Fame, No Fortune for Rock Pioneers : Jimmy Reed Will Be Honored Tonight, Yet the Industry Abandoned Him and Others

“Shame, Shame, Shame.”

That was the title of blues singer Jimmy Reed’s last big hit, but it could serve as a commentary on the music industry’s treatment of rock’s aging pioneers.

Reed, composer of such classic blues tunes as “Big Boss Man” and “Take Out Some Insurance,” will be honored tonight at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria as one of 10 new inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But the accolades Reed will receive at this evening’s $1,250-a-plate, black-tie gala will do little to diminish the exploitation he suffered throughout his career.

During the last nine years of his life, Reed--who scored more than 18 Top 20 R&B; hits between 1957 and 1963--received no royalty payments whatsoever. He died at 51 in 1976 broke and in debt.

In fact, had Reed’s poverty-stricken widow, Mary, not taken the publishing company that controls her husband’s song catalogue to court last year, his family would have never received a cent in royalties.

“The tragic irony of pioneers like Jimmy being honored is that many of these artists and their families were abandoned to live and die in destitute conditions by the same industry now singing their praises,” said Scott A. Cameron, a Burbank artists’ rights advocate whose company negotiated a settlement on behalf of the Reed estate. “For that, the music industry should be ashamed of itself.”

Reed is not the first Hall of Famer to fall on hard times.

Jackie Wilson was buried without a headstone. Supremes member Florence Ballard died a welfare recipient. Little Richard, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, the Coasters, the Drifters and the Soul Stirrers have all been forced to fight for past-due monies.

During their heyday, most ‘50s and ‘60s rock artists never counted on seeing a royalty check. Royalties guarantee artists an established percentage rate of income for each record sold.

Many of rock’s early pioneers signed meager royalty agreements offering less than 3% of the wholesale price per record sold. While royalty rates for artists in 1991 have increased to about 10% of the retail price, reissue catalogue owners are legally bound to honor only the terms specified in original contracts.

Attorney Howell Begle, the founding executive director of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, a nonprofit group formed to aid senior performers, attributes the difficulty with collecting delinquent royalty payments to a never-ending paper chase.

“The problem is that you’re dealing with contracts that were signed 20 years ago,” Begle said in a phone interview from New York. “You’re dealing with companies which have gone out of business and documents that have disappeared, not to mention the statute of limitations.”

Begle suggests that the current royalty crisis cannot be resolved by standard accounting techniques.

“It’s an issue of conscience and it calls for an enlightened response,” Begle said. “If the situation is ever going to change, corporations must go beyond what they are legally obligated to do.”

In the late ‘80s, much talk circulated throughout the industry regarding plans to improve the plight of rock’s disenfranchised pioneers.

Atlantic Records broke the ice in October, 1988, when it cut a $750,000 deal to compensate many of its early artists who had not been receiving royalties. The company not only agreed to audit and update royalty payments, it donated nearly $2 million to the Washington-based Rhythm and Blues Foundation in an effort to address the needs of aging artists.

“When a record company buys a catalogue, I believe they also inherit the duty to pay the artists on the records that they release,” Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic chief and chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said in a phone interview from New York. “These people deserve to be paid.”

MCA Records, which purchased the Chess Records catalogue six years ago, followed Atlantic’s lead in 1989, agreeing to double the base royalty rate due artists from Chess reissue sales. Irving Azoff, the executive who initiated the MCA/Chess royalty payment plan, finds it “unconscionable” that no other companies have followed suit.

“There should be no question whatsoever as to paying these back royalties,” Azoff, now head of the new Giant Records, said. “I truly believed that after Atlantic did it and we did it, the entire industry would step up. But it just didn’t happen.”

According to Azoff, current marketing costs associated with promoting reissued catalogue recordings are extremely low. Beyond investments in artwork, advertising and possible studio remastering, CD reissues of blues and R&B; oldie compilations present record firms with easy, high-profit returns.

As a result, more and more companies are cashing in on the lucrative CD reissue box set market.

Cameron--who has won delinquent royalty settlements on behalf of such veterans as Willie Dixon, Little Milton and Koko Taylor, as well as for the estates of Reed, Percy Mayfield, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters--said he wishes music industry executives would pay as much attention to royalty balance sheets as they do to Hall of Fame ballots.

Helping aging rockers pay their bills is a priority for the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.

Founded in May, 1988, the group was created to administer financial assistance to hospitalized recording artists and to disperse grants to aging performers in their legal battles and creative pursuits.

In 1989, the foundation handed out $125,000 in grants to several prominent R&B; performers including Percy Sledge, Charles Brown and the Clovers. The organization has also dispersed funds to pay for the funerals of Big Joe Turner, Dee Clark and Coasters singer Cornell Gunther.

The Rhythm and Blues Foundation also underwrites the rent on former Motown star Mary Wells’ Burbank apartment. Broke and uninsured, Wells was evicted last fall from her home after being diagnosed with throat cancer.

“I don’t know how any of your readers can continue purchasing the old Motown hits,” whispered Wells in a phone interview on Monday. “Look at the condition Motown left Mary Wells in.”

Joyce McRae, a Rhythm and Blues Foundation trustee and adviser for Wells and soul singer Sam Moore, suggests that delinquent royalty payments constitute the equivalent of pension fund defaults.

“Most of these artists are living without the benefit of health insurance or pension funds, for God’s sake,” McRae said in a phone interview from her Scottsdale, Ariz., office on Tuesday. “Every year, the industry pats itself on the back at these award shows for honoring rock’s royal heritage, but in the meantime, these people are suffering.”

Moore, formerly of the soul duo Sam & Dave, echoed her complaints.

“I hear all these musicians and industry types talking about saving the Amazon rain forest,” Moore said. “But what about saving us? We’re an endangered species, too.”

Artists honored in the 1991 performance category include LaVern Baker, the Byrds, John Lee Hooker, the Impressions, Wilson Pickett, Jimmy Reed and Ike & Tina Turner. Blues legend Howlin’ Wolf will receive this year’s early influence/forefather category, while record producers Dave Bartholomew and Ralph Bass will be inducted in the non-performing division.