L.A. Company Buys Catalogue of Black Music

Los Angeles-based Warner/Chappell Music Inc. said Friday that it has acquired Mighty Three Music, one of the last major independent black music catalogues outside Motown.

The price of the sale was not disclosed, but a record industry source close to the deal said Warner/Chappell paid slightly less than $15 million. The Philadelphia-based company owns copyrights to about 2,500 songs, including compositions performed by such artists as the O’Jays, the Stylistics and Teddy Pendergrass.

Warner/Chappell’s acquisition of Mighty Three dramatizes the recent scramble by music conglomerates to snap up even small music publishers. The interest has been fueled by expanding opportunities to market songs in movies, television advertising, albums and other outlets.

Fewer than 60 of the 2,500 songs owned by Mighty Three, which had estimated revenue of $820,000 in 1988, sold more than 1 million copies after they were originally recorded. But Warner/Chappell says it believes that it can successfully market such catchy tunes as singer Jerry Butler’s “Western Union Man,” singer Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones” and the O’Jays’ 1974 hit “For the Love of Money,” which resurfaced on television two years ago in a Nissan car commercial.

“These are the great R&B; songs we grew up with,” said Leslie E. Bider, president and chief executive of Warner/Chappell, a unit of Time Warner Inc. “We expect these songs to be covered (re-recorded) by other artists in the future because of their strength and timeliness.”

Mighty Three Music was launched in 1973, when Philadelphia producer Thomas R. Bell joined with songwriters Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff to become one of the foremost proponents of the pop-disco Philadelphia sound. The sound was recorded primarily on the Philadelphia International and Philly Groove labels.

Music publishing firms such as Mighty Three were once viewed as the Plain Janes of the entertainment field. But prices for such concerns have skyrocketed since singer Michael Jackson spotlighted them five years ago by paying $50 million for a British company that controlled the copyrights to nearly all of the Beatles’ songs.