Syd Nathan and Hank Ballard

Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely began his career touring with big bands and worked his way into Syd Nathan’s King records, producing rock and country songs. Along the way he worked with James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, who referred to Neely as his favorite uncle.

(Author’s note: Italics denote the material is from Neely’s own memoirs.)

Syd Nathan died in Miami Beach March, 1968. I was in New York. Zella called me, and I flew to Miami. On March 25, I exercised my option to purchase the King music assets and formed King Records Inc. of Ohio.
In April Don Pierce and I merged Starday and King. We sold the company to LIN Broadcasting Company in New York, a public company. That October, Don Pels, LIN president and CEO, agreed to a contractual relationship wherein I assigned LIN the “Hal Neely Starday/King music assets”—International Music Associates Ltd., a Turks and Caicos Island company– as a separate LIN division. I was elected as a LIN vice president and member of the board of directors. Don Pierce became only a LIN consultant, and I would keep a furnished apartment at 54th St./First Avenue in Manhattan.
I notified Don Pels in 1971 that I wanted to buy back my library/catalog. The problem was that I was an officer/director of LIN. However, if I could get an offer for the library/catalog from a reputable third-party, the LIN board would sell the library/catalog back to me at the same price. LIN announced it “chose not to stay in the music business if Hal Neely was leaving LIN.”
I obtained three bona fide offers from three nationally known reputable record conglomerates to purchase all of my music assets for $1,625,000. The LIN board accepted the offer with no time limit or interest on said purchase.
I needed funds so I entered into a contractual agreement of sale with an English company, Polydor Records (Author’s note: Polydor was a German company.) Polydor was attempting to become established in the American music scene with the purchase of “certain James Brown master recordings” subject to all licenses, royalty agreements, Hal Neely royalties, fees, commissions et al and the six years remaining on the James Brown exclusive recording contract with me. That cash offer was for $1,412,000. Polydor offered me a top USA Polydor CEO/managerial job, but I refused.
In April of that year I entered into an agreement with Freddy Bienstock/Jerry Lieber/Mike Stoller (BLS), and we formed Tennessee Recording and Publishing Company Inc. with offices in the Brill building in New York and the Starday-King complex on Dickerson Road in Nashville. I moved my LIN office and Starday-King personnel to the Starday-King complex in Tennessee. Victoria resumed her “old non-official”– non-salaried—Starday-King functions as an aide to me.
Over the next three years my association with BLS did not work out. Lieber and Stoller spent most of their time in Europe on company funds. They contributed no new songs to our catalog. We disagreed on policy/procedures/expenses/duties. In 1973 BLS called a special board meeting in New York. I was voted out as president/chief executive officer of Tennessee Recording Company on a vote of 3 to 1. Freddy Bienstock’s younger brother was named to replace me. I returned to Nashville and moved out of the Tennessee Recording Company complex on Dickerson Road.
We had an impasse. BLS would not sell to me; I would not sell to BLS. The dispute would go to court. We reached an agreement about the price. We flipped a coin. The loser would sell to the other party. I called heads; it was tails. I lost.
Unbeknownst to me until several weeks later, BLS had entered into a private/personal sale agreement with Moe Lytle doing business as Koala/Gusto Records for this sale to Lytle of all the Tennessee Recording Company phonograph master recordings and the real property complex on Dickerson Road. BLS would retain TRPC/SK publishing rights/catalog. I was too late. The deal was done.
The 1970s was when everything went down the tubes. The record business was zilch. It was time for me to think of a different career. Victoria and I went to real estate school to get our licenses. She moved into a nice little apartment in Madison, and we joined up with a friend of ours in his Madison office renting apartments and homes. It did not take us long to find out this was not our cup of tea.
I had a friend in the coal mining business in War, West Virginia. We picked up an operating coal mine on the mountain. The United Mine Workers went on strike, so we sold our coal for what money we could get. I bailed out and quit the coal business.
I had gotten hooked up with Dick Hawkins, Boots Randolph, and Alex Moran, and we were able to pick up, cheap, 40 acres of wild hilly timberlands north of Hendersonville on the Tennessee-Kentucky border. We could log the timber off, make our investment back and still have our hideaway. It was a log cabin type of two-story house on a small creek with an old but still good barn sitting on a little hill overlooking a beautiful meadow. It was a perfect getaway for all of us. We paid cash. I would handle the books, pay the bills etc.
Hawkins was married and so was Boots. Alex was living with a lady friend. We were all into horses, riding in parades, going to shows, etc. Dick ran a road building company, had a bulldozer and truck and cut a series of riding trails up and around and through the timber. Dick and I purchased a large used two-bedroom house trailer and put it on the hill next to the barn. Boots, Moran and our other guests bunked in the cabin. I was designated “chief cook.” We would go up to the “North 40” several times a month, sometimes on a Friday night or Saturday morning and come back to town Sunday night.
Nashville was changing and growing fast many of the music people moved from Old Hickory Lake into Orange County or to West Nashville. I gambled that the town would grow east where there was lots of good open land and the price was right. I picked up 80 acres for development and started construction on six houses. Hawkins Brothers Company did the land and roadwork. I bet wrong.
I would go there, sit under a tree awaiting lookers. No traffic. I lost part of my shirt and bailed out. Most of America went into a bad turn down. The music business hit an all-time low. It was time for me to try to put the pieces back together. I sold the house on the lake and the land which I jointly owned with Don Pierce. Mary and I moved into a rented house in Hendersonville where she worked as a red lady volunteer at the hospital. I stayed in town most nights to avoid a lot of “conflict and trash.”
I met Sam Martz in 1996. He was a true Christian gentleman who owned a religious music and Bible company and a large building in Madison. Sam and I decided to join forces, combining his religious music with my black music company, Hallelujah. I moved my office to Sam’s building and put my office down the hall from Sam’s front office. I built a recording studio and hired a staff, which included Denise, a sharp beautiful blonde haired young lady who had worked on Music Row so she had a lot of contacts. I put her in the office next to mine.
We hung all my gold records, pictures, awards and commendations on the walls in my big office and in the hallway. I had lots of extra office furniture– conference table etc. — which we placed in a storeroom in the back with all the “Hal Neely big-band arrangements,” contracts, and memorabilia. I hired Moses Dillard, a black preacher who was also a superb musician, as a producer. He brought in some very good black gospel acts. We were in business. I stayed many nights in Nashville with an old friend, Reed Parker, who was a pharmacist on staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital. He had a lot of free time and loved my music business so he joined us there also.
Little Richard had gotten a divinity degree. Sam Martz was his best friend and advisor. When in Nashville Richard was always in Sam’s office. He and I resumed our close relationship from the original James Brown days back in Macon, Georgia.
Some kids broke into the building and stole all my pictures, and awards– took it all, including my golf clubs and my band library. I offered a reward with “no questions asked” for the return of my things. No luck.
My son and his wife now lived in Cookeville. She had a job, and my son was going to college and also working. Mary saw them often.
Victoria worked as a secretary at Vanderbilt University. Mary and I were still married, still friends but living apart in different worlds. She had a nice apartment next to the hospital in Madison. Mary was always very close to our son and his wife, but I was not. We all just sort of went our own way. We agreed to a divorce. I took care of her financially the rest of her life. A beautiful lady. Mary was very close to my parents who now lived in Portland, Oregon. In time she moved back to the Stone farm in Lyons, Nebraska.
It just happened–Victoria and I fell in love. She was 22 years younger than I. We could not get married until my divorce from Mary was final. We made a host of new friends and were happy.
Ellen Tune’s invalid mother lived alone in the Elmington Townhouse Condominiums adjacent to the Westchester Country Club in prestigious West Nashville. It had two huge upstairs bedrooms each with a bath, a full kitchen with everything, a dining room looking out onto a flowered patio, a huge living room, a full basement split into two small guest bedrooms with bath. Mrs. Tune died. Ellen’s brother, an attorney, had his own place. Ellen had her own apartment also. They loved Victoria and offered to sell her the house. The problem was that Victoria had no money, no credit history, and no steady job.
I was able to arrange financing, guarantee the loan, and place the condominium in the name of Victoria and my brother Sam. We moved in. Victoria and I took the master suite and the back bedroom as a guest room. The front door opened off a flowered walkway but everyone used the back door off the kitchen. Our best friends were Stan and Betty who lived several blocks from us. Stan could build anything so I hired him to redo the kitchen and make the other changes Victoria wanted.
I was “supposedly retired,” but remained very active in Nashville’s country music community. One of my best friends ran a catering service with his office on Music Row. Each Monday morning he held a free breakfast meeting for the local “Music Row Reformed Alcoholics”– I wasn’t an alcoholic but I knew most of the guys and I attended the meetings to hear the Music Row gossip. I was now “old hat” in Nashville– no longer sitting at the head table– each year Victoria and I were moved further back into the crowd.