Bussey claims in my book I state that the song — which Jim recorded four times — "hardly made any money” and he says "this beggars belief. Rondo (Bea's publishing company) had the copyright on the song for 15 years, and had 3 hit singles on it in the country charts; two by Jim Reeves and the other by Ronnie Milsap.”
I'm afraid Mr. B didn't parse the language of my book very well, or he would have had a better understanding of what transpired.
I report that after Jim died, Mary threatened legal action against Bea in 1976 to recoup the song. Mr. Bussey takes issue with this and claims that "the song was not given away under duress but…Mary PURCHASED the song" in June 1981 — AFTER Ronnie Milsap had a hit on it earlier that year. Mr. B bases this on records at the Library of Congress showing a transfer of ownership from Rondo to Reeves-owned Tuckahoe Music at that time. Bussey concludes that "clearly Mary Reeves had to have shown some compassion, by not muscling in on a business deal while sales were red hot, and waiting until the song had slipped to No. 99 in the Cashbox Top 100 Country Singles Chart."
Such speculation by Bussey is completely baseless.
Mr. B further alleges I made "contradictory statements” in my book by asserting on the one hand that Bea Terry was given everything on the song and yet Bea had “dutifully paid [Mary] thousands of dollars in royalties” (a fact, incidentally, which I deduced in part from paperwork I obtained regarding Jim's estate as it was going through probate).
Bussey says "this revelation calls into disrepute the whole story of a legal battle between Mary Reeves and Ms. Terry. Just who was this hot shot Texas lawyer Mary hired, and where is the documentary proof of the legal action the reader demands?"
Well Mr. Bussey, once again you have egg on your face. The lawyer whom Mary hired to pursue litigation against Bea in 1976 (the documentation for which I possess in writing), was Wilford Naman in Waco, TX, who co-founded one of the oldest law firms in Texas.
Normally when a lawsuit is commenced in the U.S., you have to sue someone in the state where THEY reside, not where YOU live. So Mary's Nashville, Tennessee attorney secured a lawyer in Waco, Texas because that's where Bea was living at the time. Mary had shadowed her closely and knew that Bea and her sister, Dorothy, had moved from California back to Texas, where they were born.
An experienced litigator, Mr. Naman was a formidable threat and Bea, who by that time had had a series of heart attacks, was in no position from the standpoint of her health or finances to engage in a protracted court battle to protect what was rightfully hers. And Mary knew this, so she went for the jugular.
Transfers of ownership under U.S. laws routinely entail the payment of a token amount to confer specific legal status on the transaction for tax (and other) purposes so such a transfer is not considered a "gift." But I assure you, Bea did not "sell" the song to Mary in the way that Mr. Bussey speculates -- it was wrested from her with strong-arm tactics.
As the foreign website itself reports, when "Am I Losing You" came out in 1957, Bea Terry was quoted in the press as saying the song was NOT for sale. There were other publishers like Central Songs (run by her good friend Cliffie Stone), Golden West (owned by her pal Gene Autry), and Four Star (Silvester Cross). Jim could have placed the song with any of them, but he didn't, because he wanted his intimate friend Bea to have it. He even insisted SHE pick up both the publisher AND songwriter awards at the BMI Awards dinner that fall in Nashville (as he was preoccupied doing his live daily network radio show and could not attend). Even though Bea suggested Mary accept the writer's honor on behalf of her husband, Jim nixed that idea. And Mary herself declined to do so when Bea approached her at the awards dinner.
When "Am I Losing You" became a hot property, Ms. Terry was approached with offers. But she turned them all down.
Don Howard, Bea's son — who has had a fascinating career in the music business himself — told me again today on the phone that Bea “wasn't interested in the songwriter's royalties” (even though Jim gave them to her). “She was only interested in the publishing.” So out of the goodness of her heart, Bea was continuing to pay Jim Reeves Enterprises royalties even though she could have legally claimed 100% of them for herself.
Furthermore, another song Jim recorded — “Snowflake” — which was written by Bea and Jim’s good friend, Ned Miller, was also in Bea's Rondo Music catalog and ended up in Tree after Mary got into trouble for taking out an agricultural loan under fraudulent pretenses and diverting the money to help finance her second husband's movie making aspirations. My friend, the late Buddy Killen, (who was one of Jim's closest buddies in Nashville and ran one of the largest song publishing companies in town — Tree), personally told me how he bailed Mary out of hot water by buying Jim's song publishing companies without even knowing what was in them! Mary had so intimidated Bea that she even grabbed ahold of "Snowflake," despite the fact there should have been NO dispute over that song at all as Ned had independently placed it with Bea's company, Rondo. But once again, Mary wanted that copyright and she got it.
The point was NOT that "Am I Losing You" failed to earn any money for Bea's publishing firm, Rondo — as Mr. Bussey falsely accuses me of asserting. It is that this did not begin to compensate her for the out-of-pocket expenses she incurred buying numerous ads to promote Jim Reeves in trade publications for thousands of dollars apiece, for which Jim never reimbursed Bea. She obviously did this because of her romantic feelings for Reeves, and frankly, it's not very chivalrous of "Gentleman Jim" to have taken advantage of this woman in this way. For Mary to add insult to injury by threatening Bea with a lawsuit to seize ownership of a song that her husband had given another woman, suggests that Mary's actions were prompted by greed and a desire for revenge.
As for Rondo still being listed on the single "Am I Losing You" when it was issued in early 1981 — five years after Mary took legal action against Bea, and Ms. Terry surrendered all rights to the song — as Don Howard pointed out, "Mary Reeves and [BMI] head Frances Preston were friends. All Mary had to do is walk into Ms. Preston's office and tell her 'I own [“Am I Losing You”] and I guarantee all the royalties would have gone to her.” It is not uncommon for the paperwork to not be filed in a timely fashion in copyright matters so the fact that Mary's office didn't get around to officially registering ownership of the song with the Library of Congress until mid 1981 is no surprise.
That song was a big hit so I would ask: Who picked up the award that year for "Am I Losing You?" Certainly not Bea Terry. "She didn't earn a DIME on it," (Ronnie Milsap's version), her son, Don, insists.
In my book I reported how most of Bea's worldly belongings were stolen from a trailer the night before her move from California to Texas, and until her dying day she suspected Mary Reeves was behind it. Because in that trailer were all her business records and other personal items which would prove her relationship with Jim Reeves. But Mr. Bussey now writes "Maybe that alleged trailer theft didn’t happen...after all?"
Don takes great offense to that because he said he spent a year working with LA police and U-Haul trying to trace that missing trailer (before the days of computers and the internet).
The continual attempt by Mr. Bussey to argue with various revelations in my book concerning Jim Reeves and the people surrounding him, seems to reflect some sort of psychological impediment on his part in accepting THE TRUTH. Even though in my taped interviews with him pre-publication he urged me to "spill the beans" on Reeves, since my book appeared in print he has accused me of writing “filth” about Jim. He keeps worrying about Jim's "image," but judging in part from the salutary portrayal of Jim in this week's major BBC tribute to Reeves (in which I as an American participated but Mr. Bussey as a UK resident did NOT), Jim's precious "image" hasn't been damaged one bit!
What I wrote was exhaustively researched and documented. To put it bluntly, in terms maybe even David Bussey can understand: Bea Terry got screwed literally by Jim and figuratively by Mary, and that is the gist of it.
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