KERISTENE MUSIC Magazine: January 2013

HOLLYWOOD CA (IFS) -- Sony Music has acquired all of the publishing rights from EMI Music of Kenneth Howard Smith and Russell G. Ingersoll's songwriters catalog. Smith and Ingersoll collaborated on many songs as writers and artists at Motown Records in the 1970's and 1980's. Smith's production of Cardella DeMilo's "Gimme Whatcha Promised Me" from Paul and Linda McCartney's MPL Communications on their small company, with Lee Rogers new release for the D-Town label after twelve years; Lee's Motown record.

Smith is presently hosting a radio talk show on KDTN Radio One in Memphis TN. Smith's new CD/EP is entitled "Wild Plums" with just five (5) songs. Not to inspired about songwriting these days, this is a special request recording for one of his fans. Smith has been more interested in radio and television broadcasting. He started out in that medium when he was a student at Antelope Valley College in Lancaster, California working with Don Imus at KUTY-AM in Palmdale, California. He has always had a love for computers, microphones and the airwaves. Smith current publishing rights belong to Keristene Music (BMI).

"Wild Plums" by Smith, new CD/EP
release November 2012

One song has been released from the "Wild Plums" CD/EP called, "I Can't Breathe (Without You)". A little toxic love song that Smith wrote about love and missing a love that you did not know you counted on so much. Not quite a reflection song, as Smith's catalog of love songs as in the past with the lyrics of Linda Lou Kestin his one time writing partner for over thirty (30) years. As Smith puts it, he had recordings way before Kestin and he shall have recordings after Kestin too.

Smith who uses songwriting to keep his soul and mind at ease, just so happens to get a couple of well played recordings out of the situation from time to time. Not real magic, just soul exercise. From time to time, Smith starts a new chapter of his book "Vinyl Knights: Kenneth Howard Smith" a series on ups and downs in the music business. Below is a peep into the book, chapter 11:

Kenneth Howard Smith, Genius or Derelict?

Not to much is known about Kenneth Howard Smith, born in 1948 in Bakersfield, California, to parents Berry Jerry and Rillie Louise Smith who owned and operated the Bakersfield Monaco Inn and grocery store.

Kenneth was the third born of the family, but the first child to live as his older brother and two sisters died from early childhood infantile births. It took approximately seven years after the death of his younger sister for little Smith to come into this world.

In between those seven years, the Smiths marriage broke up and Berry had a daughter with Marguerite Brown, who gave birth to Emma Jean Smith-Brown.

Re-marrying Mr. Smith again, five other siblings were born to the Smith family after Kenneth that included Theodore, Brenda, Wanda, Clyde and Sandra. Emma Jean with the nick name of “Baby May” was adored and loved by her younger brothers and sisters and visited with her all of the time, even spending the summers at her Los Angeles home.

As the years progressed forward, young Kenneth remembers the times when their father worked part-time at an up and coming television station with the call letters KERO-TV Channel 10 that was located in a barn at the home of West coast Country and Western pioneer Cousin Herb Henson.

Herb Henson, known as Cousin Herb, was a country music performer and television host on KERO-TV, channel 10 (now 23) in Bakersfield, California. He is the first cousin once removed of musician Jeff Tweedy.

Cousin Herb Henson was a pivotal figure in the development of country music's Bakersfield sound—his weekday television variety program, The Trading Post, was a showcase for acts including Buck Owens, Spade Cooley, and Merle Haggard, the latter dubbing Henson "the Ralph Emery of Bakersfield." Born in East St. Louis, IL, on May 17, 1925, Henson was a self-taught pianist and sometimes comedian who arrived in California via Union Pacific railcar sometime in the mid-'40s. After picking cotton in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, he landed a job making door-to-door laundry pickups for a company operating out of the Fresno area.

Mr. Smith was one of the stage hands and janitor, and would help setup the bands for the broadcast and clean up the place after the broadcast. During these times, young Kenneth was introduced to the would be new kings of the west coast country music scene, like Lee Talley, Spade Cooley, Buck Owens, Bonnie Owens, Merle Haggard, Porter Wagoner, Tommy Sands, Glen MacArthur and a very young Dolly Parton.

Berry’s other job was a heavy duty equipment operator at the Edwards Air Force Base Rocket Engineering site. He did not have a high school degree; Mr. Smith was given the pay grade, but not the job as he managed a mop and broom to support his family. Mr. Smith however, did receive many merit achievement awards and bonuses for his design and development of many of the “slings” and moving apparatus platforms for delivering rocket parts across the country.

As the drive from Bakersfield to Edwards on a daily bases was long, as there were not freeways at the time, he and Mrs. Smith decided in would be better to move closer to his job site. So the family in 1956 up and moved to the little town of Lancaster, California, and then across the Kern County line to Rosamond.

As the family settled in to the Rosamond area, Mr. Smith would occasionally take a couple of the children to his job on the weekend to see where he worked and meet some of the people he worked with.

After the decision to build the facility had been made, contractors experienced with rocket engine development were solicited for the proposed test station design plan. These contractors included Curtiss-Wright Corporation; North American Aviation; N. W. Kellogg Company; Reaction Motors; and Aerojet Engineering Corporation (AEC), a subsidiary of Aerojet General Corporation, which had been formed earlier by GALCIT scientists. Because the type of large-scale static test stand required for the test facility had no precedent, the use of an engineering subsidiary of a rocket manufacturer promised the best possible results for construction of the test facilities (TetraTech 1997).

In 1947, the Air Materiel Command, through its Rocket Branch, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) contracted with AEC for the design of the rocket engine test stands and auxiliary facilities at Muroc Army Airfield (Renamed Edwards AFB in 1949) (U.S. Army Air Force 1948; U.S. Air Force 1964a). AEC was the logical choice to advise the Corps. Since Aerojet's inception as a spinoff of GALCIT, it had concentrated on rocket research and development, whereas competing contractors at the time were multidisciplinary organizations and aircraft manufacturers.

In 1952, ERETS was activated. Its primary mission was "to accomplish research, development, and static testing of experimental and production rocket power plants, and to provide authorized contractors and other Governmental agencies with facilities and engineering assistance in research, development, and testing of experimental rocket power plants". Rocket Branch personnel performed liquid rocket propellant servicing operations for aircraft and provided engineering and consulting services to AFFTC activities using rocket engines and their components.

It's true. Back in 1948, military personnel were working on a rocket sled experiment at the Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards Air Force Base) in California. They strapped a chimpanzee into the sled and sent the vehicle down a railroad track at an extremely high speed to measure the g-forces and deceleration effects that occurred during the trip.

After the test, researchers were dismayed to find that the sensors used in the harness's restraining clamps had returned no measurements. Edward Murphy discovered that his assistant had installed the sensors incorrectly, with each one wired backwards.

"If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will," Murphy complained. His colleagues quickly dubbed the saying "Murphy's Law." The complaint soon morphed into the law we know today: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

Murphy's Law was popularized during a press conference by John Paul Stapp, the U.S. Army colonel and flight surgeon who headed up the program on which Murphy worked. Responding to a question about why no one had been seriously injured in rocket sled testing, he said engineers always took Murphy's Law into consideration when evaluating what could go wrong.

One large hangar that Mr. Smith worked in was filled with a computer that was wall-to-wall and it was called an ENIAC.

ENIAC - Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer was the first electronic general-purpose computer. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.

ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. When ENIAC was announced in 1946 it was heralded in the press as a "Giant Brain". It had a speed of one thousand times that of electro-mechanical machines, which was unmatched by mechanical computers. This mathematical power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists. The inventors promoted the spread of these new ideas by conducting a series of lectures on computer architecture.

ENIAC's design and construction was financed by the United States Army during World War II. The construction contract was signed on June 5, 1943, and work on the computer began in secret by the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering starting the following month under the code name "Project PX". The completed machine was announced to the public the evening of February 14, 1946 and formally dedicated the next day at the University of Pennsylvania, having cost almost $500,000 (approximately $6,000,000 today). It was formally accepted by the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in July 1946. ENIAC was shut down on November 9, 1946 for a refurbishment and a memory upgrade, and was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 1947. There, on July 29, 1947, it was turned on and was in continuous operation until 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955.

ENIAC was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania. The team of design engineers assisting the development included Robert F. Shaw (function tables), Jeffrey Chuan Chu (divider/square-rooter), Thomas Kite Sharpless (master programmer), Arthur Burks (multiplier), Harry Huskey (reader/printer) and Jack Davis (accumulators). ENIAC was named an IEEE Milestone in 1987.

Young Kenneth’s experience with seeing this larger then life machine in its’ last days as young child with men and women in white lab coats with “oven” mittens would go from computer cabinet-to-cabinet changing out burned out vacuum tubes.

The name computer would resonate with young Kenneth for the rest of his life. During his days in junior high school, Smith had the opportunity to take up wood shop. One day while making a lamp, he placed the router on the wrong part of the wood and caused a large smoke cloud in the shop, and was asked to leave the shop and go enter into another class during anything, but stay away from the wood shop.

Smith was very disappointed after this rejection. So, his mother entered him into the bookkeeping and accounting classes, where he learned to type and do bookkeeping. At first, he was upset with this idea, but upon entering the class, he was the only boy in the class among 20 girls. From here, he joined the school newspaper and became one of its editors and publishers.

As Rosamond had no high school, all of its students went to Antelope Valley High School. This is where Smith in his spare time, he was in a rock band called “Al and the Altones”, then started his own group, “The Gents” which would work with Glen MacArthur in Palmdale, California at his recording studio and record company called “Glenn Records”, where Smith learned the recording end of the studio business working with Merrell Fankhauser and his group “Merrell and the Exiles”. Later on Smith joined The Clouds (aka The Telestars) with the Martinkovic Brothers touring around the Southern California area.

As young Smith entered the halls of Antelope Valley College in 1967, working on the student newspaper, his job was to keep the mailing list up to date. This was his gateway into computing and working with the college’s IBM mainframe, and learning how to program.

Smith’s interests in music continued with his up-start band “Purple Olive” that created several local area hit recordings with “Proud Mary Sunshine”, “Journey To The Center of Your Heart” and “Mary Beth”.

It did not take long for the Vietnam War to catch up with Smith as he transferred to the University of California; Santa Barbara only to find the school had been closed do to a bombing of the administration and Bank of America building on campus, which canceled his scholarship and upped his draft number. Doing this transition to the University, Smith was also in the ROTC program. The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) is a college-based program for training commissioned officers of the United States Armed Forces. ROTC officers serve in all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.

With the school closed, Smith was drafted by the U.S. Army to flight helicopters, as then Governor Ronald Reagan canceled all of the student deferments at Santa Barbara, leaving Smith with a 1-A status.

Smith had married Irene Joanne Tarbell, his record producer and music publishing general manager, with their plans drastically changed, Smith wanted to head for Canada, but was talked out of it by his mother, and he decided to join the Air Force.

After a couple of days of negotiations with the Air Force as to what his duties were going to be, his rank upon entering, as he was in ROTC and where he was going, Smith found himself on a air plane headed for Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas for basic training.

After military service in several different fields, from writing technical documents for the C-5 Galaxy transport; foreign countries with varied duties from Postmaster, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam, working with the American Consul General in Bangkok, Thailand; NCOIC (Non-Commissioned Office-In-charge) Khoko Air Station, Northern Thailand; Loading cargo master and finally Triage medical tech at Norton Air Force Base, California, Smith was discharged from military service to his country.

One thing that all of these positions had in common were working with computers. Smith found himself programming and maintaining these new machines at the local company level for the squadron. Smith was a quick study by experience and because of this; he advanced steadily up the latter in rank and responsibilities.

Yet, Smith found himself to be disgruntled as been passed over for Officers Candidate School while in the military. It all started with a letter written to then President Richard Nixon, asking why he was always passed over. He was given over six tests for OCS, but each time, he somehow would miss passing the grade by one (1) point; always getting a 69% grade on these tests. Being in military, it was this thing about the “chain of command” that he failed to adhere too. For this, Smith was punished and kept out of the officers ranks.

While in the US Air Force Reserves, Smith attended the California School of Law, in Santa Monica, California. One of his fellow students and study partners was none other then Robin Cranston, son to then US Senator Alan Cranston. Smith and Cranston were at his father Beverly Hills home, with the senator at the house. Smith so happened to mention his situation to the senator about getting passed over for an officer's appointment in the regular Air Force, which Smith just wanted to inject as a “laughing” point.

As the requirements for getting into any law school, one must have a college degree. Since Smith was a good student at the law school, and he helped Robin with his homework and studies, the senator wasted no time in securing him a commission in the California Air National Guard as a 2^nd Lieutenant.

It was a dream comes true, even with the California Air National Guard . Smith helped with Senator Cranston’s re-election by maintaining bulk contributors’ mailing lists and other donor databases. However, this too would come crashing down, as Senator Cranston some time and months later, would be entangled in the Savings and Loan Wars that would build to both Smith and Cranston's careers crashing down. Smith's commission would later be rejected and he dismissed from the Guard.

Cranston was reprimanded by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics for "improper conduct” after Lincoln Savings head Charles Keating's companies contributed $850,000 to voter registration groups closely affiliated with the senator.

Keating had wanted federal regulators to stop "hounding" his savings and loan association. Although the committee found that "no evidence was presented to the Committee that Senator Cranston ever agreed to help Mr. Keating in return for a contribution," the committee deemed Cranston's misconduct the worst among the Keating Five. Cranston decided against running for a fifth term while he battled prostate cancer.

While attending school with Robin, Smith would also be invited to celebrity parties in Malibu, Palm Springs and homes of every star Robin had anything to do with as he was also a movie producer with a lot of credits, including one with the late Dorothy Stratton, that hot Playboy Bunny who was murdered by her husband.

During law school, Smith who continued to write and record from time to time and got signed with ABC Music Publishing as a demo producer for their songwriting division. During this period of time, he met Lee Rogers and Jimmy Holliday. Rogers was riding high on the RnB charts with his Loadstone Records release of “Love Bandit”, while Holliday was at the Billboard Number #1 position with “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” by Jackie Deshannon.

ABC Records promotions department had this record called “Margaritaville” by this new singer named Jimmy Buffett. This record was one of those that did not fit the record charts on any station. It was the height of the Disco music, and it was to pop for country, too white for the RnB stations, not pop enough for the Top 40 stations. It was just an egg completely out of its shell and nobody wanted to play it at all.

Smith needed some extra money for child support and paying the rent. West coast promotions department needed someone to promote this record up and down the California coast. Smith was given three boxes of 100 - 45 RPM singles, some hotel and gas money and off he went to work this record. It took Smith four weeks going from San Diego, going back ad forth across Southern California, up to Bakersfield and up to Oregon crossing into Idaho, Montana, Utah and Nevada.

One of Smith’s famous record promotion stories starts in Bakersfield at KERN Radio, where Smith had pulled into the station’s parking lot early in the morning before the drive time on air personality was there waiting for the station to go live, the DJ was late and drove up to the station, unlocking the doors, he rushed inside to play the National Anthem and the local news. Smith with several records in his hand entered the station right behind him. Calling out to the DJ, Smith had a couple of cups of hot coffee in his hand, and as the DJ came running back from flipping the transmission switches to go live and returning to the control room, Smith handed him a cup, and said “Good Morning”. The DJ took the cup and off to the microphone he went –live. After the opening and the local and national news, the DJ signaled Smith to come into the control room.

On the air, he opened up the microphone telling everyone that it was a record promotions guy standing in his control room with some records, and that he had brought him a hot cup of coffee that he needed so very much, and that he was going to talk to him in a few minutes and see what he was pushing. It’s 5:30am the sun is not even up yet, and Smith is all ready on the air in Bakersfield.

Smith tells the DJ that he has this single by a new artist named Jimmy Buffett, and wants to know if he could give it a couple of spends. The DJ tells him that he will give it a listen and to place it on the pile of records on the wall. Smith turns to the wall, and sees his worse nightmare, a stack of records in six rows over three feet high still in their mailing envelopes.

Smith looking at the unopened records, turns to the DJ and asks him to play his record live on the air, and if he gets just one listener that votes against it, then he will pull it and call it a day. The DJ taking a sip from the coffee tells Smith, he could do that and takes the single, placing it on the turntable.

Within one minute of the songs introduction, the switch board lights up, all twelve lines. Now it’s been a full two minutes into the song, the lights are still flashing. The first caller is asked, if it’s a smash or trash? Ten callers like the song so far and vote’s it a smash. By this time, the last caller votes against it calling “Margaritaville” trash. And as Smith promised the DJ he could pull the record if he got one vote against it. To Smith’s a surprise, the DJ plays the record again, and off the microphone tells Smith that he’s going to ad the single to his playlist. Since KERN Radio was a Billboard reporting station, this gives “Margaritaville” a leg up and the rest is history.

It was no mistake that this record was given to Smith, because several years earlier, he was a Disc Jockey at KUTY-AM in Palmdale, California while attending Antelope Valley College. With his duties as the Director of Publicity on the board of the Associated Student Body, Smith had great success with groups like Three Dog Night, A Group Called Smith, Steppenwolf as he was instrumental in the college promotional of Mercury Records’ Flying Bear Tour, with Lynn County, Buddy Miles Express/Experience, Sir Douglas Quintet, Rick Derringer’s group the McCoys and Harvey Mandel.

The little radio station from Palmdale was in the circle of gold, with its signal carrying deep into the heart of the San Fernando Valley and North Hollywood. It was the 17^th logical station site to get your record played in Los Angeles City limits that generated lots of record sales.

Smith who started out as the college’s activities announcer on Mutual Broadcasting Systems, quickly moved into the position as the most requested on air personality for the college circuit. Don Imus was at KUTY and liked Smith’s warm delivery. It was not to long that he was spending more of his time at the station, as Imus was giving him lots of on air time for the college and Smith’s group, Purple Olive.

On of the pert’s of being on the Associated Student Body and on the air, Smith got the chance to have a personal relationship with the Polodor Brothers, both Don and Richard. Don Podolor worked in record promotion and booking, while his older brother was the record producer for the Monkees, Fountain of Youth, Three Dog Night and Janis Joplin.

Smith was one of the first people to get demo copies of the artists completed records, and one of the times was Three Dog Nights’ “Joy To The World” with Smith being the first DJ to premiere the single on KUTY weeks before anyone else got a copy. Other firsts, included Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party”, Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High” and Smith’s last promotional effort when he returned to the Antelope Valley from the Vietnam War was, "Rhinestone Cowboy" a song written and recorded first by Larry Weiss in 1973, and most famously recorded by American country music singer Glen Campbell. The song enjoyed immense popularity with both country and pop audiences when he released it in 1975.

Motown Records. It was also at this time, that he obtained his first personal computer, a Sinclair from England and later a Toshiba C/PM machine that was just disk based. The first real personal computers were still on the planning stages and it would be years until they reach the market place.

-TO BE CONTINUED -

EU to Clear Sony's EMI Deal
European Approval Expected for Group's $2.2 Billion Purchase of Music Publisher

By ETHAN SMITH

European antitrust regulators are expected Thursday to approve a plan by a Sony Corp.-led investor group to buy EMI Group Ltd.'s huge music-publishing division for $2.2 billion, according to people familiar with the situation.

Approval by the European Commission, the European Union's executive arm, would represent a victory for Sony, removing the possibility of a longer review of the deal's antitrust implications. Such a review could add several months to the process.

Getty Images

Beyoncé, one of EMI's songwriting artists, at the 2011 MTV Awards.

The approval is conditioned on Sony selling off certain music-publishing assets, the people familiar with the situation said. Sony initially proposed selling a more limited number of assets, but only won approval after offering to sell more, according to one of the people.

Sony and its financial partners are expected to sell off three of EMI Music Publishing's catalogs and one of Sony's, all comprising older compositions. Those include Virgin Music Publishing's songs in the U.K., the U.S. and Europe, as well as Famous Music's catalog of U.K. compositions. In addition, the company is expected to sell the publishing rights to works by a handful of contemporary song writers.

A European Commission spokesman declined to comment.

The pending approval was reported earlier by the Financial Times.

Citigroup Inc. C +0.85% is in the midst of separate sales of EMI Group's two main
components: EMI Music Publishing and EMI Music, its recorded-music operation, which Vivendi SA's VIV.FR +0.03% Universal Music Group is planning to buy for $1.9
billion.

Sony is a minority partner in the consortium that also includes the estate of Michael Jackson; Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Development Co.; Jynwel Capital Ltd.; Blackstone Group LP's BX -0.12% GSO Capital Partners; and billionaire
entertainment mogul David Geffen.

Citigroup made the EMI deals in November, after taking control of the storied British music company following an ill-fated leveraged buyout.

Because the buyers of both parts of EMI's business are already large players in their industries, the deals are being reviewed by the European Commission and its U.S. counterpart, the Federal Trade Commission. Both regulatory bodies want to make sure the deals don't lead to undue reductions in competition.

The FTC music-publishing review is continuing, as are reviews in both the U.S. and Europe of the recorded-music deal.

Music publishers own and administer copyrights of songs' melodies and lyrics, and collect royalties when the songs are sold or performed publicly. Recorded-music companies, by contrast, own specific recordings and distribute them on CDs, online and to other outlets.

The proposed EMI acquisition would make Sony the world's largest music publisher by market share, according to an investor presentation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The two companies combined represented 31% of the global publishing market in 2010, ahead of the 23% controlled by Universal Music Publishing, according to the presentation. The 31% figure doesn't take into account the current asset-sale proposals.

Impala, a coalition of mostly European independent record companies and music publishers, released a statement Wednesday questioning the significance of Sony's proposed asset sales.

"We need to see the full decision but we find it difficult to imagine these remedies will make any significant difference to Sony's market power," the statement said. "This makes the outcome on Universal/EMI all the more important."

SDCXTRA RADIO

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Emeli Sandé is an English-born Scottish singer

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

SDC Radio Networks' "Music In Action" award

SDC Radio Networks Top 50 Songs of 2012

SDC RADIO NETWORKS

TOP 50 SONGS OF 2012

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Sony Music acquires EMI Publishing rights of Kenneth Howard Smith

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