Motor City Radio Flashbacks

Indie singles label, now grossing close to $3 million annually, readies domestic and international LP lines.

 

 

Like a rocket that’s just dropped off its first stage and is quickly moving into orbit is one way of picturing the present stage of the developing Scepter -Wand Records operation.

Stage One for Scepter — its old office at 1650 Broadway — has just floated away into space. Stage two has begun in a luxurious new suite of offices incorporating the entire sixth floor at 254 West 54th Street in New York. Another kind of Stage One, the pre-occupation with singles, has also been put aside in favor of currying a more or less all-round singles-album label image.

In another sense, the second phase has started in full sway. Previously, the company has devoted itself strictly to domestic r. and b. oriented product. Now, under an experienced hand in the overseas scene, a new emphasis is being placed on the international area.

The company began, in a sense, in nearby Passaic, N. J., the home at the time of the head of the company, Florence Greenberg. It has grown from a vision in Mrs. Greenberg’s mind, in the late ’50s, to a firm which today is grossing at a rate of close to $3,000,000 annually, and a company which has its own artist management set-up, an international division and a handsome new recording studio, due for completion soon.

“My son, Stan, who is 26 today and earned a Ph.D in music, had written a song called ‘Nightbeat’,” Mrs. Greenberg recalled last week. “We hired a singer and went into a studio and recorded it. We didn’t know what we were doing at all but we enjoyed the experience. My daughter was in high school at the time. In her class was a group of girl singers who had written a song and we recorded them too. We called them the Shirelles. The recording, “I Met Him On A Sunday,” was finally put out by Decca.

“They didn’t become anything big and we finally got a release from Decca and cut another thing, “Dedicated To The One I Love,” which George Goldner distributed for us through his Gone-End company.”

Shortly before this activity, Mrs. Greenberg had met Marvin Schlachter, a young advertising salesman for Cash Box Magazine. Ultimately, the two decided to open their own company. Joining them in the venture were Luther Dixon, a songwriter -producer and Goldner’s accountant, Jerry Roth. It was the start of Scepter and the first release was the Shirelles’ “Tonight’s The Night,” which was followed shortly by the group’s first smash hit, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.”

“It was all pretty nutty,” Schlachter said last week. “We had an awful lot to learn about making records and selling them, and artist contracts and even keeping books. It’s really something that we were able to keep going. But we’ve developed something that can last a long time. We don’t have very many artists but the ones we do have we work with all the way.

“Look at Dionne Warwick, for example. She’s been on this scene for only about a year. But she was the featured singing star of the Cannes Festival last month and she has a schedule of top engagements lined up in the months to come here and in Europe.

“Look at Chuck Jackson. He hasn’t had many big hits but he sells well in the r. and b. areas and he’s getting great money on his personal appearances. Chuck makes $3,500 to $4,000 a week. The point is that we’ve made him into an artist who will be around for a long time to come.

“To do this we started our Wand Management firm. Paul Kantor, who used to be in the agency business, is the head of this. We do everything we can to teach an artist to perform properly. The record business is full of one-shot hit artists who don’t know what to do on a floor. Actually, we don’t make any money directly out of managing. We plough the income right back into the artist’s career, so it’s a form of insurance that we’re buying with the money.

“We’ve been almost completely a singles company so far. But now that we’ve been able to really establish our artists we’ll be moving more and more into albums. We’ll be very selective because you can get ruined fast by spending a lot of money to turn out an album that won’t pay its own way. Now, we’ve reached the point where we have 10 albums ready to go and we’ll probably hire a merchandising man soon.

“We take masters of course. We had a great success with the Kingsmen and “Louie Louie.” And we’ve had others, but we honestly prefer being able to have the artist right with us, so we can help build the career rather than working through outside producers.

“That pays off with record sales as well as personals because when you build the career, you also build a hard core of fans for the artist even if they don’t get the top hits. The Shirelles album that came out two and a half years ago, still sells about 1,000 albums a month, a nice catalog item. Chuck Jackson may not make the charts every time out but he sells a minimum of 75,000 to 100,000 singles on every release, which isn’t bad in today’s market.”

The company also is involved in publishing, with such firms as Zann and Flo-Mar-Lou, both BMI, and Mary Jane (ASCAP) and named after Mrs. Greenberg’s daughter. Ludix Music (BMI) is wholly owned by Luther Dixon, who has been with the company since its start except for one sallying forth into other areas for about a year (he had one working arrangement with Capitol for a time) and who has since returned to Scepter as executive a. & r. producer.

The personnel line-up includes Mrs. Greenberg as president, Schlachter as vice president on the sales and merchandising front, Dixon as vice president in charge of a. & r., Kantor as general manager of Wand Management, and Joe Zerga, formerly of Transglobal Music, in charge of publishing and the International Department. In addition there are nearly 30 employees in the office and the warehouse across the street.

“We’re going in for a big expansion in the international field,” Schlachter continued. “Joe Zerga is in Europe now, setting up a number of releasing agreements for our product over there and for release by us in this country of various albums from Europe. Pye distributes us in England now and Joe is on the pointing of completing distribution in some of the other countries.

“We expect to introduce the Scepter International album line in September. Joe has already arranged for us to put out six LP’s in our first release of albums from Ireland, Greece, Germany, Italy, France and Norway. We’ll have an album of Sophia Loren reading poetry, to give you an idea. Our income from overseas release of our records just this year will probably be close to $250,000. We expect that to be increased this year from these new deals we have.”

The overall Scepter Music Corporation, contains, in addition to the Scepter and Wand labels, the management and the publishing firms, a new studio now being fitted out. “We haven’t decided yet whether that will be a separate corporation but it probably will,” said Schlachter.

“We have a young engineer, John La Kata, installing the equipment. When it’s finished it will be worth close to $100,000. We’ll confine it mostly to our own use. Some other firms may be cutting here too but it’ll be on a limited, controlled basis.

“Another artist we are working with now is Big Maybelle. We’ve recorded some great things with her and they’ll be coming out soon.” “She is such a fine artist, and we’re willing to work hard with her,” Mrs. Greenberg added. “We think we can do a lot with her and for her, just as we have with the others. We’ve never lost an artist that we’ve signed. This isn’t called the Scepter family for nothing.

We’re basically r. and b., I guess you’d say. And I doubt if we’ll get too far away from that. It’s what we know and love. A shoemaker sticks to his last. Or you can put it another way and say if you know how to sell $3.98 dresses, you stay with that and forget about the $25 ones. We like to think of ourselves as another Atlantic Records. But I’ll say that I have a great admiration for Kapp Records and we watch what they do all the time too,” said Mrs. Greenberg. END

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Information, credit and news source: Music Business, July 11, 1964