Q. about bluenote and royalties

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

benny golson told an intro to the song that said he wife HATED it when pepole would come up to her and say: oh you MUST be betty..................until the royalties started commin in,lol...........

but really, BG wouldnt of got royalities for that song, on that BN album, right? blue note didnt pay royalties, right? or did they on case by case? or like....later in life, has benny been able to get money from the use of that song? hank never got to do that.

[medjuck]

They would have paid composers' fees. Hard for a bog company to et away with not doing so. It's mandated by law.

[umum_cypher]

but really, BG wouldnt of got royalities for that song, on that BN album, right? blue note didnt pay royalties, right? or did they on case by case? or like....later in life, has benny been able to get money from the use of that song? hank never got to do that.

Yes, he would. Much BN work is registered to one or other of BN's own publishing companies. The percentage split of the publishing royalty (between BN and the composer) was negotiated on a case by case basis, as I understand it. Musicians with enough clout to insist that their work was published by their own publishing companies were not under the obligation to negotiate, of course. But that obviously disadvantaged the labels, which is why composers were compelled to pool their work with the label's company if they wanted to record a tune. Variations of this are still standard practice. There are complexities that others will be better placed to explain.

On top of publishing royalty the musicians would receive a royalty for copies sold. But thereby hangs another tale.

There are some books about this Chewy, including on various Blue Note artists ...

[Kevin Bresnahan]

There was an interview with Benny a few years back and it stated that Benny has been able to live pretty well off of the royalties of his compositions. I forget where it was but I was happy to read that. It was a far cry from what others told me about getting paid for recording for Blue Note.

[fasstrack]

but really, BG wouldnt of got royalities for that song, on that BN album, right? blue note didnt pay royalties, right? or did they on case by case? or like....later in life, has benny been able to get money from the use of that song? hank never got to do that.

Yes, he would. Much BN work is registered to one or other of BN's own publishing companies. The percentage split of the publishing royalty (between BN and the composer) was negotiated on a case by case basis, as I understand it. Musicians with enough clout to insist that their work was published by their own publishing companies were not under the obligation to negotiate, of course. But that obviously disadvantaged the labels, which is why composers were compelled to pool their work with the label's company if they wanted to record a tune. Variations of this are still standard practice. There are complexities that others will be better placed to explain.

On top of publishing royalty the musicians would receive a royalty for copies sold. But thereby hangs another tale.

There are some books about this Chewy, including on various Blue Note artists ...

No wonder he went to Hollywood. Even the greats get robbed.

Jazz and money are like cats and dogs.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

[Noj]

Sad. Can anyone make an educated guess as to who that is?

[jeffcrom]

Sad. Can anyone make an educated guess as to who that is?

Word is that it's Lester Chambers of the Chambers Brothers.

[Noj]

Damn. I bought The Time Has Come just recently. Cool album.

[medjuck]

but really, BG wouldnt of got royalities for that song, on that BN album, right? blue note didnt pay royalties, right? or did they on case by case? or like....later in life, has benny been able to get money from the use of that song? hank never got to do that.

Yes, he would. Much BN work is registered to one or other of BN's own publishing companies. The percentage split of the publishing royalty (between BN and the composer) was negotiated on a case by case basis, as I understand it. Musicians with enough clout to insist that their work was published by their own publishing companies were not under the obligation to negotiate, of course. But that obviously disadvantaged the labels, which is why composers were compelled to pool their work with the label's company if they wanted to record a tune. Variations of this are still standard practice. There are complexities that others will be better placed to explain.

On top of publishing royalty the musicians would receive a royalty for copies sold. But thereby hangs another tale.

There are some books about this Chewy, including on various Blue Note artists ...

I believe that the publisher gets half the income from broadcast rights but the composer always gets half and can't negotiate that away. (I may be wrong about this but I think it's what I've been told.)

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Blue Note was a pretty profitable business. In David H Rosenthal's book, 'Hard bop' (OUP 1992), he puts some numbers to this. Average FIRST YEAR sales of hard bop LPs like those by Jackie McLean and Hank Mobley were about 7,500. Breakeven point for individual albums was about 2,500 sales.

When Frank Woolf came to Europe to produce Hank's album 'The flip', he did an interview on the BBC's Sunday late night jazz programme which was pre-announced, so I listened to it. Woolf talked about royalties. My understanding was that he was talking about performer royalties, not composer/publisher royalties or mechanicals (which in any case the radio/TV industry pays, not the record companies).

He said that Blue Note paid cash - more cash than the leaders would have got from the standard union contracts - but not royalties. When some BN artists began to have hit records - Donald Byrd, Jimmy Smith and Lou Donaldson were the early ones, they came to him wanting to see their royalties. Woolf said, "we told them to fuck off, they were paid cash." Hardly a coincidence that Byrd, Smith and Donaldson soon went to other labels.

Woolf then went on to say that when Horace Silver and Lee Morgan had hits, the same thing happened, but this time Lion and Woolf agreed to pay royalties and sold BN to Liberty.

In effect, by paying more upfront cash than the other labels, BN was taking advantage of the fact that most of their musicians were junkies and more interested in where the money for the next cop was coming from than in the long term.

MG

[Dan Gould]

Interesting but this doesn't jibe with the fact that on the BNBB we learned how a "sizable" check was hand-delivered to Jutta Hipp, iirc. Did they really convince EMI to pay royalties for which there was no contractual obligation?

[Chuck Nessa]

My understanding was that he was talking about performer royalties, not composer/publisher royalties or mechanicals (which in any case the radio/TV industry pays, not the record companies).

MG

Record companies do pay the mechanicals.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Interesting but this doesn't jibe with the fact that on the BNBB we learned how a "sizable" check was hand-delivered to Jutta Hipp, iirc. Did they really convince EMI to pay royalties for which there was no contractual obligation?

The way it came over was that this was the POINT of selling to Liberty; it wasn't just Horace and Lee.

MG

[Chuck Nessa]

The label was sold to Liberty because Alfred was having health (heart) problems and needed to retire.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Why would Woolf have said what he did, then? Was there some other agenda going on?

MG

[RDK]

Not strictly Blue Note, and somewhat hearsay, but years back Buddy DeFranco had (and perhaps still does) a website and message board. Someone once asked him about royalties from the Mosaic box, and at the time Buddy claimed that he never saw a penny from it.

[Chuck Nessa]

Not strictly Blue Note, and somewhat hearsay, but years back Buddy DeFranco had (and perhaps still does) a website and message board. Someone once asked him about royalties from the Mosaic box, and at the time Buddy claimed that he never saw a penny from it.

If he had a royalty deal (not likely) with Verve, Universal would be on the hook for the royalties, not Mosaic.

[RDK]

Not strictly Blue Note, and somewhat hearsay, but years back Buddy DeFranco had (and perhaps still does) a website and message board. Someone once asked him about royalties from the Mosaic box, and at the time Buddy claimed that he never saw a penny from it.

If he had a royalty deal (not likely) with Verve, Universal would be on the hook for the royalties, not Mosaic.

I didn't mean to imply that it was Mosaic's fault, but i think most would have expected him to be paid royalties from whomever was obligated to pay him, in this case Verve. If it really is that rare to be paid royalties (or at least not uncommon not to be paid them), then doesn't that undercut much of our argument against the Euro-labels (and others) that are "taking advantage" of PD laws? Not meaning to downplay the involvement (and investment) of producers such as yourself, Chuck, but often the biggest argument against the "import" labels (or even web blogs) is that the artists aren't getting their fair share.

[Chuck Nessa]

Let me modify/clarify my statement. If he didn't receive royalties there are 4 possibilities - 1) No royalty deal, 2) No royalties due, 3) Universal is willfully screwing him, Universal did not have a current address for him.

The "artists fair share" is only a portion of the argument.

[Noj]

Doesn't all this boil down to the fine print of contracts designed to favor the investor? It's a dishonest business, and it sucks for the artists, but the artists signed the contract...so they're screwed.

Edited March 7, 2012 by Noj

[JSngry]

Regarding Donald Byrd, it was he who advised Herbie Hancock on the wisdom of keeping your own publishing. Herbie apparently had the leverage with Blue Note to do so, and with the hits he had on that tunes that came out on that label, how much (more) money was that in his pocket as a result of doing so? More than chump change, I'm sure.

For that matter, a quick perusal shows that at some time Donald Byrd himself set up his own publishing company, and Blue Note kept releasing his records. So whatever he might have lost by not having a royalty deal on sales, he picked at least some of it back up from his publishing royalties.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

where is the fantastic interview i read online by i THINK lion but im not sure where they talk all about why bn was sold to liberty. it was like because he was saying, the distributor would request an order, then not pay bluenote for the albums. and the distrb. people would beg for more and more sidewinders. so they tried but then when the records werent hits bn didnt get paid. so they were saying like each time the had a hit it hurt the label. they were sayinbg like how song for my father killed blue note

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Sure, there were cashflow problems, arising as you say. But when BN had a hit, the distributor would have had to pay for all the others, to get the next hit. And BN ALWAYS had a next hit; there's a regular trail of them al lthe way from 'Midnight Special' to the Liberty days, including 'Search for the new land' would you believe?

1962 MIDNIGHT SPECIAL

1963 BACK AT THE CHICKEN SHACK

1963 THE NATURAL SOUL

1963 ROCKIN' THE BOAT

1964 A NEW PERSPECTIVE

1964 PRAYER MEETIN'

1964 SIDEWINDER

1965 SONG FOR MY FATHER

1966 CAPE VERDEAN BLUES

1966 SEARCH FOR THE NEW LAND

Then there was Liberty.

MG

[robertoart]

I find that hard to believe.