I Wrote That One, Too . . . Page 5

  I’m still somewhat perplexed why I am so allergic to math. My dad was a whiz at it, but I still can’t do long division to save my life. Musicians are often good mathematicians because there is a mathematical correlation to rhythms and musical patterns. Perhaps, because I wasn’t formally trained, I missed the connection. Perhaps the geometric plasmic bubbles took up so much space in my brain that there was no room left for equations and problem solving.

  I switched majors to the journalism school’s radio/TV/film program. It did not require math, and there were actual functioning film and recording studios on the premises.

  Things were starting to look up.

  I spent the majority of my first year as a Georgia Bulldog making friends and getting adjusted to the Southern lifestyle: fraternity parties, football games, and sneaking into the music school. The problem was, I wasn’t a music major, so I technically did not have access to the practice rooms. I kept getting kicked out because music majors had set times for those rooms, and I was hijacking their spaces.

  I feigned stupidity, but there were signs everywhere: If you are not a music major, you are not allowed to be here. I ignored the signs and practiced there a lot. I would look for a room that was empty and just act like I belonged in there. The biggest problem was that just as I would be getting into something really good, a student would barge in and say, “You’re in the wrong room—I’ve got this one reserved.”

  “Shit, okay, sorry, I must’ve read the room number wrong.”

  I’d move a couple of rooms over and begin again. This went on for a while, but the interruptions were just a small part of the major problem; there would be trombones, timpani, violins, and singers all bleeding from the various rooms in close proximity, and it was fairly impossible for me to concentrate.

  Eventually, I got kicked out so many times I became persona non grata there.

  I did inquire about sitting in on an orchestration and music-theory class that was available to non-music majors. It was interesting, and I picked up a few tidbits of information that explained the mechanics of some of the things I somehow already knew innately. But I got bored quickly and dropped the class.

  Truth be told, all I wanted to do was go to football games and date girls. With all of the excitement of my newfound college adventures, I can honestly say I put my songwriting on the back burner for the first three months in Athens, Georgia.

  Until I found my destiny in the most unlikely of places.

  One night I was picking up a date at Brumby Hall, the brand new all-girl dormitory on campus. My date was keeping me waiting, so I wandered around the lobby. It was massive, with couches, study parlors, a reception desk, and a glass-enclosed piano room with a baby grand Steinway in it.

  I was like a moth drawn to a flame. I couldn’t help myself as I immediately sat down and began to play. A huge rush came over me, and I wanted to call the girl and tell her I got sick, just so I could sit there and write songs for the next twelve hours. Of course, just as I was getting into it, the door opened and she said, with a big ol’ Southern accent, “Sorry to keep you waitin’ darlin’!”

  She sat down next to me.

  “Oh my, you play the piano? Play me something.”

  Thank God she didn’t say “Sugar” at the end of that sentence.

  You can guess the rest . . . I played her a few songs I wrote, and it was pretty much a done deal as to what would happen after the movie that night.

  Brumby Hall became my new hotspot. I’d go there and kill two birds with one stone. I’d sit down at the baby grand and try my best to split my time between meeting girls and getting some song ideas down. Most of my fraternity brothers and the close friends I had made were also dating girls from Brumby, so on many occasions, Ronnie Hagen, Mark Fisher, and Jimmy Mischner would accompany me up there to sit in the piano room and scope out the Brumby coeds.

  By the end of my freshman year, I had gotten back to writing some pretty good songs and was fully adjusted to college life. I was having a great time, the Bulldogs had a fantastic season, and I somehow managed to pass all of my classes.

  After my freshman year, I headed to New York for the summer and met Nancy Masters, the first woman to have an indelible impact on my life. My sister had been promoted to producer of advertising commercials at Wells Rich Green, and she had arranged a summer job for me in the mailroom. It would get me back up to New York, where I could try and meet more music people, make a little money, and, at the very least, eat some great New York City food after a year of southern-fried everything.

  My first day on the job, I met my sister’s secretary. She had long brown hair, beautiful eyes, and a gorgeous smile. It was pretty much love at first sight. She was smart, beautiful, funny, and kind. I was hooked. Like an infatuated schoolboy, I found every reason to leave the mailroom and swing by Nancy’s desk to see her and make small talk.

  She had just recently broken up with her high-school boyfriend of three years, and she made it pretty clear to me she was not too interested in jumping into another “situation.” But since the summer job was only going to last three months before I would have to go back to Georgia, I was pretty determined to make some headway in the romance department.

  After ten days of working there, I got up the nerve to ask Nancy to have lunch with me. To my surprise, she said yes. We ate lunch together almost every day, which soon evolved into dinners, going to movies, and seeing the Bee Gees’ first American concert at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. We also went to a few Mets games at Shea Stadium, where her dad worked.

  By the end of the summer, I was really torn about going back to Georgia. I was committed to Nancy, and I knew she was going to be the girl I would marry and spend the rest of my life with. Still, I had made a promise to my parents that I would graduate college, so I went back.

  Nancy would come visit Athens often during my sophomore year. Having a long-distance relationship was challenging, to say the least, but somehow we survived being apart most of the time.

  I dated Nancy all through college and continued to write music on my own. By the time my junior year had rolled around, Jimmy Mischner and I decided to leave the crazy frat house where we had roomed together during our sophomore year. We found a dilapidated apartment building above a pharmacy that had to have been built in the late 1800s.

  It was sixty-five dollars per month apiece for this one-bedroom, one-bath flat, with a kitchen and living room, complete with one of those old Murphy beds that pulled down out of the wall. If you took a shower longer than three minutes, the clogged and rusted drain would have the water line almost to your knees. And there was usually a rat or three renting space in the kitchen pantry.

  It was disgusting, but it was also cheap.

  Both of us had cars, and different class schedules, so we hardly ever saw each other during the day. Jimmy was from the small town of Kingstree, South Carolina, and he would frequently head home for long weekends or holidays.

  One day, I was shopping in downtown Athens when I passed an old piano/music store that I had never paid attention to before. I went in to browse around, dreaming of the day I could have my own piano, instead of having to steal hours here and there at Brumby Hall or the music school’s practice rooms.

  As I looked around the small store, I noticed what looked like a miniature upright piano in the corner. I walked over to it and played a few chords. Surprisingly, it sounded like a full piano. The brand name was Diapason. It was made in Hawaii by Kauai. The shop’s owner came over and told me it was a pretty rare “practice piano” as it was an octave and a half short of keys. It had been sitting in his store for almost a year and no one had shown any interest. Because of its small size, I knew that it would be perfect for me . . . if I could get it up those three flights of rickety stairs and through the small door of the apartment.

  “How much?”

  “Eight hundred dollars, brand new.”<
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  I knew that there was no way my parents would ever go for that. I told him I was a student but was hoping to make a future in music and writing songs. He thought for a minute and asked, “Would you be willing to rent it from me, with an option to buy it?”

  So, for $12.50 a month, I was the proud owner of my first piano. He delivered it, and with Jimmy’s and my help the three of us got it up and in the apartment without a scratch. I finally had an instrument that was available to me 24/7 in the privacy of my own place.

  During my junior year, I also started researching music publishers in Atlanta. Bill Lowery was the only game in town. The head of Lowery Music, he was an established music producer and publisher, and, from what I had heard, untouchable. I was undeterred. I cut class and drove to Atlanta, determined to see him.

  The receptionist told me, in no uncertain terms, “No one sees the wizard.” So I asked if I could play for her, in the hope she might at least pass along a good word to some higher up at the company. Minutes later, after listening to a few of my songs, she said, “Wait here,” and ran out.

  About twenty minutes later, she returned with Mary Tallent, the vice president of Lowery’s company.

  “Do exactly what you just did,” the receptionist ordered. And I did.

  Mary Tallent listened intently and asked if I could come back in a week to play for Bill, as he was out of town. I told her I’d be happy to cut more classes. The following week, when Bill heard me, he signed me on the spot.

  “I want you to write for us,” Bill said. “We don’t have anyone who writes melody like you. We mostly have country and rock writers who are self-contained recording artists, and I can use someone here to write pop love songs for other outside artists to record.”

  Lowery likened me to a young Burt Bacharach, not knowing Bacharach was my idol. He also paid me one hundred dollars a week. And I didn’t need my parents’ signatures this time.

  For the next two years, I worked for Lowery and continued my long distance relationship with Nancy. We spoke on the phone almost daily; she came to visit me in Georgia, and I would go to New York City to see her whenever I could.

  In between writing songs, doing demos, and trying to get a few songs cut by the local Atlanta artists, I got my first job arranging a string session. This was a real milestone for me. There was an R&B vocal group called the Tams who were signed to Lowery’s label. They had had a few regional radio hits in the South and were looking to record a few new songs for a new album. Mike Clark, their producer, had heard a song of mine called “How Long Love.” The song was pretty lame, but Mike liked it and wanted to cut it with the Tams.

  I was ecstatic! It was a breakthrough for me. I was getting a song cut. And the best part was that Mike asked me if I could do a string arrangement. Of course I said yes without any hesitation.

  Always say yes.

  I spent the next two days frantically trying to figure out how to translate what I was hearing in my head to paper. This was my first rodeo. I did manage to scribble out something, but the string players that we had hired couldn’t really read what I had written, so I ended up humming what I wanted them to play. It was mostly unison lines, and fortunately, by the end of the session, I learned more about what not to do, than what to do. All in all, the song turned out just okay, but the Tams loved it, and that was good enough for me.

  I spent the next two months going to the public library and studying everything I could about the instruments of the orchestra and their ranges, and revisited the basic fundamentals of scales and sharps and flats. I regretted so much not being a music major, but then again, I learned faster by experience and listening to my inner musical instincts.

  One of my best experiences at Lowery’s was in my early years there. One of my closest friends from school, Mark Yarbrough, had a band that he was still playing with on the weekends from his hometown of Albany, Georgia. One weekend, Mark asked me if I wanted to hear them play a gig that they had booked. I went with Mark and was pleasantly surprised at what I heard. I especially liked the raspy, bluesy sound of their lead singer, Stan Glass.

  I asked Bill Lowery if he would let me go into the studio with Cotton (the name of the band) and produce a few songs. Bill gave me the green light.

  Milton Brown and I had a really fun song called “Givin’ It All I Got,” so we went into the studio and recorded the band performing our song along with the old R&B standard “I Know.” Everybody at Lowery’s really loved the band’s sound, and Bill said he thought he could probably get a record company interested. I was getting ready to head home to New York for a long holiday weekend, so we decided that when I got back, we would get into it.

  It was good to be back in New York City in the late spring. Nancy and I spent most of my break together. Her dad—my future father-in-law, Nick Masters—worked in security at Shea Stadium. He invited us to see a Mets game that weekend. We had great seats three rows from the field, sitting next to a gentleman Nick was friendly with who attended every home game.

  Nick introduced us. The man’s name was Nat Tarnopol. He was the president and owner of Brunswick Records. The label was based out of Chicago, but Nat ran it from his New York offices. Nick had briefed Nat that I was a songwriter, and Nat asked me if I had any songs he might like for some of his artists. He invited me to get a tape together and gave me his card with where to send it.

  When I got back to Georgia, I sent Nat a tape with three or four songs that I had written. A few days after he received them, I got a call from a man in Chicago named Eugene Record. At first I thought I was being fucked with . . . but his name was really Eugene Record! He had been in New York, where Nat had played him my tape. Eugene was head of A&R for Brunswick in Chicago, and he wanted to record two of my songs with the great Jackie Wilson.

  “Are you kidding me?” was all I could say.

  “No. Jackie and I really love the songs. We’re cutting them tomorrow, and Nat wanted me to let you know.”

  I couldn’t wait to let Lowery know that I was getting two songs on the next Jackie Wilson album. This was definitely a “pinch-myself” moment.

  Some six weeks later, I was back in New York for summer break. I went up to the Brunswick offices to say hi to Nat and listen to the Jackie Wilson recordings of my songs. It was a thrill. I hardly recognized my songs, though, as Eugene’s heavy R&B-influenced production took them to a different place. It was killer!

  While I was meeting with Nat and some of his staff, he asked me if I had anything else I was working on. I said, “Yes, I’m producing a great Southern band out of Atlanta called Cotton. We’ve cut a few things and are looking for a label deal.”

  Nat said, “I want to hear it.”

  “I just happen to have a tape of our first two things we’ve cut, can I play it for you now?”

  A verse and a chorus into the first song, we had a deal.

  Nat asked me what else I wanted to do with the guys, and I said we had a few more songs we wanted to record. It took a few weeks to get the paperwork in order, but by September we were back in the studio in Atlanta, recording some additional tracks with the band.

  Between juggling school, Nancy, holidays, and the other guys’ schedules, it was difficult to find a good chunk of time to spend completing the project. God, I couldn’t wait to graduate!

  Nat told me he wanted me to do overdubs and have the songs mixed in Chicago by the Brunswick Studios engineer. Eugene Record was also there, and he wanted to be somewhat involved as well.

  It was winter break by the time Mark and I went to Chicago. The studio was on Lake Michigan, and with the wind whipping off the lake, the cold was beyond any cold day I had ever experienced.

  We had booked a three-girl group of background singers called Kitty and the Heywoods, whom Eugene had recommended I use. They were fabulous. But I still had not gotten to meet Eugene Record yet.

  I wanted to put an addit
ional piano part on one of the songs we were doing with the band. I went out into the studio and overdubbed the part. When I walked back into the control room, there was this guy with an enormous Afro standing there. He reached out his hand, smiled a big smile, and said, “Hi Steve, I’m Eugene Record; welcome to Chicago.”

  He apologized for not getting by sooner but said he had been next door, working on a record of his own with his group, the Chi-Lites. After a few minutes of catch-up and music talk, he said he would see me later, as he had to get back to his project in the next studio over. About an hour later, we were starting to mix the band’s stuff when Eugene popped his head into our control room, asking me if I could swing by his studio when I had a minute.

  I walked down the hall and into the studio where Eugene was working. He was overdubbing a melodica part on this cool song. He wanted a certain piano part put on his song that was similar to what he heard me playing on the Cotton record, and he asked if I wouldn’t mind trying “something” for him.

  I sat at the piano and started riffing to the track he was playing. It was a really simple part, but it was exactly what Eugene wanted. A few takes later, he hugged me, thanked me, and took us to dinner on the company.

  Little did I know that I had just played the piano on one of the great R&B records of all time . . . “Oh Girl” by the Chi-Lites.

  Cotton released two singles on the Brunswick label, one of which got some mid-chart play. “Oh Girl” was a monster hit for the Chi-Lites, and I later produced a Top 10 country version of the song with Con Hunley on Warner Bros. Records.

  Eugene and I remained friends, and we would see each other occasionally until his death in 2005. He recorded a few more of my songs with several other artists signed to Brunswick. Nat Tarnopol passed away in 1987 at the age of fifty-six.