Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely began with dance bands in the Midwest during the 1930s and became a recording manufacturing exec and record producer at King Records.
(Author’s Note: Chapters written in italics are from Neely’s personal memoirs and do not always agree with outside sources.)
Meanwhile, I was still working for Allied, living in New Jersey. There was a daily Smoke Rise commuter bus to Manhattan leaving at seven each morning and returning at 6 p.m. If I had to go to my Manhattan office in the Port Authority building on 39th Street first, I took No. 507 to No. 17 in Hackensack New Jersey and then to No. 3 in Union City and the Lincoln Tunnel. If I went to the plant first, I got on No. 17 near Lindhurst, then to the Lincoln Tunnel terminal. Going home at night I reversed the procedure.
On many nights, when I couldn’t get home, I stayed at a small hotel on 54th and Broadway. The King Records office was across the street. For all commuters to Manhattan, from wherever, such a complicated procedure was the way it was if you did not live in town. Doing too many jobs was wearing me out. Mr. Broadhead gave me a choice, Allied’s vice president of sales stationed in Manhattan or manager of the new Allied pressing plant in Jersey. I chose sales.
Syd was getting more and more ill. He and Zella were spending much of their time in their condominium in North Miami Beach. I was at King’s in Cincinnati on a regular basis. All the staff and employees treated me like one of them. Allied’s government prime production contract was terminating soon in 1957. It was time for me to move on. I wanted to be a producer.
ZIV/World offered me a contract to produce “I Led Three Lives” and the World Transcription Library. I would be based in New York.
I talked to Syd at least two or three times a week. I was in Manhattan and called Syd in Cincinnati about 10 in the morning.
“Syd, just wanted you to be the first to know. I am leaving Allied to join ZIV/World as a producer tomorrow.”
There was a long silence on the phone.
“Hal, you promised me that if you ever left Allied you would come to work for me.”
“I didn’t remember it that way.”
Syd hung up on me. About seven that night I received a call.
“Hal, can you come and see me? I’m at the Sheraton.” Syd always stayed there when in Manhattan. For Syd, he was being nice and polite.
I had no idea what he wanted to talk about. Syd was like a second Dad to me so of course I would go see him. “Yes, I’ll be there.”
I walked into his room. Sitting with him was Dr. Richard Nathan, Sid’s younger brother from Miami Beach. I was greeted warmly. I’d always been like family. We talked and talked. They wanted to know why I had decided to leave Allied after almost ten years. It soon became evident to me that they were serious about working something out for me to come to King. We got down to the nitty-gritty. I now sensed the ZIV/World may not be what I really wanted. This could be as good or better a deal for me.
“Hal, just what is it you want in the near future?” Richard asked. “You’re not getting any younger.”
Boy, I knew that. This might be my chance. “My own record company someday.”
There it was on the table. We talked and talked some more.
“Hal, we will give you a 10-year contract deal and whatever else you want,” Syd told me. “You will run King. Richard and I have talked it over. We will also give you a first refusal option, no time limit, to buy all the King music and publishing assets, but not my personal property, for $1,676,000.”
It was almost sun-up, time for breakfast. Syd was very, very ill. They gave me everything I asked for. We shook hands. I wrote it up, in my hand, a simple contractual sale agreement on a blank page in a notebook I always carried in my briefcase. We had it notarized in the morning in the Sheraton office. Richard went back to Miami Beach, and Syd stayed in Manhattan a few days with me. I called ZIV and Mr. Broadhead in Hollywood. The plan was that I would join King as vice president and chief operating officer and be a member of the board on January 1, 1958.
I would sell my house in Smoke Rise as soon as possible and King would move my family to Cincinnati. In the interim I would work out of and live in Syd’s brownstone building on 54th Street and Broadway for free. It was across from Al and Dick’s Café, a local music industry hangout. I would be on King’s payroll and help Allied until they replaced me. Mary, our son, and I packed up and moved everything in a moving van to Cincinnati. King furnished me with a new Buick station wagon.
We first moved into a temporary apartment. Mary wanted a house. Jack Kelly, a true Kentucky gentleman of the old school and chief financial officer of King, assisted us in the move. Kelly had helped Syd in his buy-out of the House of the Blind pressing plant in Louisville. We decided on a beautiful small rural residential community, Terrace Park. Mary picked out a house under construction on a dead-end side street. I would be about 30 minutes from the King plant. The house had two stories, a full den and storage room in the basement, a nice front hall entrance, large living room and a dining room with fireplace, and yard. The first thing Mary did was add a big screened porch off the dining room just like the house in Smoke Rise.
We felt we were home, joining the Terrace Park country club and the local Presbyterian Church. Our neighbor was a doctor who became our doctor. We made a host of new friends. At work I was in charge, but Syd was still the boss.