Post #629304 by bcxists on Mon, Mar 19, 2012 1:36 PM

Yes, there was a will. He left the physical recordings to Joe Romersa, a musician and collaborator with ahbez, who retains them in his home studio. He left the publishing rights to David Janowiak, a real estate agent who helped ahbez several times to sue (successfully) for unpaid royalties on "Nature Boy" and helped him copyright most of his songs unter the title Golden World Publishing. Ever since ahbez's death, Romersa and Janowiak have not gotten along and disagree about how to proceed with ahbez's unreleased recordings. Romersa, best as I can tell, most certainly wants them all out; Janowiak has done some pretty bizarre things with ahbez's writings, including hiring a young woman to edit and re-write much of his poetry. I have interviewed her and she walked away from the project because she thought what he was requesting was unethical. Janowiak has blocked most of ahbez's last recordings from coming out.

As to the arrangement on "Nature Boy," I have the AFM session logs and didn't notice Baxter's name on there. I can look again, but might you be thinking of the 1958 Cole remake of the song (much slower)?

As to what ahbez made financially from "Nature Boy," it's somewhat confusing. He made a small pittance when it sold its first million copies, but royalties were soon held up in litigation due to Herman Yablokoff opening a lawsuit against ahbez for copyright infringement of his song "Schveig Mein Hartz," which Yablokoff claimed the lyrics and melody of "Nature Boy" were derived. In 1950, ahbez settled out of court for $25,000, but retained the copyright to "Nature Boy."

He sued Capitol Records in 1972 for unpaid royalties and again in 1992. It seems that the Local 47 AFM and ASCAP paid regular mechanical royalties to him, though he only retained 12.5% of the publishing, doling most of the publishing out to Nat Cole, his valet Otis Pollard (who took the song to Cole), Cole's manager and others. So desperate was ahbez to get the song placed in 1947 that he nearly gave the thing away.

Now, I'm going through mounds of court records and paperwork to put the pieces together, but it seems at some point, Janowiak got him more of the publishing back, placing the publishing with Golden World in 1972, as it had been with Capitol-Irving since 1948. Once they got the publishing back, ahbez rarely complained about money any longer. In fact, he logged over 200 sessions with Joe Romersa at Salty Dog Studios from 1987-95, with Romersa saying ahbez always wrote a check for the studio time and it never once bounced.

No worries about the questions... I find him fascinating too, but I guess that's obvious.

Brian