555 - Dick James, muziekuitgever (1920-1986)

 

In de jaren zeventig had je in Amerika drie vakbladen die zich op de muziek business concentreerden. Billboard was het grootste, maar ook Cashbox en Record World waren de moeite waard. Tegen het einde van 1970 begon Record World met een nieuwe rubriek: ‘Dialogue – the viewpoints of the industry’.

   Jann Wenner, uitgever van tijdschrift Rolling Stone, was de eerste die zijn inzicht over het muziekvak ten toon mocht spreiden. Vrijwel week na week, maand na maand, jaar na jaar ging dat door totdat Record World in 1981 ten onder ging tijdens de grote crisis waar de muziek business na 1978 in belandde.

 

Belangrijke mensen met veel verschillende achtergronden kregen de kans om hun zegje te doen, om te vertellen over hun eigen ervaringen en hoe zij aankeken tegen de ontwikkelingen. Wat namen: Mickey Most (eigenaar RAK Records, 10 april 1971), Barry Hansen (professioneel verzamelaar van grammofoonplaten, 17 juni 1972), Brian Wilson van de Beach Boys (28 juli 1973), Bob Thiele over jazz (12 oktober 1974), Marc Paul Simon over het promoten van disco-platen (6 september 1975), Don Cornelius over het succesvolle tv-programma ‘Soul Train’ (1 mei 1976), Stig Anderson (manager van ABBA, 14 mei 1977), Monti Lüftner over het Duitse Bertelsmann concern (6 mei 1978), Quincy Jones over hoe leuk het was om hits te maken (23 augustus 1980).

   Op 24 november 1973 was Dick James (Reginald Vapnick, 1920-1986) aan de beurt. James was van joods-Poolse afkomst. Fred Goodman liet hem zijn verhaal vertellen.

 

  

Wie is Dick James

 

Alvorens Dick zelf het woord te geven, legde Goodman in het kort aan zijn lezers uit met wie hij te maken had. Hij was niet de eerste de beste! “Englishman Dick Jam0es has been one of the most important and successful men on the international music scene. Starting in the business as a singer, he later became a music publisher, manager and owner of independent record labels.

   He has published and represented such writers and artists as Lennon and McCartney, Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, Shawn Phillips and Phillip Goodhand-Tait.

   During his twelve years as a publisher, James has had 27 number one records in the UK and many million sellers worldwide”.

 

Inspiratie van Bing Crosby

 

Goodman vroeg de succesvolle ondernemer hoe hij in het vak terecht gekomen was.

   Het was allemaal begonnen toen hij als jongetje Bing Crosby (1903-1977) in een film zag en hoorde zingen.

   “I went to see a movie which starred a newcomer named Bing Crosby. I came out of that cinema certain that I wanted to be a singer. I sat at the piano in my front room and taught myself how to play.

   While I was playing the piano, I was making an awful noise that I thought was singing. I left school and tried to see how I could get myself into show business. I went to all kinds of auditions and singing contests. Happily I seemed to come in the first three places or occasionally I won. This tended to encourage me and tickle my ego”.

   Als jonge zanger mocht Dick voor de radio optreden. Maar in 1939 was de Tweede Wereldoorlog uitgebroken. De laatste drie jaar van de oorlog maakte hij onderdeel uit van het Britse leger.

 

Zanger

 

Na de oorlog pakte Dick James zijn zangcarrière weer op, eerst bij orkesten, later ging hij solo.

   “When I came out of the Army in 1945, I joined Geraldo’s band which was one of the top bands throughout the war. Also Cyril Stapleton, Stanley Black and Mantovani. I also worked as a free-lance musician going from one radio band to another. I did as many as three broadcasts a day. Then I felt I wanted to give up the band business.

   I went into what was the beginning of the end of vaudeville, what we called variety. Every major city in the U.K. had a couple of theatres”.

 

Dick kreeg bovendien de kans om zijn  stem via de grammofoonplaat te laten horen. Met de singles ‘Robin Hood’ (1956) en ‘Garden of Eden’ (1957) wist hij zich te klasseren in de Britse hitlijsten. Met zijn versie van ‘You can’t be true dear’ verscheen hij anno 1948 in de Amerikaanse top 20.

   In 1973 omschreef Dick James zijn platencarrière als zanger met de volgende woorden: “I was making recordings with Decca and EMI. I made a record with EMI – a little thing called ‘Nature Boy’ and the ‘B’ side was ‘You Can’t Be True Dear’. And they followed each other into the American charts.

   ‘Nature Boy’ was number one, of course. Nat ‘King’ Cole had the really big hit. We had two number ones back to back.

   The other one was a Jerry Wayne song, and followed ‘Nature Boy’ into the number one. So I was on top of this round of hits for RCA for 18 weeks and we sold over 300,000.

   I think that was the first and last hit I ever had in the United States”.

 

 

Eerste samenwerking met George Martin

 

Als vocalist maakte hij kennis met George Martin (1926-2016), die het bij Parlophone Records (onderdeel van EMI) voor het zeggen had. Achteraf was James blij, zei hij, dat zijn carrière als zanger niet zo veel had voorgesteld. “Maybe it’s just as well, because I would have taken my singing career more seriously and never have become a publisher. However, during this period, I did record the ‘Robin Hood Theme’ from the Richard Greene TV show. I had a long term contract with Decca and at the end of that time, I switched back to EMI and met a guy”.

   Die ontmoeting zou bepalend zijn voor zijn loopbaan in de muziekwereld. “We proved mutually important to each other’s careers. The guy happened to be George Martin, and he became my recording manager and I was his first solo artist. We had a reasonable hit with our first record, I think we sold about 100,000”.

 

Werken bij de muziekuitgeverij van Sidney Bron

 

Dick James leek te beseffen dat er voor hem geen eeuwig bestaan als zanger was weggelegd. Altijd maar onderweg zijn, zo zag hij zijn toekomst in elk geval niet. Maar hij wilde wel in het vak blijven.

   Dick James: “I was pushing 32, and I figured I didn’t want to be a bald, fat, middle-aged has-been of a singer. So what else was I going to do?

   I had a wife who I didn’t see very much of. I had a son who was going on six and I’d hardly seen. So I thought there must be another way of making a living. Perhaps it was then that the thrill of singing and performing and going out in front of an audience – that whole stage-struck feeling was fading”.

 

Dick moest een keuze maken, vond hij: impresario (agent) of muziekuitgever?

   “I wanted to stay in the business. I was going to be either an agent or a publisher. I figured I’d be a publisher, because I was always keen on picking songs and felt I had a fair ear for a song. Also, a song can’t answer you back; an artist can. So, I had a very good friend who I’d gone to regularly looking for songs, and he was just breaking up a partnership with someone else. This was Sidney Bron.

 

Als rechterhand van Sidney Bron [Bronstein] wist Dick zich te ontplooien als songplugger – bij artiesten (om die songs te vertolken) en bij de radio (om ze gedraaid te krijgen).

   Naar eigen zeggen had hij dat goed gedaan. “Sidney was looking for a music man. Sidney was an administrator and I was looking for an opportunity. After all, I was a singer who wanted to become a music man – find the songs, plug the songs, make the songs.

   That was in 1953. I was with Sidney eight years. In that time, we had 28 hits, 5 number ones, including things like Frank Sinatra’s ‘Wee Small Hours’, Perry Como’s ‘Idle Gossip’, Rosemary Clooney’s ‘Mangos’.

   In fact, I left Sidney with a top 10 hit of Rick Nelson’s ‘Hello, Mary Lou’”.

 

Eigen muziekuitgeverij

 

In 1961 begon Dick James zijn eigen muziekuitgeverij, Dick James Music. “I took a couple of offices right on Charing Cross Road, an empty file cabinet, a dub cutting machine, a typewriter and a secretary and that was it”.

   Dick nam contact op met George Martin en vroeg hem om repertoire voor zijn uitgeverij. “He used to play me things he’d compose but he was never serious about them. So he wrote two themes, and I chose one of them. It was a little thing called ‘Niagara Theme’”.

   Dick liet zien wat hij kon. Bij Decca schoot hij raak. “I took it over to Dick Rowe at Decca who thought it was a beautiful theme and he agreed with me that it ought to be recorded. He did it with a studio orchestra”.

   Met ‘Niagara Theme’ wist James de Amerikaanse muziekmarkt binnen te dringen. “George Pincus in the U.S.A. published it on the guarantee of a record. He went out and got Roger Williams and several cover records on it”.

   Vanuit Amerika ging het lied de westerse wereld rond. “I published it in Australia and got a few pounds advance, then published it in Europe and gradually got cover records. It never made any particular charts in any country of the world. Yet that song still earned money for me and for George Martin”.

 

Britse muziek

 

Zo ging hij door met zijn uitgeverij. Langzamerhand wist James, de voormalige zanger, een netwerk van contacten op te bouwen in Engeland.

   “I sold a little sheet music, got performances, sold a few records and gradually was building up the company, and people started coming in. All I wanted to do was to try to be a creative publisher.

   I had songs sent to me by American publishers, but I just couldn’t afford the dollar advances. So it meant that I had to publish British material. I always had a great faith in the British product. Even when I couldn’t sell it I had faith in it.

   Uit ‘armoede’ had Dick James derhalve besloten om zich te concentreren op Britse componisten.

 

Dick: “I’d go down fighting, still having faith in it. A few months went by and I was turning things over and beginning to establish a modest music publishing organization. Artists would come in for a little help and I’d help them with advice because, after all, I was an ex-artist. They’d show their appreciation by either recording one of my songs or sticking a song of mine on an album.

   I knew all the producers and the disc jockeys from my days as an artist, always went to them with a good song, never went to them to waste their time. If I had a bad song, I was entitled to die with the bad song.

   A bad song has no right to live, you know. It has a right to die. It’s only the good song that can earn. A good song musically, or a good song commercially. And if one can get the combination of the two, that provides for a most satisfying music publishing operation”.

 

‘How Do You Do It’

 

Vanzelfsprekend kwam de vraag ter tafel:  “How did you get involved with the Beatles?”

   Dick noemde geen naam. Een nog onbekende liedjesschrijver had hem op het spoor gezet.

   “A friend of mine said, ‘Dick, I have a friend whose son wants to be a songwriter. This friend thinks his son’s out of his mind. They’ve got a big manufacturing business, but he wants to be a songwriter. Will you listen to his songs?’

   I said I’d listen to his songs, and if they were no good I’d tell him to go work in his father’s manufacturing business. If they were good I’d publish them.

   Well, this guy did not come to see me, but one day I was walking across Charing Cross Road and there was a group of music publishers standing and talking, so I stuck my neck in to say hello. Someone happened to mention a name I recognized. It was the son who was supposed to come and see me. I asked why he hadn’t come, and he said it was because his father had told him to come, and if his father had told him to come, he wasn’t going to come. So we went back to the office, and he played me a song and I flipped over this song.

   I asked him where he had been and he said ‘Everywhere’.

   I said, ‘What do you mean everywhere?’

   And he said, ‘I mean everywhere. I’ve been up and down Denmark Street and everybody’s turned me down’.

   I said, ‘They’re out of their minds. It’s a smash’.

   So he left it with me to see what I could do”.

   Dat moet Mitch Murray (Lionel Stitcher) geweest zijn. Zijn song: “How Do You Do It’.

 

 

The Beatles

 

Dick James zocht zijn vriend George Martin op en liet hem de song horen. “I went up that afternoon to George Martin and played it for him”.

   Ze werden het er snel over eens dat de song hit potentie had, maar hadden geen artiest voorhanden. “He looked at me quizically and said, ‘If you think it’s a hit, I’ll agree with you’. He said he didn’t have the kind of artist necessary for that song, and I told him if he didn’t do it I’d take it somewhere else.

   He then thought of a group he had from Liverpool.

   I said, ‘Liverpool, what’s from Liverpool?’

   He said, ‘They’re a nice bunch of guys, I’m bringing them down and experimenting with them. They wear their hair rather long, and they are amusing characters, very nervous and excitable and they excite each other. They’ve got something, but what they’ve got I don't know. I’ll send this song up to them. I’ll try it with them, and we’ll see what happens’”.

 

De Parlophone-baas dreef zijn zin door en maakte er een opname van. Het resultaat was niet om over naar huis te schrijven. Op verzoek van Dick James werd de song niet gebruikt.

   “A few weeks later George called me to come and listen to the song. He played it for me and I said, ‘George, it’s terrible. It’s worse than the demo’.

   George agreed it didn’t come off. They didn’t quite fancy it. It wasn’t them.

   The ‘A’ side was a little thing called ‘Love Me Do’.

   I didn’t like it very much either. It didn’t have melody, it was a riff. 

   They were very good, but my song was a better song.

   George agreed with me but said, ‘What can I do?’

   I asked him not to make my song the ‘B’ side. But he decided to keep the ‘A’ side and record another ‘B’ side. ‘Love Me Do’ didn’t do too badly. The success on the charts was really on the northwest of England, round about Liverpool where, of course, they were tremendous stars.

 

Ontmoeting met Brian Epstein

 

Dick James had contact met producer George Martin, maar niet met The Beatles. “I hadn’t met the boys yet.

   George called me several weeks later and said he had some bad news for me. It seemed the boys had come down to record another session, and they’d scrapped my song. They said it was a good song, but they just couldn’t get into it. George said that the cloud might have a silver lining though.

   With him was the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein [1934-1967], and he was looking for a publisher who would stand alongside and plug the boys as well as their records and the songs.

   Brian Epstein was perhaps the forerunner of the great, high-powered managers”.

 

Dick James helpt

 

Aan Fred Goodman vertelde Dick James dat hij de tweede Parlophone single van de Beatles helemaal zag zitten. Dat liet hij dan ook weten aan Epstein. “I saw Brian and listened to a record he’d brought. It was a little thing called ‘Please Please Me’, and I said it was a number one smash. It was not like anything they’d done before. I flipped and Brian thought I’d gone beserk. He’d never heard enthusiasm like this”.

   Dick liet zien tot waar hij toe in staat was. “I phoned a friend of mine in television who was just starting a pop series which went out every Saturday afternoon. I played the song for him over the telephone, and we set up the TV shot.

   In fact, this became the formula for the way we worked. In the early stages when Brian didn’t know anybody, I used to fix the radio and TV shows and have the contracts sent through to Brian who obviously took care of all the business and I booked all the promotional gigs”.

   ‘Please Please me’ was de eerste Beatles-song, waarvan Dick James de publishing rechten wist te verwerven – onder het motto ‘voor wat hoort wat’.

 

De oorspronkelijke song van Mitch Murray kwam nu ook goed van pas. “Sometime later, Brian asked me to hold onto that song of mine that the Beatles had scrapped. He had another group that George Martin was going to record. And he wanted to use it with them. That group was Gerry and the Pacemakers and the song was ‘How Do You Do It’. It went to number one. So it pays to fight for a song”.

   Ook ‘How Do You Do It’ kwam in het fonds van Dick James Music terecht.

 

Succesvolle uitgeverij

 

Dick James was ervan overtuigd dat zijn vertrouwen in ‘How Do You Do It’ de weg naar het grote succes voor zijn bedrijf had geplaveid. “I do believe that my faith in that tune led to my meeting Brian Epstein and the biggest break of my business career. ‘Please Please Me’ came out on January 11, 1963 and by January 20 was a smash hit and about three or four weeks later, it was number one. And we virtually never looked back. It was the start of the most incredible situation”.

   Voor de Beatles en hun manager zette hij na enige tijd een eigen muziekuitgeverij op, waarin hij zelf als aandeelhouder nadrukkelijk participeerde. Zo wist hij John Lennon en Paul McCartney als songwriters aan zich te binden. “I suggested we start a music company, the Beatles, me and Brian. Because the boys came from northern England, we called it Northern Songs”.

   Dankzij de goede band met manager Brian Epstein wist hij ook andere groepen en artiesten bij Dick James Music te betrekken, zoals Billy J. Kramer en de Dakotas. Verheugd liet hij anno 1973 in Record World afdrukken: “We leapfrogged the number one spot on the chart for seven months with seven songs between the three groups. The same publisher, same manager, same recording manager. It was unprecedented to have success like that”.

 

Iedereen wilde nu wel praten met Dick James, die als uitgever het succes in de hand leek te hebben. Zo kon hij zaken doen met de Hollies, Troggs en vele anderen. “I set up a company with the Hollies and had many of the songs contained in their albums. I had a record label with Larry Page, called Page One, which I still own. I bought Larry out when he wanted to start his Penny Farthing operation. We jointly handled a group called the Troggs with a thing called ‘Wild Thing’.

   We also set up a company with Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway called Cookaway and we have a great number of hits there”.

 

DJM Records met Elton John

 

James, een vijftiger, had intussen zoon Stephen in de zaak gehaald. Een van de nieuwe ondernemingen was een eigen platenlabel, DJM Records. Vader en zoon James schoten opnieuw raak, met name door hun steun te geven aan de activiteiten van Elton John (Reg Dwight) en zijn muzikale partner Bernie Taupin. Het tweetal was bij alle activiteiten van Elton John betrokken geweest, zelfs als manager. 

   Dick: “The first artist we signed to the DJM label was Elton John. Elton and Bernie Taupin wrote the songs and Elton recorded them. Although the early material was not successful, we pressed on and we made more records. We put Elton and Bernie on a retainer. We paid their rent and gave them eating money, Christmas present money, jeans money and shoe money and just kept them going for two and a half years.

   Then we met producer Gus Dudgeon, while Elton met up with arranger Paul Buckmaster. Then we put Elton on a plane to L.A., and he played the Troubadour – and you know the story from there. Elton is one of the biggest, hottest things in show business today.

   Although I don’t manage him anymore, I’m still very keenly interested in his career. We cooperate very closely with his current management and we still publish his songs until the end of this year. He’s still under contract to DJM and we have world distributing rights. That continues until the end of February, 1975”.

 

Elton John en Stephen James

 

Minder succes hadden ze met een andere, inmiddels beroemde artiest. “My son discovered an artist and, in fact, we published his first-published song. But, unfortunately, because of certain circumstances and a misunderstanding with the management which I will not go into, we didn’t manage to finally get the signature of the artist on a contract. Otherwise, we would’ve been publishing all the works of Cat Stevens. Because we published a little song called ‘I Love My Dog’. And ‘I Love My Dog’ was Cat Stevens’ very first hit in the U.K.”

 

De toekomst in 1973

 

Vanuit het succes terugkijken is makkelijker dan de toekomst voorspellen. Toen Dick James de vraag voorgelegd kreeg om dat toch te doen, antwoordde hij: “We’re always on the threshold of new successes. We have a talent that I think is going to set another mark on the entertainment industry in the U.S.A. – Phillip Goodhand-Tait. Phillip is a writer/artist, who has written quite a number of hit songs – some for a group called Love Affair. 

   Again, it was our desire to develop Phillip as a writer/artist. Musically, he has a standard of musicianship that is quite incredible – a totally different kind of projection from that of Elton John. They could, in fact, both appear on the same bill. Though they both play piano and sing, their total image and projection is so different that they wouldn’t even clash”.

 

Wat kon de uitgever anders doen dan zich positief opstellen. “Phillip was signed to 20th Century, and the guy that flipped over Phillip is beautiful Russ Regan, who used to be the head of a&r at Uni when he picked up Elton John for MCA. When we were at MIDEM we had a video clip of Phillip Goodhand-Tait. We played it for Russ and he signed him.

   We’ve taken this long to produce an incredible quality album. A single is out and, in the next few weeks. Phillip Goodhand-Tait is going to make a very important mark. I’m not going to suggest that he’s suddenly going to go ‘POW!’ the way Elton John did because ‘POW!’ doesn’t very often happen. It’s steadily placing one brick on top of another and building a career, and I’m quite willing to do that”.

   Phillip zou evenwel geen tweede Elton John worden.

 

Volgens Dick James was het moeilijker om talent aan de man te brengen. In de twaalf jaren dat zijn bedrijf bestond, was de muziek business flink veranderd. “In the old days, a guy came in and you heard his song. You gave him a few pounds in advance, you went out and walked the streets. You went to an artist to ask him to record it and that was it.

   But today a great deal of the whole modus operandi of the music industry has changed via the Beatles, et. al., writing their own in-house material”.

 

Dick uitte zich nogal pessimistisch. “Show business has begun to show a lack of variety. Today, if you find a good quality song, you can’t find an artist to record it because everybody’s doing their own thing. And if you hear a very good singer, where do you go to find a song a song, that hasn’t already been recorded by somebody else. So what comes first, the chicken or the egg, the singer or the song?

   I can tell you this, for about 12 months now, I’ve told all my friends in the industry, ‘I want to hear a good singer’.

   If I were a good singer, I’d try to find a good song or get the songs specially written for the singer. On the other hand, we’re signing writers who are writing material who do not perform their own material, so that we can have the material, we can have the performer.

   We can get back to the potentials of a Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Frank Sinatra, you know, where it’s not all in-house. And I think it’s got to be, because I think we’re lacking the width and dimension of the spectrum of show business”.

   Liedjes voor een goede zanger of zangeres had Dick James genoeg in zijn bedrijf. Maar de combinatie artiest en songwriter, daar had hij op gevorderde leeftijd inmiddels moeite mee. Maar met een catalogus van Beatle- en Elton John-liedjes kon je nog jaren vooruit..

 

Meer ‘dialogen’ op komst

 

Fred Goodman kon zijn dialoog met Dick James afronden. Record World had meer van dat soort items in de planning: met de beslissers bij FM radio-station WNEW (notes from the ‘underground’, op 1 december), met Billy Sherrill over de ontwikkelingen in country & western (8 december), met Mike Stewart, directeur van platenmaatschappij United Artists (15 december), met Ira Moss van Pickwick over goedkope albums (22 december) en met Jay Lasker (ABC-Dunhill Records) over de vraag hoe het er met de platenindustrie in z’n algemeen voorstond. Er was genoeg om over te publiceren in het Amerikaanse vakblad.

 

 

Harry Knipschild

15 mei 2025