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Little Richard (Michael Jackson's Friend) Has Passed Away

CherubimII

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What?!! Little Richard Got HOW MUCH Money From Michael Jackson?!!

October 4, 2014 • By Admin Team

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Many folks have called Michael Jackson many things ranging from the greatest of all time, to the worst, but one thing he definitely should be called is one of the REALEST stand-up guys in the music industry. Word on the Old School curb is that when MJ bought the publishing rights to the Beatles catalog, he was unaware that the Beatles owned ALL of the rights to Little Richard&#8217;s publishing, which then meant that MJ acquired all of the rights to Little Richard&#8217;s publishing. As soon as Michael found that out, he immediately GAVE Little Richard ALL of his publishing rights back because he believed that Little Richard deserved to be compensated for his hard work after having been disrespected by his record label for so many years prior to.According to Celebrity Net Worth, Little Richard&#8217;s net worth is $40 million, so we&#8217;re sure those publishing checks had a lot to do with that.

As we all know, most soul artists were not getting paid what they were worth back in the day and Little Richard was caught up in that mix. So it&#8217;s beautiful thing to have had an artist like MJ in the music game who was willing to reach back and uplift the greats who paved the way for him.One thing about Micheal is that he was not as soft spoken as we may have thought and he was NOT one to be tested on any level!

https://www.iloveoldschoolmusic.com...-how-much-money-from-michael-jackson-himself/


[video=youtube;S54LDJnCJvA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S54LDJnCJvA[/video]


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CherubimII;4289567 said:
What?!! Little Richard Got HOW MUCH Money From Michael Jackson?!!

October 4, 2014 &#8226; By Admin Team

little%2Brichard%2Bmichael%2Bjackson%2B(2).jpg
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Many folks have called Michael Jackson many things ranging from the greatest of all time, to the worst, but one thing he definitely should be called is one of the REALEST stand-up guys in the music industry. Word on the Old School curb is that when MJ bought the publishing rights to the Beatles catalog, he was unaware that the Beatles owned ALL of the rights to Little Richard&#8217;s publishing, which then meant that MJ acquired all of the rights to Little Richard&#8217;s publishing. As soon as Michael found that out, he immediately GAVE Little Richard ALL of his publishing rights back because he believed that Little Richard deserved to be compensated for his hard work after having been disrespected by his record label for so many years prior to.According to Celebrity Net Worth, Little Richard&#8217;s net worth is $40 million, so we&#8217;re sure those publishing checks had a lot to do with that.

As we all know, most soul artists were not getting paid what they were worth back in the day and Little Richard was caught up in that mix. So it&#8217;s beautiful thing to have had an artist like MJ in the music game who was willing to reach back and uplift the greats who paved the way for him.One thing about Micheal is that he was not as soft spoken as we may have thought and he was NOT one to be tested on any level!

https://www.iloveoldschoolmusic.com...-how-much-money-from-michael-jackson-himself/


[video=youtube;S54LDJnCJvA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S54LDJnCJvA[/video]


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Thank you for posting this. This is a little known FACT that the public doesn&#8217;t know about and the media ignores.
 
I didn't know this. I wonder why he didn't do this for Paul McCartney and George Harrison as well.
 
Toby34 said:
I didn't know this. I wonder why he didn't do this for Paul McCartney and George Harrison as well.
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Probably because Paul didnt buy the records first, and they didnt want to have a hand in owning some of john's music. although id argue the catalog was kept in good hands for sometime.

R.i.P Lil Richard, you'll be missed and never forgotten.
 
Apparently not.

"And I&#8217;ve never gotten money from most of those records. And I made those records: In the studio, they&#8217;d just give me a bunch of words, I&#8217;d make up a song! The rhythm and everything. &#8220;Good Golly, Miss Molly&#8221;! And I didn&#8217;t get a dime for it. Michael Jackson owns the Specialty stuff now. He offered me a job with his publishing company once, for the rest of my life, as a writer. At the time, I didn&#8217;t take it. I wish I had now." &#8212; Little Richard, 2004

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/...-influence-beatles-rolling-stones-996679/amp/

And The Beatles didn't own the rights. Where did they get that from?
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Rodney Jenkins instagram - re: <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MichaelJackson?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MichaelJackson</a> giving Little Richard his music publishing back - Michael was about setting things right - <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/tuesdayvibes?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#tuesdayvibes</a> &#55357;&#56613; <a href="https://t.co/0HNgleO4vK">pic.twitter.com/0HNgleO4vK</a></p>&mdash; MJJJusticeProject #1Billion4MJ (@MJJJusticePrjct) <a href="https://twitter.com/MJJJusticePrjct/status/1260319313010950144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 12, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Well according to Little Richard himself, that didn't happen. Fans need to stop perpetuating information that isn't true.
 
Wow. okay somebody did history (no pun) wrong. I always thought he gave them back to him. people need to erase that and write the real history. that's crazy. my head is actually spinning from this. @_@

r.i.p little Richard and bless Michael.
 
Toby34 said:
I didn't know this. I wonder why he didn't do this for Paul McCartney and George Harrison as well.
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Because they made huge amounts of $ already. Black artists especially back then got screwed over by lables and .L.R hardly made a dime. So mj wanted to give him back his songs so he could make a decent amount of $ . Mcartney and co made their choice at the time regarding publishing.
 
Sorry for bringing up old threads. But I was wondering if there's more information about whether the Beatles owned Little Richard's songs (which makes it wild that Paul McCartney complained about MJ buying their music). Also, is it true that MJ gave Little Richard back the rights to his songs?
 
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librariangirl:) said:
Sorry for bringing up old threads. But I was wondering if there's more information about whether the Beatles owned Little Richard's songs (which makes it wild that Paul McCartney complained about MJ buying their music).
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Afaik, Paul's beef about the songs was that Michael allowed the songs to be used in tv adverts and The Beatles always said they would never do that.

librariangirl:) said:
Also, is it true that MJ gave Little Richard back the rights to his songs?
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I don't know much about this. There is a short video clip with Marsha Ambrosius where she mentions that Michael gave back the song rights to Little Richard (also another video which mentions it). But there's a lipstickalley.com post dating from 2018 which claims that this never happened.

I vaguely remember finding something online saying that Michael wanted to sign over the rights to Little Richard and him and John Branca had a meeting with LR to get it done and there was a complication so it never happened.


I sometimes think this is one of those stories about Michael that has taken on a life of its own. Here's one video about this:

3m 3s


Here's a quote from the YT description:

"Little Richard also reportedly received no royalties when his hits were used in movies or covered by white singers, a common practice in the music industry at the time.In 1984, Little Richard sued Specialty Records for $112 million, saying they had not paid royalties to him after he left the label in 1959. He went on to settle out of court for an undisclosed amount. However, Little Richard’s music, along with that of The Beatles, went on to be purchased by Michael Jackson, who bought Specialty’s catalog in the mid-1980’s. According to reports when Michael Jackson bought the publishing rights to the Beatles catalog, he was unaware that the Beatles owned ALL of the rights to Little Richard’s publishing, which then meant that MJ acquired all of the rights to Little Richard’s publishing.

As soon as Michael found that out, he immediately GAVE Little Richard ALL of his publishing rights back because he believed that Little Richard deserved to be compensated for his hard work after having been disrespected by his record label for so many years prior to. At the time of his death Little Richard’s estate was valued at $40 million."


The problem with this part of the story is this:
"According to reports when Michael Jackson bought the publishing rights to the Beatles catalog, he was unaware that the Beatles owned ALL of the rights to Little Richard’s publishing, which then meant that MJ acquired all of the rights to Little Richard’s publishing."

This makes no sense. The Beatles didn't own the publishing rights to their own songs. If they had, they would never have been for sale. The ATV catalogue included lots of songs (not just The Beatles stuff). Paul McCartney did own a publishing rights for other people's songs, that's how come him and Michael had the conversation about getting into buying up catalogues. But it seems like the Little Richard material was part of the ATV catalogue and PM did not own that.

Here's the lipstickalley.com thing:


Here's a quote from Little Richard:

"I didn't get paid — most dates I didn't get paid. And I've never gotten money from most of those records. And I made those records: In the studio, they'd just give me a bunch of words, I'd make up a song! The rhythm and everything. "Good Golly Miss Molly"! And I didn't get a dime for it. Michael Jackson owned the Specialty stuff. He offered me a job with his publishing company once, for the rest of my life, as a writer. At the time, I didn't take it. I wish I had now."

Apologies if this is not very coherent, lol. :ROFLMAO:

I never did track down a definitive version of the story. These random bits are all I have.
 
Oh, I forgot about this one - Bryan Monroe talks about interviewing Michael.

Approx 1m - 2m 10s is the bit about the Little Richard song rights and the meeting between Michael, John Branca and LR.

 
librariangirl:) said:
Sorry for bringing up old threads. But I was wondering if there's more information about whether the Beatles owned Little Richard's songs (which makes it wild that Paul McCartney complained about MJ buying their music). Also, is it true that MJ gave Little Richard back the rights to his songs?
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The Beatles didn't own their own songs, let alone somebody else's. They signed a bad record deal which is how they lost their publishing in the first place. "Northern Songs" is what their publishing was called in the 1960s. This is how a lot of songwriters didn't own their songs, that is how the ATV catalog existed for Mike to buy. Record deals always benefit the company and not the artist. Even the artists who became millionaires made a small percentage compared to what the labels got. The Beatles would have lost their recordings too if Paul McCartney hadn't refused to sign with Allen Klein after their manager Brian Epstein passed. The other 3 members did. Klein's company ABKCO owns the early Rolling Stones albums and all (or most of Sam Cooke's albums and also a lot of Sam's photos including personal family pictures). If Cooke hadn't of died early, and later found out that he had been scammed by Klein, I doubt he would have been happy about it.

Paul McCartney himself owns song publishing including Buddy Holly's and a lot of Broadway showtunes. That's how he knew about it to recommend it to Mike. The media tends to say that Mike bought The Beatles or Lennon/McCartney songs. That's not entirely accurate. The Beatles songs were only a part of the ATV catalog which contained many songs by many songwriters. Including songs that came out after Mike bought it like Eminem's. There's a few different stories about why Paul didn't buy it. One is that Paul only wanted The Beatles publishing and not the rest of it, but the sellers didn't want to sell individual songs, only the entire catalog. Another is that he wanted Yoko Ono to pay half of the asking price, but she wasn't interested. Partly because he didn't want to be seen by the public as "owning John Lennon". The songs that George Harrison & the few that Ringo wrote for the band were also in the ATV catalog.
 
zinniabooklover said:
Oh, I forgot about this one - Bryan Monroe talks about interviewing Michael.

Approx 1m - 2m 10s is the bit about the Little Richard song rights and the meeting between Michael, John Branca and LR.

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Another bit I'd forgotten - in that 1m - 2m 10s section, Bryan Moore implies that the arrangement that Michael wanted to put into place to benefit Little Richard didn't go through bc of Sony. Who knows if that is actually true? It could be exaggeration, of course. But it's interesting. :unsure:
 
Thank you @zinniabooklover and @DuranDuran for the clarification! Totally makes sense with the Beatles not owning Little Richard music since they struggled with their own publishing rights so it must have been owned by ATV (fake news can spread fast!). Regarding MJ giving back Little Richards rights I found this quote "Michael Jackson gave me back my songs. He didn’t have to do that." This is supposedly from an 2001 interview with Rolling Stone, but I haven't found the article.
 
zinniabooklover said:
Oh, I forgot about this one - Bryan Monroe talks about interviewing Michael.

Approx 1m - 2m 10s is the bit about the Little Richard song rights and the meeting between Michael, John Branca and LR.

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Interesting, but MJ never outbid McCartney, since he never took part in the bidding in the first place, so who knows how well informed this guy ist about the rest.
 
librariangirl:) said:
Interesting, but MJ never outbid McCartney, since he never took part in the bidding in the first place, so who knows how well informed this guy ist about the rest.
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Exactly so. This what I meant about I have never been able to get a completely coherent, straight-up version of this story. There are many parts of Michael's life/career story that I either stay away from or only circle around the edge of it bc trying to track down all the details, work out the real truth, work out a coherent version of the story ... it can sometimes be really hard and I just can't get that obsessed with all of it. I'd rather listen to his music or watch him being wonderful.

The essence of this story is really nice. Basically, Michael wanted to help Little Richard and correct the disservice done to him by the earlier contract (which wasn't an unusual contract for that era). So that's my take-away from this. Michael wanted to do the decent thing. Whether he actually was able to, I don't know, but his heart was in the right place. That's enough for me. :)
 
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