alties from England, Canada and Sweden. Jack Yelien, chairman of the exec committee (pinchhitting for absent prexy Paul Cunningham), opened the meeting with the usual prexy and exec committee reports. Main issues involved were the probe regarding racketeers in the jukebox industry and also the con¬ tinued fight to make jukeboxes pay off royalties. A U.S. Senate com¬ mittee is currently investigating the gangster tactics that have been associated with the jukebox indus¬ try. ASCAP’s fight with BMI was also discussed. A highlight of the evening was the special presentation made to L. Wolfe Gilbert by producer Ar¬ thur Freed who was repping a group of Coast members acknowl¬ edging Gilbert’s service to the or¬ ganization. Ned Washington co¬ chaired the gathering with Gilbert GIs Hear Chant of Jangle To Get in Fighting Trim Honolulu, Feb. 24. Sounds like a pressagenfs dream, but Army spokesmen at sprawling Schofield Barracks swear it’s true. They’re using Arthur Lyman’s “Exotica” and “Magic Island” albums to get troops into the mood for jungle training. Lt. Richard Hobbs says the sound effects include almost every noise a man could expect to hear in a tropical jungle. The recordings arc piped over public address systems as soldiers file into the rugged training area. + The first move by a music user to have the courts fix the licensing rate of the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers was made last week by the All- Industry Radio Music Committee in a petition filed in New York Federal Court. The radio commit¬ tee, representing 685 outlets across the country requested that the court fix “reasonable fees” to ASCAP since direct talks had broken down. The industry com¬ mittee and ASCAP failed to reach an agreement last November and December when negotiations were suspended. Under the 1950 ASCAP consent decree, the N. Y. Federal Court re¬ tains jurisdiction in disputes over licensing rates. ASCAP’s custom¬ ers have the right to ask the court 'to determine a fair fee if they are not satisfied with ASCAP’s pro¬ posals. During the negotiations, ASCAP asked for a one-year extension of the current blanket licensing rate of 2.25% of the gross. The stations, however, insisted on a cutback to 2.05%, the rate which ASCAP now- charges television. ASCAP reject¬ ed this demand on the grounds that radio is virtually an exclusive mu- sic-and-news operation, while tv is an all-around entertainment me¬ dium. At the present time, ASCAP has pacts with about 1.5C0 radio sta¬ tions, including some 500 network affiliated stations. This fact, cf course, precludes any blackout of ASCAP music on the airlanes sim¬ ilar to that which occurred in 1940. The ASCAP-radio pact, which ex¬ pired at the end of 1958, was ne¬ gotiated in that period. Emanuel Dannelt, of McGold- rick, Danr.ett, Horowitz & Golub, is legal rep for the radio industry committee. Herman Finkelstain is general counsel of ASCAP. | Court Rules for Ricky In $31,964 Songs Award; Verve 22G From MCA, Imp Los Angeles, March 3. Ricky Nelson’s settlement of $31,964, awarded last Dec. 1 from Verve Records as royalties assert- edly due from three recordings, gained Superior Court approval last week when Judge Kenneth N. Chantry ruled in his favor. Young singer, son of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, originally had sued over songs, “I’m Walkin,’” “Teenage Romance” and “You’re My One and Only Love.” He claimed a contract calling for 4 yz c /o royalties but had been paid only $150. He asked $28,035, plus $15,300 in damages for al¬ leged faulty distribution of wax- ings. Verve in turn filed countersuit against MCA Artists and Imperial Records, for $2,217,210, charging Imperial had induced Nelson to break his pact with Verve* In sub¬ sequent Dec. 1, 1958; settlement of all actions, Nelson was awarded $31,964 and Verve $22,000 from MCA and Imperial. MCMALLUTUFIN 12THANNI AS DISKERY With 12 candles going on its birthday cake this month, MGM Records is planning to celebrate with special promotions and ex¬ ploitation programs. All disks shipped from the fac¬ tory will have an imprint in red os ;the label reading, “MGM Records 112th Anniversary Celebration.” A3 'albums will have a special wrap¬ around calling attention to the milestone. Supplements, stream¬ ers, advertising copy and promo¬ tional material will tell the same birthday s-ry. Anni program will continue tin: ugh May and include .incentive <--n plans for distribu¬ tors and their salesman.