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Jim Reeves’s Last Flight So you think it’s the big time when you’ve been in the business almost ten years and had several million-selling hits?That’s what we thought all through the next five years of our career.We had made so much money from“TheThree Bells,”“Scarlet Ribbons,”and“The Old Lamplighter” that we had to have our royalties spread out over the next few years for tax purposes.We kept on recording singles and albums, thinking the money from the sales was going into a separate fund from which we would get our royalties twice a year as we were supposed to. It didn’t happen. One day we got a notice from RCA that we were in the red. Red? What the devil were they talking about? RCA had charged against our royalties the costs of recording sessions, production, promotion , and everything else imaginable. I guess every hog between Nashville and Madison Avenue was supping at our trough. All the money from those million-selling songs was gone.We were drained dry, although we thought there was no way that this could be true. I took it upon myself to try to discover how all our money had disappeared.After all, RCA was a big time, reputable outfit. I went directly to ChetAtkins and told him about our situation.He couldn’t believe it.“There’s no way in God’s creation that you kids should be in the hole,” he said.“Why, you should be sitting on half a fortune by now.” Being an RCA executive as well as producer,Chet said he’d check into the matter for us. But he could never get anything out of the people in the NewYork office.While he seemed as puzzled as we were as to why we were in the red,he must have finally thrown up his hands in despair at trying to communicate with those big city paper-pushers. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do, short of getting a 207 20 battery of accountants and lawyers and going to court.We’d played that sorry old song before.To add insult to it all, one day I got the nastiest letter I’ve ever received from RCA.The letter told me to stop bugging Chet!The letter was full of criticism of the Browns, me in particular, and in so many words implied that the label was carrying us out of the goodness of its heart. Oh, yeah, carrying us! I’m sure RCA made megabucks off our records. I went to Chet and apologized for bugging him, and he got so mad at RCA for that letter that I thought he was going to blow a fuse. The end result of all this hassle is that we never got a clear accounting from RCA on our financial status.We certainly didn’t get a lot of the money we thought was coming to us.We weren’t the first singers to get stiffed by a record company, I’m sure, but we were probably the easiest because we were so trusting. It would take almost the rest of our career to get us back into the black with RCA.Today, most performers have powerful lawyers and accountants working for them to lessen the possibility of being cheated, but that wasn’t the norm back then. • • • RCA built a big,beautiful new studio in Nashville,and we were the very first artists to record there.We were working on a new album when Steve Sholes, the RCA vice president who’d written me the nasty letter, happened to come in. I remember we were recording “BornTo Be withYou.”When I saw Steve, I just froze up. I couldn’t sing at all.We must have had at least fifty takes on that one song, and I know we never did get it right. Not too long afterward,RCA was throwing a big party in Chet’s honor in the new recording studio. I didn’t get an invitation.What I did get was a little of old-fashionedArkansas courage,aided by a little Old Charter, and I crashed the party. I had said something to Mary Lynch, Chet’s secretary, about being left off the invitation list. Mary was very apologetic and insisted that I come to the party anyway. So I did. I was standing by the door when Chet and Steve walked in. I...

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