(82) STAFF MEETINGS AT THE SONG WRITING FACTORY

At staff meetings at American Music, Sylvester Cross, the owner, held court. We would go over the songs we had written, the demos we'd recorded, and talk about which artists might be interested in having a hit with one of our songs. Sometimes we even had meetings on Sundays, to get the week started early. Sylvester was always interested in making a buck and not wasting any time to do so.

Usually we tried to record demo's M.O.R. - Middle of the Road - So that any artist or producer who was listening could imagine the song going one way or another - to country or to popular music - or whatever way they wanted. Still, there was a lot of creativity expressed in our output. And today floating around are demo records that preserve the early work some of the session players and studio men then who were writing songs and making demos and went on to their own fame later.

Bobby Darin had gotten his start making demos in studios in the Brill building and around New York. Bobby was able to use his voice to sound like a number of other artists and tried to make demos for artists specifically by sounding like them. On occasion someone would try to sound Elvis to pitch Elvis. Usually he took this as a compliment. Even I, with a little extra time in a recording studio, pressed a little Elvis trying to sound Elvis. Our mutual friends would take the demo to Elvis to see if I'd done an authentic enough job of it. Elvis' compliment then was "I couldn't have done it better myself!"