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Song
Originally, the setting for this song was the old home- town. A typical country song with
the universal theme of lost love and heartbreak. Only this song has a special meaning
which came about when I changed the one line from “my home town” to “Dallas town” to
make it more commercial. To put this hidden meaning across, my song really needed to
be recorded by a female artist. When I couldn’t find a female artist who I thought could
do justice to my song I thought of Marty Robbins who was riding high at that time.
.
I had been working with a local singer/musician named Carl Beck who idolized Marty
Robbins and who could sing just like Marty. I could get Carl to do a neat little demo with
his great voice and guitar. We could send the song to Marty and it could be his next hit
record. I had also just written “The Epitaph” and it too could be a great song for Marty to
fit in with his gunfighter ballads.
Carl and his band had one of those 15 minute slots on the local radio station playing live
music on Saturday afternoon. In fact, that is how I first met Carl. I heard him singing on
the radio, found out what Bar he was playing at and went to see him at his gig. I told him I
was a songwriter , that I had some connections with a local recording studio and would he
be interested in cutting a record with some of my songs.
I took Carl and his band into the local studio where we cut our first 45 with my novelty
song “Go Home And Cry On Your Pillow” on the “A” side and a slow love ballad “A
Song To Remember”on the flip side.
Well, Carl and his band had been playing in the Dives and Clubs around Denver for
several years and like most other musicians his career was going nowhere, so what did he
have to lose? Our record got played on a few of the local stations and gave us all some
good kicks but never made it out of town.
Maybe together, Carl and I could team up again and get “Changing of the Seasons” and
“The Epitaph” to Marty and get our foot in the door down in Nashville. Then soon after
Carl made a demo of the songs on a little reel to reel home tape recorder he got wind of
an advertising & promotion scheme being cooked up to the north of Denver by the
Cheyenne Frontier Days committee to drive a horse drawn Stagecoach from Cheyenne,
Wyo. all the way to New York City to promote their annual rodeo event. The tour would
start out in April or May from Cheyenne and be scheduled to reach New York by July
4th. just a few weeks before their event.
Carl got a group of four or five hardy musicians together and then cut a deal with the
Frontier Committee to drive the Stagecoach. The Committee would foot the bill for the
horses , stagecoach ,supplies and promotion for the trip while the band would book
themselves at various clubs along the way to help defray the costs of their motel and living
expenses. Carl’s booking agent drove a station wagon car with some of their gear and
supplies and went ahead of them to book the band at various clubs along the way. His job
was also to keep them in supplies for themselves and their animals. At first, being excited
about their trip, and their future prospects the guys even camped out overnight a few times
singing songs around the old campfire with their fiddle and guitars. As the word spread
about this unusual caravan heading east across the prairies promoting the Cheyenne
Frontier Days Rodeo , people started meeting them out on the road as they came near
their town. This was becoming all they had hoped for and everyone was having fun on the
trip until they had to endure a few wind & rain storms.
Carl’s hopes were; that by the time the Stagecoach got as far as Nashville, the publicity
they created along the way promoting Cheyenne Frontier Days would get them live radio
appearances and all kinds of free publicity for himself and his band. He was also singing
and promoting some of my songs at his gigs along the way and was hoping to get the
attention of some Nashville record producer. My hopes were also riding along with him.
Everything was going as planned until they got to Missouri. Then disaster struck! Their
booking agent met a girl and together they then ran off with the group’s money and supply
wagon. I would have written a song about that but there were already hundreds of
country songs with that theme. This unexpected contingency proved a disaster for their
whole plan. In the confusion that followed, the Frontier Committee withdrew their
support. Being stranded on the road and unable to secure further financial backing to
continue, the tour was cancelled. With broken hearts in hand along with dashed hopes
and dreams of making it in the music business, the musicians straggled back to Denver to
jobs and family to recover from their ordeal. Carl went back to work at his day job of
managing a Transmission Repair Shop and decided to take a hiatus from the music
business for a while.
My songs never made it into the local studio this time because we had learned from our
previous recording experience that it took a combination of national distribution, sales,
radio play and gobs of promotion money to break a record into radio and get it going up
the charts. So, I made a deal with Carl to give him 10% of any royalties I made on the
songs, in exchange for the couple of demo’s he had made, and started sending them out
to publishers and other people in the music industry. I even pitched them to some of the
national recording artists when they came to Denver to perform in the local nightclub. One
time I strummed my guitar and auditioned my songs to the Glazer Bros. Country Group in
their motel room. These boys had been the back up singers for Marty Robbins and now
they were out on their own. Yes, There I was all duded up doing my best Marty Robbins
imitation and there they were lounging around the room in their undies. Too bad videos
weren’t around yet! I could have gotten big bucks for a couple shots of that scene. Some
years later I read where these same brothers started a publishing company and gave
songwriter John Hartford of “Gentle On My Mind” fame his first big break by publishing
his song and then getting it recorded by Glen Campbell. Too bad they didn’t see the
potential in my song “Changing of the Seasons”. But then again, I didn’t have Marty
Robbins great singing voice either. I’ve always wondered how John Hartford auditioned
his song to these guys. At other times, I phoned and got an appointment to take a tape
recorder to an artists motel room to audition my songs. Of the mailings, 99% of the stuff I
mailed would come back rejected and/or not even having been listened to as most
songwriters will testify.
Disheartened with my efforts to access the right people in the music industry and unable to
afford a trip to Nashville to pitch my songs. ( I already had a wife and three kids to
support and there were no such thing as credit cards in the mid 60’s) I needed to change
my strategy. So I started buying weekly Billboard Magazines and read the articles. Some
would mention record producers who had hooked up with certain artists etc. One such
article mentioned a manager/producer by the name of Don Grashy who was working with
a former child recording artist who had taken leave from the music business for a few
years and was now set to give it another shot as an adult in Country Music. . Her stage
name was Myrna Lorrie ( taken from the movie actress Myrna Loy ). The address given
for the producer was in Hollywood, Calif. Whoa!,___ With my mailings I had learned
from experience that most of the people in Hollywood seemed to be a bunch of shysters
who just wanted your money for one scam or another so I was reluctant to even send a
letter to this guy. But I did send him a letter and a demo of some of my songs. Then,
Wham-o!__ I got a quick reply that he was interested in “Changing of the Seasons” and a
few other songs for this artist. It turned out that this feller Don Grashy was a Canadian
publisher /producer from Thunder Bay Ontario. Also, his artist Myrna Lorrie was already
becoming one of the top female country music artists in Canada with several records to
her credit. Now, Don was getting ready to sign her with an American label and take a
shot at the U.S. market. Boy! I was so excited to hear this that I signed a writers
agreement with his publishing company. Still a little skeptical about what this Canadian
Dude was doin’ in Hollywood, I wrote a one-year provisional clause in our agreement that
if a record wasn’t made and released on a label with national distribution all rights would
revert back to me. After a year my song still wasn’t recorded but Don promised me he
had big plans for my songs so I verbally extended my provisional clause with him. (it took
a year and a half for him to record my song after I signed my writers agreement) . I found
out that the name of the American label he was dickering with was Musicor Records,
which was controlled by Pappy Daily, who had George Jones and Gene Pitney as his
biggest artists. Old Pappy Daily had the reputation of being a pretty big player in country
music at that time. He also had his own publishing company called Glad Music. Things
were sure beginning to look good for my song. It finally got recorded and was set for
release in the Spring of 1968.
Wow! My song “Changing of the Seasons” on the “A” side was going to be the catalyst
to launch Myrna Lorrie’s career in the U.S. market. Aside from being a fine ballad there
was a hidden meaning in this song which has everything to do with a certain tragic event
that occurred in Dallas in the early 60’s. Listen closely to this song and see if you can
guess that event? The “B” side was a cute up-tempo novelty song written by Don and
Myrna called “Bashful Billy”. How could we miss?
I built a special radio from a mail order kit from Radio Shack so that my wife and I could
monitor some of the big radio stations around the country and hopefully in Canada as
well. Luckily we were able to pull in a radio station out of Calgary and one night my wife
and I heard my song playing on the station. I called my publisher to ask why he hadn’t
sent me a copy of the record and notified me of the release. He told me that the Canadian
label Myrna was on had made a mistake and released the record prematurely. (found out
later it was his own small label that had done this)
Contract negotiations were still on-going with Musicor who had not yet signed Myrna to
their label. Musicor made them withdraw the release of the Canadian record and then the
contract negotiations continued. Finally, on April 14, 1968 Musicor released the record
to the country stations in the U.S. and Don had also gotten it on the Columbia Ltd. Label
in Canada. Boy! Were my wife and I excited that we had finally made it happen. We
heard my song “Changing of the Seasons” playing on 50,000 Watt WHO out of
DesMoines, Iowa and even on our local country station KLAK in Lakewood, Colorado.
We bought a bunch of postcards and started sending them out to DJ’s all over the country
to help promote my song. My publisher sent me a box of a couple dozen records and I
started visiting radio stations around my area in the evenings.
The record got great reviews in all three leading trades; Billboard, Cashbox and Record
World.
The Cashbox review stated “Myrna Lorrie has been trying for a while and this should be
the song to get her into the National Spotlight. Blueser gets a pretty job from the lark”.
Record World said “Girl keeps turning out winning country cuts. This weeper couldn’t
sound sweeter or more wistful”. Another song of interest released at the same time as my
song was “Pick Me Up On Your Way Down” by Patsy Cline. It would be two more
years before the release of “Help Me Make It Through The Night” by Sammi Smith.
It didn’t take long to hand out all my copies of the record to DJ’s and friends so I called
the local Record Distributor to get some more copies. The Distributor told me he hadn’t
yet received any copies of this record and that he was sorry but he had never heard of it.
Well, Confident that the records would be arriving soon and my being tied up at my day
job earning a living, I didn’t even call my publisher to ask what was going on. I just kept
calling the distributor every week looking for the record. After several weeks of this I
finally called Don Grashy and he had disconnected his phone in Hollywood. Having now
lost track of him and not having any contact information for him in Canada, I turned to
Myrna’s fan club president for information. She told me that Myrna had a personal
manager by a different name and gave me his mailing address. What I found out from him
was devastating to me. He told me that the negotiations with Musicor had fallen through
because Myrna refused to accept their offer. What ever they did offer must have been a
joke because Myrna told them she had things going well enough in Canada now and didn’t
need the U.S. market anyway. Well, needless to say, Musicor killed the record right then
and there and they never even made it for sale or put it into distribution. Naturally, just
like a real country song , I got my heart broke. Meanwhile, up in Canada my song was
climbing the charts and by fall it finally made #l in the RPM survey up there. I still had
hopes that maybe some other artist would pick up my song and release it on an American
label. But, that didn’t happen. Sure, I mailed out more demos of the song to Nashville but
was unable to open any doors down there. This is when I finally got it all figured out.
With all the hungry songwriters and entertainers right there in Nashville knocking on their
doors they really didn’t need to bother with an unknown songwriter from Denver,
Colorado.
As a BMI writer I made a grand total of a little over $600.00 on the performing rights
which were mostly radio play in Canada. True to my promise, I gave Carl his 10% which
amounted to about two weeks worth of groceries at the time. But since they only pay
royalties quarterly the tiny checks I sent him were like chicken feed. A few years later
“Changing of the Seasons” was put on Myrna Lorrie’s greatest hits album and that was
the last I heard of her. I often wonder how both our lives might have been changed if she
had signed that contract with Musicor Records. I never did get any royalties from record
sales. When I confronted my publisher about this he blew it off as a “didn’t cover
expenses sort of thing” and sent me a check for $14.95
Heartbroken, but not totally defeated I turned my full attention to my work. I landed a job
as a Manufacturer’s Rep for a National Commercial Food Service Equipment company.
But I kept writing songs as a hobby. My friend and singer, Carl had since moved to
another town and was doing well in the Transmission Repair Business, so I started
cultivating another local entertainer who I felt had all the tools to make it as a recording
artist. I sat down and custom wrote a couple of songs for him and that’s the beginning of
another fine story. Stay tuned.
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