The Apple Tree - 21. Chapter 21

About 6 months before Tony would have graduated, the contracts and the pressure to sign began. Tony just told them to send the contracts to me. I think this irked them to no end. They would bombard Tony with all kinds of promises but somehow these promises never showed up in the contract. The other part of the contract I didn't like was the cut the recording studio received plus the agent's fee. I made an appointment with a law firm that specialized in representing artists. I paid dearly for the information I wanted but in the long run, it saved a lot of problems down the line.

Armed with this information, I sat down with Tony's current agent and reviewed his contract. The first thing I did was cut his percentage from 20 percent to 10 percents, the second thing I did was add a requirement that he had to guarantee a certain income from appearances, which had to be approved by me and that I had the authority to overrule any provision of the contract that wasn't in Tony's best interest. The result of that discussion was a withdrawal of the agent's contract. The word soon got out to the other agents. Their next ploy was to convince Tony that they had his best interest and I was preventing them from making Tony a star. That didn't work for obvious reasons. No one could turn Tony against me.

Tony and I took a long vacation, thanks to dad holding down the fort. Although I told Tony it would be a vacation, I had an ulterior purpose. I packed several discs and had some sent to the various hotels I had booked for our vacation. My plan was simple. The discs I had contained only one song, I'd sit at a sidewalk café and play the disc. If someone would ask, I'd give them the disc. It was a simple plan and it worked. We were in Paris and Tony and I was sitting at one of the many sidewalk cafes having lunch. I saw a few kids walking toward us, I pushed play on the small disc player I had. As they came by, one of the girls stopped and asked, "Who was that singing?" I told her that was one of the most upcoming singers from America.

Now by this time, a crowd started to gather around. "Would you like to have this disk?"

"Yes, will you give it to me?"

"Sure here," as I took the disc out of the player and gave it to her.

She thanked me and her group of friends started to ask her to play it. Of course on the disc were Tony's name and the picture of the Blue Minstrel. All through France, Germany, and England, the same thing happened, the kids liked the music and wanted to know where they could buy it. Before I left a city or country, I would send one of the discs to the radio stations.

With such luck, I extended our trip to include Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Scotland, and Ireland. By the time our vacation was over, the requests for more information were flooding the music school at the university.

Tony went and picked up the letters and my job, as I was told, was to answer each letter.

"I'll answer each letter but you need to get to work as well. I need single discs, I think you can make a master and then make copies from that, right?"

Tony said yes that would not be a problem. "Good start making them, I'm going to send a disc with each response, and then I'm going to contact some outlets and ask for an order. I'll also include in each reply the name of a distributor in their country. Let's see what happens."

As the mail began to pile up, I realize that this wasn't going to be a cheap plan but the payoff was going to be huge. Tony went to school and started to make the copies. He would come home with a few hundred. "I think you'll need more than this."

"That took me almost 8 hours to make those. The machine is slow."

"Why don't you hire one of the music majors to do that for you? You could pay them for each disc they make."

The next day, Tony brought back 200 hundred discs. "I've hired two students to make the discs. Will see how many I bring tomorrow."

"You should test them to be sure they are ok before I send them out."

"We do test them, one student makes the disc and the other plays it in five distinct areas. It's automatic, all one needs to do is to place the disc in the machine and then remove it."

"Good tomorrow morning we'll take these to the post office and mail them."

Tony picked up one of the mailers, "What is this Blue Minstrel Inc.?"

"That's the name of our company. I have included in each package a brochure from your US tour and the name and address of our company. They do need a way to contact us. I also included a few newspaper clips."

"I'm glad you're my agent."

"Well we can't sit back on our haunches, so I have scheduled you to be interviewed on several radio shows and two national television shows."

"That's great. You'll be there with me, right?"

"I've told you, turn around, and there I'll be.”