Left over Warner tracks by DW and BB

[Blair N. Cummings]

I e-mailed David Nathan asking when we might see (hear) those tracks made by Dionne with Burt in `75. This was his reply:
No time soon; Rhino stopped the series I was doing on her plus she is 'not happy' about all the reissues being done!

Sorry!

DN

[Peter Greenhill]

[quote="Blair N. Cummings"]I e-mailed David Nathan asking when we might see (hear) those tracks made by Dionne with Burt in `75. This was his reply:
No time soon; Rhino stopped the series I was doing on her plus she is 'not happy' about all the reissues being done!

Sorry!

------------------------
Why would she not be happy with the reissues?

She doesn't want people to be able to listen to and enjoy her songs?

Wierd!!

[GehVorbei]

The woman is 65, she is slowly approaching retirement, she seems to be for whatever reason financially not as "comfortable" as some of her peers are, she has been working her butt off touring during the last couple of years and she had a very hard time securing a new record deal to be able to release some new product. Which she now finally did.

I can understand that she feels that all of reissues with the never heard before tacks can wait a little longer and are actually competing with the new products she is about to release.

[Guest]

Geh, Dionne has been known to be very generous when it comes to helping folks out and sometimes has been generous to a fault. She has also had some very bad financial advisors whom she trusted completely. Dionne is in the same boat as many of her peer's-Aretha Franklin has some royalties coming in from a few tracks she has written, but she, Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight, etc, in that they are primarily performers and do not have a great deal of residual income coming in. If they are not performing and recording they are not earining money. Burt Bacharach, the songwriter (as opposed to the performer) has had a steady stream of income all these years due to his residuals from airplay. In 1979, by the time Bacharach gave Dionne the rights to her recordings written by him (part of a 5.5 million settlement Burt and Hal paid-and how much of that Dionne ended up with after the lawyers got their cut is anybody's guess) she and many of her contemporaries were not receiving the airplay on pop and FM radio stations (DISCO!) that might had resulted in a windfall for her. Up until about 1978, Dionne was one of the most heavily played artists on AM and FM radio-she was a staple. Most of her classics sides were in rotation on most radio stations around the country. Disco did change a lot of that, along with standardized and computerized playlists (thank goodness for XM radio these days-Dionne can be heard again-along with Aretha and all the other wonderful artists from the 60s). She was also a favorite of DJs everywhere. All that to say just this: I listened to the BBC concert the other night and Dionne mentioned that she has released 63 albums (CDs). That is a great deal of product to compete with any thing new she is trying to do. Just as Bacharach wants to still be an artiste with something new to say, I think Dionne feels the same way. And, those days when she went back into the studio with Bacharach after their acrimonious spilt and just prior to her lawsuit against Bacharach and David could not have been happy times for her since the project was apparently scrapped after two tracks were laid down by Bacharach-one more blow-built up to knock down. I don't think she wants to relive the painful parts of her past and because they were so successful together I think she and Bacharach both have torelive a lot of the past every time they play one of their classics-there will never be anything like them again. How do you top yourself? Dionne made millions in the sixties and into the 70's and lived well, she made millions in the 80s and 90s and lived well, but alas, she did not, as is the case with many of her contemporaries, plan well. Still, at a minimum of $20,000 per appearance and at 200 appearances per year she is doing all right after she pays her band and expenses. I would imagine that right now she is making hay while the sun shines so that she can retire comfortably. I don't think we have to worry that Dionne is broke-I think probably far from it due to her heavy schedule of concerts. Not long ago, Aretha filed bankruptcy-and her phobia of air travel prevents her from making many personal appearances. What is a woman to do? She cranked out a well received cd and made some money. I think Dionne is hoping for the same.

[Ron]

This is a most interesting topic having both positive and negative consequences for both the performers and consumers. This is particularly true with respect to a long time fan base in search of remastered material to replace the worn out vinyl that's barely audible. I may open this up for discussion under a "new subject heading" if forum participants are interested in addressing this subject further. It is certainly relevant to all the reissued Warwick material originally recorded on the Scepter, Warner, Arista and River North labels.

[Peter Greenhill]

I'm not an expert on this issue, but wouldn't Dionne make as much from the sale of a CD issue of an old LP as she would from the sale of an album of new material?.

The sad truth is that, inevitably, Dionne is passed her best and many fans would be more interested in an album of her singing Bacharach/David songs from the 60s/70s, particularly if they are rare, than they are in some of her recent stuff e.g the Christmas album.

Pete

[Guest]

Peter, Dionne was probably paid in advance for most of her old albums unless she has a residual deal going with Arista. Scepter is long gone and the rights to her Warner Recordings reside with Warner. Her back catalog of material which Warwick's lawsuit against Bacharach gave her would result in some residual income for her, but she and Bacharach both sold, if not 100 percent of the rights, at least a major portion of their rights back to Warner Special Music in 1992. I doubt that Dionne gets much from the sale of her pre-Arista material and probably receives a very small percentage of Arista CDs sold. I would imagine that her new deal with Concord records was an advance type of arrangement where Concord foots the bill for the recording and if any profits are left, shares them with Dionne, and the more the CD sells the more Dionne gets. Each company is different and each deal is different. In 1995, Dionne sued Atlantic Records and Warner Brothers Records over profits from her recordings and lost the suit. Record companies tend to be very ruthless and exploitative, as we all well know. They operate very rarely in an artist's interest. Dionne did better than most artists in the 60s and 70s, especially black artists. When Dionne left Scepter for Warner's in 1972, the multi-million dollar deal was reportedly (at the time) the highest ever paid for a female recording artist (and from rumors circulating at the time, she was right on up there with the most popular male artists recording at the time).