In my attic suffering the heat of summer is my complete “Celebration Rock” record collection, or at least what’s left of it. I still have the first record I bought for the pilot back in 1968. It was called “16 Motown Hits,” and it was purchased at the now long defunct Woolco big box store on Richmond’s north side. (In fact, I still have the first record I ever bought, period. It is a 45 rpm copy of the Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley.” But that’s another story…)
As I’ve mentioned previously, once the pilot show was OK’d for refinement, and the initial broadcast was aired in February 1968, our WBBL counterpart WLEE was more than happy to loan me the “hop” file of 45’s so my Sunday night hour would be current with ” Big ‘LEE’s” playlist. Still, I had to use my limited budget (and some personal funds) to augment the sometimes scratchy hop file hits. I did try to buy wisely, choosing records that I thought would have some staying power, that is, records I would be able to use more than once. Remember, this was a very low budget experiment in religious broadcasting, and I had to be a very careful steward of church funds when it came to buying music by Eric Burden, Marvin Gaye, Spanky and Our Gang, and Simon and Garfunkel.
Each week after taping “Showcase,” the forerunner of CR, I would return the hop file to WLEE, but place a purchased record or two in my own library for future use. I built up a modest collection of 45’s and L.P. albums as one year led to another. I also began to add some early “contemporary Christian music” to my library, so I could have some pointedly faith-based songs to use on the show. In the late 1960’s there wasn’t much to choose from in that genre. I got a hold of some Catholic folk mass albums, some now-embarrassing-to-admit Christian “pop” stuff, and some very early (and earnest) attempts at singing the faith with a rock beat. One example of that was an album of traditional hymns set to a 60’s style rock sound by a group called “The Crusaders.” (It was, as I may have mentioned here earlier, a far cry from the Crusaders jazz group led by Joe Zawinul. But it did add a fun contemporary sound to old established hymns.)
Eventually, WLEE and later WRVQ and WEZS (and its successor WMXB) passed along new releases they had received as promos from record companies. Again, this was to the advantage of the stations airing the show; they wanted the program to sound fresh and current on their frequency, even if it was in public service time. So I began to accumulate “dupes” the stations could spare. About that time, around the mid-1970’s I guess, the local Columbia Records rep Randy Allen began passing along to me the latest current albums his company was releasing. Randy did this as a favor, but he knew that if I chose to play a particular album, I would feature it, play most of it, talk about it, and sell a few records in the process. Mutual back scratching. Kenny Loggins… Earth, Wind, and Fire… Chicago…these made for good CR shows. Then the local Warner Bros. – Electra rep did the same thing for me, and my collection grew some more.
Truth be told, not all the records that came my way fit my format or met my needs. I was given some records that must have gone straight to the cut-out bins at that Woolco store. But even records by obscure artists sometimes had songs that held some intrigue for me, and I would save a record just for one cut that I thought I might be able to use some day. At the same time, I received many other albums that went straight to the top of the charts, albums by top artists of the day, but they either didn’t fit my music format, free and broad as it was, or I found no cuts that would fit the message of the “Celebration Rock” ministry of music and meditations. I won’t name names!
(Occasionally, friends would bring me a favorite album and recommend that I use it on CR. “Jeff, you’ve got to hear this! Play cuts 1,3, and 7! Great messages.” But often those records had been eaten up by home phonographs [as we called them], and they weren’t up to broadcast standards.)
After a few years, or several years, I had a couple of thousand albums in a large record shelving unit donated by a local store. Here I would find multiple albums by Chicago, Carole King, Billy Joel, and Harry Chapin. And single albums by T-Bone Burnett, Suzanne Vega, and Grace Slick. All were filed alphabetically by artist. And I had hundreds of old 45’s, filed by song title, many too abused by “back-cuing” to play, except under the most desperate circumstances.
Then one day…I wondered if maybe I might not be complying with copyright laws by using these records on my show. Now, locally, my broadcast of those records (more precisely those songs) was covered by licenses secured by the stations which carried the show. The fact that I had made a “mechanical reproduction” (by taping the records into my show) didn’t bother me much. That was just a matter of convenience, and when it came time for the stations to log their music as either ASCAP or BMI (or more rarely SESAC), I was asked on rare occasions to submit my playlist for the stations’ record keeping. But when CR was heavy into syndication and I was making multiple tape copies of each show…hmm…was that legal?
On time, I bumped into a representative of either ASCAP or BMI (can’t honestly remember which) at a national broadcasting conference, and I presented my dilemma. “I’m taping your music for my syndicated show and sending those tapes to stations for broadcast. Is that legal? Do I need to buy my own music licenses in order to do that?” You see the risk here? What if the rep said what I was doing was clearly illegal, and, yes, I did indeed need a license to tape their music for my show? I’d be led away from the convention in handcuffs, and fined, and then before the next “Celebration Rock” tape was produced, I’d have to buy expensive clearances for the music I wanted to use.
The rep asked, “How many stations are you on…how many copies of each show do you make?” The answer at that time was, “Around forty.” He then asked, “Do you charge the stations for your program?”
“No, it’s supplied free…public service, you know.”
“Well, no one is going to go after you on this.” That was kind of an answer. Sort of permission to keep doing what I was doing. And then came the clincher: “You’re small potatoes. The people we are after are the bootleggers who are making thousands of illegal tapes and selling them out of gas stations and mini-marts along the highway. We’re not worried about you!”
Whew! …but hold on; wait a minute! What did he mean “small potatoes” ?! It might have been better to be arrested than accused of being that! Here I thought I was doing pretty well: a sometimes creative show, often artfully done, always sincere, very welcome at the stations, drawing faithful listeners and some good reviews…and carried by more and more stations, and I might add, selling a lot of records, Mr. BMI (or was it the other guy?). On the other hand, yes, what I did all those years was modest compared to what whole networks and denominations were producing. Maybe I should have been totally up front about it all: “Hi– this is Jeff Kellam, and this week on ‘Small Potatoes’ we’ll feature the music of The Eagles!”
So, the music licensing people let me off. I was humbled, but relieved. And now, decades later, music copyrights and licensing organizations are playing catch-up with all the electronic and digital ways artists’ songs are played, posted, sampled, and shared over Internet, cell phone, and ipod. “Celebration Rock” is long gone. But I still have a couple of thousand old vinyl records in the attic, the soundtrack of my life, waiting to be dusted off so they can sing again. And more than a few old reels of tape that were once my ministry of faith, hope, and love. Small potatoes. But delicious!
