(part 187) BILLBOARD AD, RCA, AND DP...

President of RCA Records in 1977-78 Bob Summer

I contacted my girlfriend's father and told him the cost of a full page ad. He agreed to it, and told me he was sending the money, not just for the ads, but enough to pay for the office and his two daughters salaries as well.

At least he was cognizant of the fact that the upkeep of all it was an ongoing issue, so he continued to supply the means necessary to keep it afloat.

Two thirds of my expenditures were the girl's salaries and the upkeep of the office. It came to nearly $30,000 a year.

The first ad was a full page in Billboard. It was an all black background with red lettering, and when you saw it, it jumped out at you.

It said Robert Parker Jameson "Stay With Me" on RCA Records. It was simple and dynamic, because it looked different than every other page in the magazine.

When RCA saw the ad, they weren't all that happy about it, and had had no idea I would be running it, let alone paying for it. I received a telephone call from the president of the label, Bob Summer, and he asked why I'd run it without saying anything about it.

"I was told by your PR department, while I was in New York, that they had no plans to do any advertising, so I decided I would," I said.

There was a slight pause in the conversation. "Well I wish I had known what you were planning," he responded. To which I said, "I thought you'd be glad." "It's not bad," he replied, "it's a good ad. I just wish you would have let me know about it."

This went back and forth awhile and resulted in him saying he would send me a check for the amount of the ad. I guess he didn't want it to get around that I was paying for my own publicity.

After we hashed that out, he changed the subject to DP, whom he said he'd spoken to about my refusal to let him manage me. "You know, Bobby, DP and I are friends and he told me that he felt hurt by your decision to cut him out of the picture."

I knew then what was coming. The president of RCA was going to lean on me about DP. "Look," I said, "I've known him for a long time, and a lot of shit happened between us in the last five or six years. Things you probably don't know about."

"I do know a bit about your history," Summer said, "DP told me some of it, but outside of that, you need to work out your differences with him so we can concentrate on the future. He's only trying to help you succeed, Bobby, and he can't understand why you turned against him."

I sat listening to the president of RCA Records, and couldn't believe what I was hearing. He was telling me, in essence, to agree to have a cocaine dealer manage me, even though I was clean and sober, and had made a decision not to let DP get involved.


President of RCA Records 1977-78 Bob Summer

He was attempting to override my position, for what ever reason, and because of it, I had no other choice but to tell him, "No!" again.

Bob Summer did not like this one bit, and so he went on, "I want you to think about this, Bobby," he said in a now serious low voice, "Give it some more consideration before you shut the door completely. I'd consider it a personal favor."

The conversation ended, and I had the distinct feeling that I'd just been given an ultimatum by the president of RCA Records. I wondered, again, about what he was getting from DP that made this so Goddamned important to him.

The only thing I could come up with was drugs, and possibly sex from DP's lady friend. That added up, in my mind, to two of the big three, sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, and that would be enough to control a lot of people. So how much control did DP have?

As I mulled this over in my mind, I knew there was no way I was going to place my sobriety in danger, and let a coke dealer manage me, no matter who he was..or what it cost me.

If the whole thing went in the shitter, I wasn't going to end up getting loaded to save it. I knew these guys didn't give a damn that I was clean, but I did.

I cared so much that I was willing to let my decision kill the whole deal, if necessary. This was a complete change of attitude for me, because I'd always been willing to deal with the devil on music business bullshit, but not this time.

This time was different. I had something of real value to protect, and I wasn't willing to jeopardize it for any deal at any price.

I called my girlfriend's father and told him of my conversation with Bob Summer about DP. Being as conservative as he was, this was somewhat of a bewildering turn of events for him, and he questioned me as to why I thought it was happening.

I told him it was probably drugs and sex, and again, this was a confusing possibility for him to comprehend. I said it was like alcohol. "Once it gets going in your life, you just become a slave to it, like a drunk with a drink." He understood that.

As we talked on, I made it clear to him that we needed to keep promoting the record ourselves and protect what we'd accomplished so far.

"The record's doing pretty good," I said, "it's on a lot of radio stations. So if we keep at it, RCA will go along, if the record looks like it might be a hit. Then all the bullshit will stop."

"Well I gotta tell you, son, I've been in business most of my life, but I've never seen anything like this before." "I know," I said, "it's like a disease in the music business. Think of it as being like alcoholism in any other business, it's irrational, it just doesn't consider anything else except feeding itself."

Later that night when I was alone, I made a list of my current responsibilities. Stay sober, pray, trust God, stay positive, work at my relationship, go to a meeting, spend her father's money wisely, give support to her sister, stay true to yourself, don't panic.

(part 186) BREACH OF FRIENDSHIP AND BILLBOARD MAGAZINE

I knew DP well enough to know he wasn't going to accept my position without an argument. He wanted to manage me, period, and he fully expected my cooperation in return for his part in getting RCA to buy my songs and release a single.

I knew, too, that he considered us friends, and that my refusal to do what he wanted, in his mind, would be a breach of that friendship. He would take it to mean I had shit on him, but in reality it just wasn't in the cards. I hadn't talked to him in years.

On the other hand, I was sober and clean, and couldn't see myself being managed by a cocaine dealer, and was well aware that being clean and sober was of little, if any, importance to DP.

In his mind, he probably thought it was temporary, and that I'd get back to my old ways eventually, with his help. Because of this fear, I wanted to stay as far away from him and my old life as I could get, and this was the key reason for my decision.

Each of us had a real position to protect, and that meant there was going to be something else said and done about this further up the line.

When my girlfriend and I got back to her parents' house in New Jersey, I explained to her father and mother what had happened and how I was dealing with it. To say the least, they were impressed with my explanation of the facts and subsequent decision about DP.

I also said that RCA would not commit to any real promotion of Stay With Me, and that if we wanted the record to have a chance, we had to promote it ourselves. "RCA is in a wait and see mode," I said, "and that's not good."

Her father asked me what I thought needed to be done, and I said that running a couple of ads in Billboard Magazine would help. He agreed that it sounded reasonable, and told me to let him know how much it would cost once I got back to L.A. and found out.

After a few more days in New Jersey my girlfriend, her sister, and I headed home to Los Angeles and West Hollywood. All through the flight, I thought about Billboard Magazine and how an ad ought to look and what it ought to say.

A few days later I went to the offices of Billboard. They were located in the 9000 building on Sunset Blvd., some four or five blocks from my apartment.

AImost immediately, I ran into Bill Wardlow, and he was pretty damn happy to see me alive and looking so well. He'd been with Billboard when Tony Alamo had run the Bobby Jameson ad campaign in 1964, so we reminisced about it for a time.

While we were doing that, another Billboard executive entered the office after hearing I was there. Before I could say anything, he began yelling that I still owed the magazine $14,000 for the unpaid bill from the 60's.

Wardlow interrupted him and said emphatically that Tony Alamo and Gordon Gessler were on the hook for that amount, and it had never been an issue that I owed the money to the magazine.

None the less this guy kept ranting. He said he was going to call RCA and let them know who I really was--the crazy guy who jumped off buildings, and that they shouldn't have me as an artist on their label. I do not recall this guy's name, but I guarantee you he was pissed off at me.

After Bill got the guy out of his office, I gathered my senses, and asked him about the cost of running some ads. Wardlow apologized for the guy's outburst, and said if I ran it as an artist ad, paid for it out of my own pocket, I'd get a price break.

This broke down to somewhere between $1,600 and $1,800 for a three color full page. I told him I wanted a black page with red lettering, something that jumped out when you saw it. He agreed that it would have a definite impact and liked the idea.

After a bit more talk, I left Wardlow's office. The guys outburst at me had been another one of those unexpected land mines that had blown up in my face.

Even though I was trying to do the things necessary to make a go of my life, it was now becoming obvious to me that some people just didn't believe it or care. It was another jolt, just like the DP thing had been, and came without warning.

As I walked along Sunset Blvd., back to my apartment on Doheny, I wondered how many others would there be that just felt I shouldn't be given a chance.

My past, all the way back to 1964, had just been thrown in my face by a total stranger, and my career, in his opinion, was a threat to RCA's integrity if, in fact, I was an artist of theirs.

I always knew there were people who didn't like me, but in truth I was shocked by that asshole's attack on me at Billboard. Thank God Bill Wardlow had been there or I would have been thrown out of the place and never allowed to return.

That's what the guy had kept saying to me, "You don't have the right to be here. You didn't even have the right to walk in here." Whew! What a bummer the whole thing was!

(part 185) MONEY...GOING EAST...AND DP

Even though money was coming in, it was also going out. The dollars I received from RCA, $16,000, was devoted to recording costs. The money from my girlfriend's father went to pay the salaries of his two daughters, at a cost of $1,000 a month for each of them.

That was $24,000 a year, which left $6,000 from the $30,000 he invested. I mention this for those who might think I was sitting on a pile of money.

We also rented a small office for RPJ Music and Step Three Productions in Hollywood, but the girls rarely went there, so it just cost money without serving much of a purpose.

Most of the work was done in my apartment and in the studio, the rest was for show. Because their father put up the money, I never complained about the cost of the office or the girls.

We were paying rent on three apartments in West Hollywood, at that point, and had to pay a music lawyer to go over the the RCA contract.

All in all, we were spending a lot of money on a regular basis, so whatever I got was spent on what I outlined here. The whole thing started with me and $15,000, and a desire to record some of my songs and pay my rent. It had now grown into something far different and far more costly.

As we flew back to the east coast at the end of 1977, I couldn't help feeling perplexed about the amount of responsibility in my life. There were too many things going on at once, and my emotional state was always susceptible to stress.

Now I was going to play family guy, business person, recording artist, and shut down DP as well. I had to stay sober, keep on believing the outcome would be positive, and a hundred other things having to do with interpersonal relationships between me and everybody else.

Part of my brain was handling it all, but another part was surveying the area for booby-traps and land mines. I'd seen too much in the past to just accept that everything was going to be fine.

Call it what you will, but I was still the kid from the streets banging up against the odds, in my mind, and I knew how things looked when they started to turn south.

Another concern of mine had to do with the promotion of "Stay With Me" and RCA's commitment to that process. Without promotion, the record would fail.

I'd been coming to the conclusion, in my own mind, that running a couple of ads in Billboard Magazine would help. This was something I planned to take up with my girlfriend's father and the label while in New York.

My reluctance in having to confront DP grew as the time drew closer to it actually happening. I went over it a hundred times in my head, but knew it wasn't going to work out to his satisfaction.

There was going to be a backlash, but I didn't know what it would be or how bad it would get. And at some point soon I was going to have to tell my girlfriend's father about DP, and try to explain how the mess came about in the first place.

I also knew I'd have to make a real commitment, and convince him I had no intentions of doing business with a cocaine dealer.

Finally the day came, and my girlfriend and I headed for New York city in her father's car. Our first stop was at RCA, where I got my picture taken, and we met some of the promo people.

Then it was on to a hotel where we contacted DP and arranged to meet with him that evening. I went over what I was going to say to him, one last time with my girlfriend, and prepared for the night ahead.

When we arrived at his place, we were greeted by DP and his lady friend, an aging, but extremely attractive actress. It was actually her apartment, I found out later, and by the looks of it it cost a bundle.

They were all smiles as we went through the necessary introductions, and DP gave me a big hug and said, "It's good to see you, Bobby, you look great." I thanked him and said it was all the clean living I'd been doing.

As we got to talking, I found out that DP's lady was friends with the president of RCA, Bob Summer, and figured DP had made his way to him through her.

What I didn't know was, if it was sex, drugs, love, or a combination of those things. What I did know was that DP was actually talking to the president, either directly, or through her.

When we finally got to the heart of the matter, I told DP that I was sober and clean, and had been that way for nearly two years, and was a lot different than I'd been when he last saw me. DP said that was good, but that I was still the old Bobby, too, and smiled.

"That's true in one way," I said, "but in other ways I'm completely different." I explained how my girlfriend's father had given me the money to record my songs, and that he was sober too, and that I could not see him and DP working together in a million years.

I said I'd had to make a choice about what I was going to do, and that I'd made it. I told him I planned to carry on with my girlfriend's father, and that because of it, I wouldn't be letting him, DP, manage me.

I said I was prepared to give him 10% of the money RCA paid for the songs, and that was it.

The song below is Rock-n-Roll Hotel and was recorded in the second group of songs referred to in the last couple posts.

(part 184) THE RETURN OF DP

Seemingly out of nowhere, I got a telephone call from DP. You remember him, the cocaine dealer from Nashville I wrote about. He said his call was to let me know that it had been him who had gotten RCA to buy my four songs and release "Stay With Me" as a single.

He went on to say he wanted to manage me, and that he expected me to accept this notion as payment for his help with RCA. I remember the feeling I had when I first heard this.

I was literally stunned by his remarks and the confusion this caused. It tore into my unsuspecting emotional state like a chain saw. The questions it raised about my beliefs and the rebuilding of my life nearly leveled me on the spot.

It was the last thing on earth I expected to hear that day, and after getting off the phone, I had to think long and hard about what this might mean to my fragile new world.

To try and fit DP, and his lifestyle, into my world at that point was as far from where I thought I was headed as I could imagine. There was no reasonable way to talk about him and my girlfriend's father in the same breath, let alone put them together in business.

Think of it! A middle aged, middle class Catholic from New Jersey, who was in AA, paired up with a younger cocaine dealer from Nashville, and the two of them investing in and managing Bobby Jameson.

Yeah sure! I knew this was a non-starter from the moment I heard it. What I didn't know was how much truth there was to DP's claim about RCA.

Once more, the weird-ass luck of Bobby Jameson was staging a come-back in my current life. I'd thought that kind of shit was finally behind me, but suddenly realized it might not be.

Out of the blue, the possible tearing of the fabric I was weaving, was now front and center, and threatened the very foundation of what I was doing. The God awful pushing and pulling of the past had descended like a black curtain on my semi-peaceful world.

I immediately told my girlfriend about DP, and explained how he fit into my past life, and what he wanted to do in the current one. My new life was her new life as well, so I felt the need to tell her about the looming crisis.

I assured her I wasn't about to let a cocaine dealer from my past manage me, whether he had played a part in RCA's decision to get involved with me or not.

We agreed I should speak to DP further, and offer him 10% of what RCA had paid me for the four songs, if, in fact, his claim was true.

I had seen cocaine get into the heads of music people a lot, before I got clean and sober, so in the back of my mind something told me that DP had probably made his way inside RCA using cocaine as the pass key.

If he had someone at RCA that he was supplying with that shit, then he probably had more leverage than I wanted to admit. If this were true, "Where the hell was God in all of this, and where did that leave me?"

Later in December of 1977, me, my girlfriend, and her sister would fly back to New Jersey for Christmas with their family, and that would be when I could to see to the business with RCA.

I talked to DP on the phone, and told him I'd meet with him when I came to New York, and we'd get things worked out in person, which he agreed to. I kept it as positive as I could, so he wouldn't know how I really felt about his involvement.

Because of the amount of money my girlfriend's father had invested in me, I decided to keep the problem with DP under wraps until I knew for sure how it was really going to go.

By then, "Stay With Me" was beginning to attract attention around the country on various radio stations, some of which could be heard in New Jersey, where my girlfriend's parents lived.

They were very excited to hear the song on local radio, knowing they had something to do with getting it there.

Imagine how they must have felt, being straight laced people on the east coast, hearing their daughter's boy friend, from California, singing a song on the radio that was written about her, and that they'd paid for.

As the weeks passed, I continued writing and going in the studio to record until the time came to go back east for Christmas.

It was the end of 1977 and a lot had happened, and a lot was about to happen. I was excited about going to New Jersey and New York City, but extremely uncomfortable knowing I was going to meet with DP face to face.

I had already decided I was going to tell him he couldn't manage me, and I knew how he was going to react. It was going to be a showdown, and DP was gonna be pissed.

(part 183) MONEY FROM RCA

click to enlarge
Original RCA promotion photo taken in New York City at Rockefeller Center in 1978.

RCA gave me $16,000 for the four songs Ben and I produced. That was $4,000 a song, so there was a bit of profit in that number.

I don't know why I didn't ask for more, but I assume at the time, it seemed reasonable to me. I know I was trying hard to be honest about my costs, so I probably figured out what I'd spent and added a little to arrive at that amount.

Remember! This was 1977 and you could still go into a quality studio, with good players, and create something for a reasonable amount of money.

The good thing about quality musicians is they get the job done, so even though they cost more their work is accomplished with efficiency, which saves you money.

We had the songs, the players, and the studio, so when we started we worked, and didn't waste studio time thinking about what we were going to do, we knew going in.

Everybody was clear on their job, and because Ben was used to me, and the band was used to Ben, there was no real friction about what was expected. In the long run this proved to be a financial plus.

Once I got the money from RCA, I decided I should go back in the studio and cut more sides, hoping to end up with an album.

RCA didn't want an album, they wanted a single release to test how things might go, and then we'd see. I on the other hand kept thinking album, believing if I recorded it they'd buy it when they heard it.

Once I was successful at selling the first four songs, and recouping the money my girlfriend's father had given me, everybody decided I really did know what I was doing.

This was both good and bad, but back then it all looked good. My girlfriend's father then decided he wanted to invest more money in my project, partly due to my success, but also because his daughters needed a job.

In his mind, it made sense for them to work for me in a small company that he would finance. I didn't object, so RPJ Music and Step Three Productions were created to publish and produce my music. Step three came for the twelve steps...as in AA...

The next check I received from him was for $30,000 to use as I saw fit. It was now looking like everything I touched turned to gold, which was a dangerous place for me to start inhabiting.

The more responsibility I got, the more pressure I felt to do the right thing, whatever that was. I'd gone from nothing to a whole lot in a year and a half and wasn't sure of what to make of it.

My answer was to concentrate on going back in the studio and record. This gave me a focus and sense of purpose, which I held on to for balance.

As long as I knew where I was headed, I could keep busy doing the things that would get me there. I kept trying to refocus my mind on accepting the success I was having, but the more of it I encountered, the more worried I became about how to incorporate it into my ever changing life.

I'd been rocketed from a lowly halfway house beginning to the surreal world of West Hollywood's music business hype overnight. It started looking as if whatever I thought I needed would suddenly appear out of nowhere.

As good as this might sound, I wasn't very well equipped to handle it. I was still too used to things going wrong, and failure, to suddenly switch to the opposite effect gracefully.

As I plodded along, RCA decided to release Stay With Me/Long Hard Road as a single, with Stay With Me as the A-side. It was not my choice, but I had no power over what they decided.

I used my full name, Robert Parker Jameson instead of Bobby Jameson, because I wanted to disconnect from the past and what I perceived as my failures.



For whatever reason, my dealings with the label were almost exclusively with the new and then current president of the company, Bob Summer.

He'd been the force behind RCA's decision to buy my recordings, and this in the long run, would cause trouble with his A and R reps, who felt their position had been circumvented by him. The reality of inner company politics is nothing but poison.

(A & R stands for Artist and Repertoire).



This is one of the songs we recorded when we went back into the studio after RCA bought the first four songs.

(part 182) RCA BUYS 4 SONGS

I said there were four songs cut initially. This is the fourth song, I've Seen It All Before. After completing the sessions I began working on getting the songs on a label.

I had done nothing about that until I finished recording, so it meant starting from scratch. It wasn't like there were people lined up to hear the songs.

My plan was, continue believing that there is a label who wants my music and will release it. With this in mind, I made demo tapes and began circulating them to different companies, one of which was RCA Victor.

Because most of what I did was in the dream machine inside my own head, sending the songs to RCA made complete sense to me. You know, like Dreamworks. Dream it into reality!

RCA was a company I admired, for what ever reason, probably because they were Elvis Presley's label, so I sent them a demo tape.

Art, in my way of thinking, always starts as a dream, whether that dream was three seconds ago or thirty years ago. What comes out in the long run started as a dream, or vision, in someone's mind and heart.

My theory was, why not get a label the same way? Why not ask myself what label I wanted to be on, and then send them a tape, with the full expectation that they'd say "OK!" So that's what I did.

It wasn't all that long after I sent out the demos that I got a letter back from RCA saying they were interested in the recordings, and what did I want in the way of money.

Well as you can imagine I got pretty damn excited and called everybody I knew to tell them. My girlfriend and her sister went completely out of their minds when they got the news, and couldn't get to the phone fast enough to tell the rest of their family back east.

Everybody thought I was a genius at that point, and kept telling me that over and and over. I had to be careful, because inside my head, that kind of praise was dangerous if I took it too seriously.

Remember! My problem was me, and me and good news was as volatile as me and bad news. Going up too high, or going down too low, was the danger area, so I had to keep tabs on what I was thinking when the praise rolled in.

It is far clearer now, than it was back then, that the array of musicians we used were top of the line. Collectively, they had recorded with Boz Skaggs, Steely Dan, Toto, and Seals And Crofts, to name a few. But sometimes using the best money can buy is counter productive.

When people are too good, it is hard to get them to see outside of their own version of what they're doing. Overplaying can become a significant problem, as well as believing that what you've played is good enough simply because you played it.

Because I had some money to spend on high quality players, to some extent I missed an opportunity to use lesser known people, who may have delivered something extra, in the way of emotion, not necessarily found in the playing of the very successful.

In other words "heart" may be lost to some degree, because of ego, when you think you can do no wrong, but don't misunderstand the point I am making here.

I'm glad I got the chance to use these musicians on the recordings, but I was also aware at the time that it was nearly impossible to get these guys to try anything other than what they decided was the way it should be played.

If I had the original recording that I made of Growing Pains Of Time, and played the studio version, and then the original version, you'd know immediately what I'm talking about.

Even though I love the studio version of that song, I liked my version better, because it was raw and powerful, while the studio version is a bit too over produced and slick.

I fault myself for this more than faulting anyone else. It was my responsibility to convey what I wanted, and I failed to do that to some extent.

It is too easy to just say, "We are our own worse critics," and leave it at that. What I am talking about is real. The songs could have been better than they are if I could have conveyed my vision more clearly than I did.

The problem, as I alluded to before, was that I was newly sober and my capacity to be more demanding of what I wanted was stifled by me.

If I was to record now I would have no problem, or less of a problem, fighting to get it right no matter who was playing. There is something very important to be said for knowing exactly what you want and being willing to fight for it.

If my vision of what the songs were supposed to sound like was indeed valid, which I believe it was, then to not achieve that was a failure, whatever the cause.

Every time I hear a song of mine not being the way it was intended when I wrote it, I know in my gut it could have been better.

If I ever get to record again and get it right, and nobody likes it then, that will be fine. But if I do get it right and people go ape shit over it, then my point will be proven.

I just want that opportunity again, because previously I failed, and the failure came as a result of letting things slide at the time of recording, which I now consider a weakness of mine in the past.