Then if you factor in the many TV and radio appearances that Jim made around the world, some of which were probably recorded (and which I reveal for the first time in my book, "Jim Reeves: His Untold Story,") the difficulty of compiling a complete list of all his songs only increases.
It is a 100% certainty that unheard Jim Reeves recordings exist that are either in the possession of people who do not realize their historic importance, or who DO understand their significance but choose to hoard them instead.
The much vaunted James Newberry collection, for example, was said to have included unreleased material on Jim, including two live Canadian shows that over the years Mr. Newberry repeatedly described in glowing terms…but to my knowledge never let anyone hear. A book could be written about James Newberry's decades-long, very aggressive pursuit of anything he could get his hands on that pertained to Reeves. His ingenuity in tracking down these rarities was astounding, especially in the days before the internet. A California resident, he literally circled the globe and spent a small fortune buying items, or convincing people to donate Reeves rarities to him, with the assurance he was going to someday open a museum. But this never materialized. Instead, these items remained locked up in professional storage and were even unavailable to me, despite my friendship with James.
Finally, he decided a few years ago he wanted to find a permanent home for his collection.
He sought my advice and, after talking with someone who had been close to Jim, I recommended to Mr. Newberry that he contact Nashville businessman/music mogul Mike Curb, (who bought RCA Studio B, the Quonset Hut and various other historic properties). In hindsight, I now very much regret that I personally recommended Curb.
The negotiations between Newberry and Curb took over a year to complete and I am privy to many of the private details (though the terms have never been revealed). It was certainly my hope (if not my expectation), that once these items were transferred to a new owner, they might become available to the fans.
The day the Newberry collection arrived by semi trailer truck in Nashville, Richard Weize of Bear Family Records just "happened" to be in town (?) and must have had some communication with Arie den Dulk, who proceeded to send word to me through an intermediary asking me for details on any unreleased material in the Newberry collection. It isn't unreasonable to assume that Richard had hoped to strike a deal with Curb to release some of these recordings but so far, nothing has materialized.
I was very surprised and quite amused that either of these guys would try to contact me in the hope that I would share what I knew with them. They apparently made this attempt out of desperation as they could not get any answers from James Newberry. I likewise did not cooperate.
Although Mr. Newberry had loaned some historically significant items of Jim's to the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, this did not include any recordings. Sadly, Mr. Curb has proceeded to lock everything up in storage just the way Newberry had done for so many years.
To put this in context, you must realize that within the Reeves fan world there is a very closed little society comprised of diehard collectors with deep pockets, who are obsessed with secrecy and selfishness when it comes to Jim Reeves. They don't want the world to derive any enjoyment out of Jim's irreplaceable recordings because to do so would mean they'd have to give up "bragging rights" that they have something nobody else has.
Good luck trying to find out what Mr. Curb's intentions are with regard to what he now owns of Jim Reeves. I used to call James Newberry "the Howard Hughes of the Reeves set" for his obsession with privacy and unreachability by ordinary fans. But I believe Mr. Curb is the most insular individual I have encountered, and I have literally met and interviewed Presidents of the United States with greater success.
Instead, Mr Curb dispatches flunkies like Don Cusic, who was sent to California to discuss Curb's acquisition of Newberry's Reeves collection. Even though he is a writer, historian and professor of music within the Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, you won't get any straight answers out of Cusic either.
(As an aside, Mr. Cusic is the same guy who chaired the Belmont Award committee that bestowed "Best Book on Country Music" honors in 2011 on "The Starday Story" and author Nathan Gibson, after which Mr. Gibson committed the embarrassing fau pau of publicly thanking Cusic for all his pre-publication, hands-on help with his book prior to his "winning" the award. Mr. Gibson also served on a committee staging the award. This egregious conflict of interest is tantamount to one of the judges in the Miss America pageant sleeping with the winning contestant, and in the real world would not be tolerated. But Cusic saw nothing wrong with it, nor did people like Alanna Nash and Diane Pecknold -- who served on the award committee. They denied knowing of Mr. Cusic's assistance to the winning author but didn't see any conflict. Chet Flippo, who was also on the committee, is one of the most inaccessible people I've ever run across. Mike Curb was also made privy to Mr. Cusic's actions, which surely undermined the integrity of the Belmont book award and the supposed impartiality of the judges. But he turned a blind eye toward it.
Mr. Gibson wrote a dreadful book that was so distorted in portraying Starday owner Don Pierce in glowing terms, (with which Ray Baker, formerly of Jim Reeves Enterprises even publicly took issue), and failed to mention the biggest hit ever recorded at Starday studio — Jim Reeves' "Distant Drums." Gibson admitted to me he was UNAWARE OF IT. No matter. He "won" anyway. The fix was in. This is NOT, as you may surmise, a matter of "sour grapes" on my part, as my book supposedly came in "second," though Cusic took great pains to praise it as in a league with Pulitzer Prize winning books. But I resented being deceived and sucked into their little charade, as should the other nominees, some of whom wrote outstanding books on country music figures that year and were very deserving of winning in preference to a man who received insider and furtive help from the head judge of the "impartial" awards committee.)
My point here is to illustrate the politics involved. Some of the people who have control over Jim Reeves recordings operate within a very elitist and closed society. They don't like me because I have released a lot of music on Jim that otherwise would never have been heard, and this is anathema to the hoarders.
It is sad but true that many of Jim's songs are irretrievably lost. As I have said many times, "inaccessibility is just another form of DESTRUCTION."
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