garyrue.com

The Tommy Durden Story

(or How Gary Rue came to be a music publisher)

It was 1981, I believe, my pop music group, Rue Nouveau, had found its way to the Holiday Inn in Houghton Lake, Michigan, for a six night sit-down performance run. While we were setting up (a difficult task, since it was our first encounter with a revolving stage, a totally useless concept-zoo-like) one of the waitresses came up to me and suggested in a cool voice that I would enjoy meeting her father, a musician in his own right.

“Sure”, I said, (having just gotten over my youthful arrogance and was practicing civility and humility), who’s your father?”

“Tommy Durden”, she said.

Scouring my as-yet-nearly-smooth brain, I came up with zip and so, demurely blurted, “Don’t believe I’ve heard of him.” (After all, if I hadn’t heard of him, how important could he be?)

“He wrote “Heartbreak Hotel” for Elvis," she exclaimed.

“Oh…”, says I. (Fool…) “I’d love to meet him”.

 And so it came to pass, that evening, I sat down to dinner with Tommy Durden, the man who wrote “Heartbreak Hotel”. For Elvis Presley, no less. Present were Tommy, his wife, Babe, Mary, his daughter (the waitress), Leslie Ball (Rue Nouveau’s lead vocalist) and myself. Tommy and I were aligned at either end of the table (head and foot), with Babe to my immediate right, 90 degrees. The dinner quickly defined itself as a night to remember: It went something like this, hell, it went a LOT like this:

Tommy, the "Swingin’, Singin’, Southern Gentleman from Georgia," spent the first 20 minutes of our repast, through the hors d-oeuvres, regaling us with how wonderful the whole experience had been: Elvis, also a gentleman (he called Tommy “Sir” on the occasion of their first and ONLY face-to-face meeting—Tommy was much impressed and flattered). A sigh from Babe, she’d heard it so many times…A brief mention of Mae Axton (co-writer) a slightly diminished assessment, but glowing, nonetheless. DEEP sigh from Babe. Colonel Tom Parker (Elvis’ manager), a perfunctory mention, nowhere near honorable, but still with respect. Babe: Sigh. Deep sigh. Then, a snarl…

Babe had had enough. She half rose from her seat, eyes a-blazing at me while pointing a loaded finger at Tommy at the other end of the table, fired, “That’s NOT the way it happened! My Tommy’s got a whole trunk load of songs at home that no one will listen to because after they ALL got their piece of “Heartbreak Hotel”,  that god-damned Colonel Parker had him black-balled from the business!!!”

 “Oh…”, I said. Well, so much for the dinner ending on any kind of high note. We still had four hours of grueling, soul-sucking lounge work ahead of us, so the dinner party melted like the wicked witch of the west, we all faded to our separate directions and to our disparate tasks, and that appeared to be the end of it.

Fast forward 32 years later…

2012. My life’s turbulent path had led me to quieter pastures as an adjunct instructor at McNally Smith College of Music in St Paul, where I was in the business of training young hopefuls to gain a sense of confidence in the music business and then go out into the world and discover what they're really up against. Always in the market for something interesting to say to my usual group of typically blasé students (finished products at 19!), I began retelling the saga of the dinner party of 1981, and that mysterious ‘trunk load’ of songs I’d heard about.

“Why dontcha call ‘em up and ask ‘em?” belted a student from the back row.

“Maybe I will just DO that”, I countered. So I did.

I Googled the name “Mary Durden”, got a phone number in Roscommon, Michigan, gulped, dialed, held my breath…Mary answered (53 now, still had that cool voice). I asked if she remembered me.

“Yes!”, she said. 

I inquired after the health of her parents.

“Both gone now”, she told me.

“Mary, do YOU know anything about that trunk load of songs your mom so emphatically spoke of when we had that dinner?”

“I’m sorry, Gary, I’m in the early stages of early-onset dementia, so if you want any information on other songs of my dad’s, you should talk to my husband, Arthur.”

Arthur comes on the line and I go through it all again.

“Well, Gary, I don’t know anything about a trunk load of songs, but I’ll have a look in the basement and let you know what I find”.

I gave him my number, hung up and waited. For 10 days. I didn’t really have it on my radar. After all, if there’s a good idea out there, someone has probably already tried to do something with it, and I was really only responding to the impatience of my student. But after that 10 day wait, I got a few items in the mail: photo copies of Tommy’s promo material, a scan of a few 45s with bands like “The Dillards” covering “Heartbreak Hotel”. Nothing much of value, and I thought this would be the end of it. Still, Babe’s words were beginning to resound and amplify in my mind. What OF that ‘trunk load’ of songs? I knew the music business well enough to suspect, hell, assume that Tommy had been drilled out of a good share of “Heartbreak Hotel” no matter what the credits on the record said, or no matter what HE said. So I pushed the issue. I made another phone call.

“Arthur”, I said,” I’d really like to know about the other songs. Babe was so adamant. Could you please double check? She knew Tommy better than anybody. She MUST have known something out of the ordinary happened back then.”

Arthur replied, “I’ll take another look. A good look. I’ll call ya back.”

Two weeks later I received 3 boxes in the mail. One contained video recordings of interviews Tommy had held and events he had attended, 1985-1995, or so. The second box contained audio CDs of interviews, more informal and more detail (they involved the clinking of glasses and an increase of gaiety and slurring).

But the third box was the jackpot. Audio of Tommy’s songs, written between 1951 and 1984. There was even a ‘voice only’ of a melody from Mae Axton, (Tommy's co-writer) imploring Tommy to ‘do something with this one’!

I had the tapes baked and digitized. Listened to the results. Called Arthur: “I’m coming out, we need to talk”.

Late November, over Thanksgiving break 2012, I drove to Gilbert, Michigan, spent a sleepless night at a so-so motel and drove, through glorious autumn sunshine, the remaining 40 miles to Roscommon the following morning. I arrived at their house around 1PM, figuring I would spend the afternoon going over the details of what looked to be an astounding scenario.

I went away with publishing deals for 23 of Tommy's songs. Now all I had to do was track down the contracts of origin and plead my case to have the songs returned to the family by reason of non-performance, audit, lack of contracts-of-origin, or whatever reason I could think of (in the end, it would all be a process to get the material reverted so the family and I could claim publishing rights for the musical I was about to write, which would drive the Durden catalogue).

I returned home with renewed confidence to actually grab this bull by the horns and wrestle it out of music history, and righting a great wrong. Well, let me tell ya, it ain’t all that easy to take away someone’s power. Them that got it don’t cotton to losing it.

The story continues…watch this space.

Gary

El Paso Herald Post, 25th August 1955, “Story of Person Who Walked Lonely Street”