Pat Boone’s Label Seeking Salvation : With Few Hits, Family Record Firm Foundering

Through his Lamb & Lion Records, entertainer Pat Boone has used music to spread a Christian message.

He recorded such albums as “What I Believe,” featuring the hymns “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “Old Rugged Cross.” Daughter Debby Boone, best known for her 1977 hit “You Light Up My Life,” was the label’s most popular star. Also recording for the label was another Boone daughter, Laury Boone Browning.

Now the Burbank record company that Boone owns is seeking financial salvation through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Last September, Lamb & Lion Records quietly filed for protection from creditors in the wake of financial and legal problems.

Court papers in the Chapter 11 filing list $355,689 in unsecured debts and $62,416 in assets. One savings and loan owed nearly $200,000 is suing the record label in San Mateo County Superior Court, alleging in court papers that Boone and a former Lamb & Lion executive created a “fraudulent plan” to divert money to themselves. A lawyer for Boone said the entertainer denies the allegation.

News Spread Slowly

Although the company is owned by a celebrity, news of the bankruptcy-court filing has spread slowly through the Christian music business. Several executives and producers, some of whom have worked with Lamb & Lion, said they were unaware of the label’s filing but added that they are not surprised that it has suffered financially.

“Debby Boone is the only thing they had that sold very much. You can’t support a whole record label on one artist,” said Billy Ray Hearn, owner of Sparrow Records in Chatsworth, one of the nation’s largest labels for Christian music.

The bankruptcy filing is a setback in the business career of Boone, 54, whose full name is Charles Eugene Boone and who is known as much for his wholesome, milk-drinking ways as he is for his 1950s hit records. They include such songs as “Love Letters in the Sand” and “Two Hearts.”

Other Business Ventures

Boone, who graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University, has frequently been portrayed in recent years as an entertainer who used his singing and acting career as a steppingstone to successful business ventures. In a 1984 interview with The Times, Boone said that “underneath the Pepsodent smile and white shoes is a would-be Ted Turner, or maybe even a Norman Lear.”

Boone’s recent ventures have included real estate and television. One of his holdings is a 37% stake in television station KDOC in Anaheim, where he is president of the board.

The station is Orange County’s only commercial television outlet and offers such programs as “Hot Seat,” hosted by combative talk-show host Wally George.

Boone and other family members could not be reached for comment about Lamb & Lion’s bankruptcy filing. But Richard A. Green, one of Boone’s lawyers, said that despite the record company’s problems, Boone’s other business interests are healthy.

“He is not in trouble. None of his (other) businesses are in trouble. This is one entity that on its own has not done that well,” Green said.

Not Very Active

Green added that Boone has not been very active in running the label. “This is something Pat has done because he loves it. It has no bearing on any other aspect of his business. There’s nothing to read into it,” Green said.

The largest claim against Lamb & Lion is for nearly $200,000 from Bell Savings, a San Mateo, Calif., financial institution that in late 1987 filed the lawsuit alleging that Boone diverted money.

Boone is listed as a creditor for a $117,000 loan, as is his Boone Productions, which is listed as having a $47,000 loan outstanding. Debby Boone, 32, is listed as a creditor for an undetermined amount in royalties.

Owns Entire Firm

Bell Savings, which was insolvent, was acquired last September by a group of investors led by former Treasury Secretary William Simon, with about $565 million in assistance from the Federal Savings & Loan Insurance Corp. Bell Savings was merged by the Simon group with a healthy institution, Western Federal Savings & Loan, and operates under that name.

Court records list Boone as 100% equity owner in the company. Joel Yodowitz, a lawyer representing the savings and loan, said Boone should be responsible for the label’s debts.

“He should stand in the shoes of Lamb & Lion in terms of any exposure,” Yodowitz said.

Attorney Green said Boone denies the allegations, adding that the dispute with the savings and loan is being worked out amicably.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Boone was one of the nation’s most popular singers, purportedly receiving as much fan mail a week as Elvis Presley did. He’s sold, according to some estimates, as many as 50 million records and became a popular actor, starring in such films as “State Fair.”

During the 1960s, Boone invested in problem-plagued businesses, including a direct-mail film company that went under and an automated restaurant chain that went out of business. He invested in the Oakland Oaks, a professional basketball team in the now-defunct American Basketball Assn., but avoided losses in that deal by selling the franchise.

Lamb & Lion was founded by Boone in 1983. Lawyers involved in the bankruptcy case said a reorganization plan for the company is being circulated among creditors and that more favorable contract terms have been worked out with its record distributor.

Lacks a Superstar

The company’s best-selling records were recorded by Debby Boone, whose albums typically sold 100,000 to 150,000 copies apiece, said Jerry Parks, general manager of the Benson Co., a Nashville, Tenn.-based Christian record company that serves as Lamb & Lion’s distributor. But he said buyers showed little interest in records by Pat Boone or the label’s other artists.

Even though Debby Boone’s albums sell well, record executives said, Lamb & Lion had no artist approaching the superstar category of Amy Grant, who is generally acknowledged to be the biggest star in popular Christian music and sells millions of records.

Other executives said Lamb & Lion suffered by not having a strong “label manager” to run things and was short of money for marketing and promotion. It also failed to sign other Christian artists outside the Boone family, as it had originally planned.

“The label is really a very small family label,” Parks said.

Lawyers and record executives said Lamb & Lion’s problems are not a reflection on the $350-million-a-year Christian music business, although the segment no longer enjoys the booming growth that came in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the surge of the born-again Christian movement.

“There’s nothing complicated to it. Not enough people were buying their product,” said Joseph A. Eisenberg, a Lamb & Lion bankruptcy lawyer.