A LITTLE MUSIC BUSINESS FAMILY HISTORY

With the quarantine still a harsh reality, I spend my spare time doing all sorts of things I might not normally do to keep my mind occupied. Like just yesterday, I decided to Google my father's images. The old man produced and or arranged on 17 gold and platinum records and worked with not just pop stars the likes of Louis Armstrong, Andy Williams, Barbra Streisand, Met Torme, Robert Goulet, Patti Page, Marty Robbins, Aretha Franklin et al...but pimple rockers (at least at the time) Frankie Avalon, Bobbie Rydell, Bobby Vinton, Dion, and many more. The point is there were literally hundreds of image references to peruse.


Fully sixty years ago, my brother (who is four years my senior) rode the train into the city to hang with my father (who had left to start a new family) without me for some reason. I was unhappy because first, we rarely got to see the old man, and second, my brother was part of a recording session during which dad let him play the triangle - at least until some fuddy duddy pointed out that my brother wasn't in the union and pulled him from the rehearsal just before the actual recording took place.

Fast forward 55 years, and in a conversation with my brother, he recounted going to the city when we were kids and attending a recording session with my father and Phil Spector, who were recording a guy named Johnny Nash. I knew about the "triangle" session from many years before. But I didn't know that I'd missed meeting Phil Spector when I was a tyke. 

So anyway...while I was whiling away the hours yesterday, clicking on all these images, I found one which led to a picture of an old Johnny Nash record with credits that said "produced by Phil Spector" and "arranged by Robert Mersey." I forwarded the link to my brother with the note "this might be the Phil Spector session you attended when we were kids." 

Two minutes later, here was his response: "that was the song I played the triangle on until Phil Spector told me I couldn't because I wasn't in the union."

My brother never told me it was Phil himself who aced him out of his only session credit. Nor did I know that the day he played the triangle was the same day he witnessed Phil Spector at work.

And to think...this wonderful revelation courtesy of the corona virus. There is a silver lining to every cloud.