by Scott Turner

Today, a producer friend of mine confronted me with a dilemma - first off, he played me a great song that was in CD format and my reply was, "You'd better get in and cut that killer ASAP. He then tossed me the CD stating, "I would, but who wrote it and who's the publisher?" I looked at the CD and all that was on it was the title of the song. That was it! No writer, no publisher, no address, no email contact - nothing - nada - nil. I suggested that he call BMI, ASCAP and SESAC to see if they had the song on file, but he was one step ahead of me as he had already done that to no avail. I'm aware that the pros who are reading this always put total info on the CD or tape, but for those of you who have failed to do it in the past, DO IT NOW on every submission because some writer, somewhere, just lost a tentative cut. You might wonder about a cover letter - nope. There wasn't one and the lyric sheet was the same - no info at all on it. Well, what about the envelope it was sent in? That was probably disposed of 8-10 days prior as producers receive upwards of 50 songs per day and they are not listened to that day, but rather, maybe, a week to 10 days later.

I actually had the same thing happen to me many moons ago. When I was assigned my office at Liberty Records (pre-cassette days), there was a stack of songs next to my desk in acetate form that the prior occupant left there. I figured, "Why not listen to them?" and I did and I found a great song for Slim Whitman titled "One Dream". That was all that was on the label - no writer, etc. I sent it to Slim and he said, "We've got to cut that song". So blindly, we did. In those days (when I was commuting to Nashville), Bill Denny at Cedarwood Music was kind enough to lend me an office at his firm so I was checking out my rough mixes on the Slim session and it came to "One Dream". After about eight bars in, my door burst open and a good friend named Bobby Sykes (from the Marty Robbins Band and a Cedarwood writer) said, "You cut my song!!!" He was ecstatic, but so was I because fate found the writer. It was pure luck because the song hadn't been turned in to BMI and yes, Bill Denny was more than pleased that a Cedarwood song was cut. I told him that, "My office rental is paid in full now!!"

So take heed - load the CD (or tape) with ALL of the information and remember, NO SASE, NO REPLY. Too many tapes come in that way and are tossed in File X.