Swamp Pop Song Writers

Writing a column requires interesting situations not encountered every day by your average person. I could write about going fishing but unless a shark bites my arm. it wouldn’t be much of a column. Today I choose my ventures into “song writing” which I hope you enjoy. Here is some background about sang writing history.

In 1915, great songwriters Irvin Berlin, Jerome Kern. John Philip Sousa and others formed the Association of Songwriters, Composers and Producers CAS-CAP) to protect songwriters copyrights on recordings and live performances but excluded Jazz, Blues and Country Music (called Hillbilly then) which were not considered “professional. Every performance of a song in any category had to be compensated. Talking movies, radio, TV and the Internet were added when invented.

In 1940,600 radio stations created a competitor. Broadcast Music Inc. (EMI) to license the excluded music which had become popular with Gene Autry. Ernest Tubb, Louis Armstrong and later Elvis. From the 1940s on, BMI ate ASCAPs lunch, and herein begins the local connection.

I am a “songwriter” as certi-fled by BMI. During my active Bong writing years (1957 to 1935) ] was well compensated from publishers and BMI, but you must remember that there are classes and pay grades. My total income from those years can be made by a modern artist like Taylor Swift in just a few days. Just two of her recent compositions “Blank Space” and “Shake it Off alone made her rich, but she also recorded them, (more $). add her past hits, (still more $ her TV shows, endorsements, and concerts, (plenty more $). and she’s got enough money to buy Chicago, (although I don’t know who would want to). I extravagate, but not much.

Beginning in the 1950’s, in Lafourche and Terrebonne there were about a dozen or SO EMI song writers like yours truly. Vin Bruce. L.J. Foret. Harry A neslmi Ebdon Barrios and maybe a half dozen more certified by B.M.I. (Broadcast Music, Inc.) That organization monitors radio. TV, live bands, Internet like Pandora and ‘iTunes. elevator music. (Muzak) night clubs and airlines and charges them to pay the writer when their songs are played.

Vin and I and other local artists are in the l to 3 cent bracket. Not having written songs in years, my B.M.I, checks have dwindled but they are still playing somewhere in the world since I received a BMI check in November for over $1,000.

In my productive years I wrote over 120 songs, co-wrote another 30 with Vin Bruce. Mac Rebenac (Dr. John), Harry Anselmi, Mickey Gilly, Rod Bernard and others, which were published by over twelve different publishing companies and recorded by 28 different artists, including Asleep at the Wheel. Johnny Paycheck. Frogman Henry. Mac. Rebenac (Dr. John) and of course Vin and I. One of my songs, “Cheat-ing Traces”, was recorded by ten different artists between 1962 and 2013.

I’ve written and had published many regional, multistate and foreign-charted songs (France and Belgium). Close, but no national hit. If I had my vacations could have been in Hawaii, Paris or Cancun instead of Orange Beach, Branson and the Smokey Mountains.

By the 1960s Vin Bruce and I and a few other local BMI writers like L.J. Foret and Eb-don Barrious were invited to a meeting with officials from ASCAP to get us to switch from BMI. The meeting was held at Rebstock’s dance hall in Golden Meadow to make their pitch. We met them hut after discussions with our publishers, we declined. ASCAP believed that signing multitudes of small timers like us would retrieve their losses with the big writers. Right decision? I don’t know but it’s all moot now and I still get BMI royalties even though I haven’t written a song in over 20 years.

I have some funny stories about my sang writing days, but that’s next week. BYE NOW!

Swamp Pop Song Writers