COLLECTORS’ CORNER: When Persistence Pays In Unexpected Ways
By Chris Wood
This month’s column is all about persistence and how it sometimes results in attaining different levels of “getting there” in unusual ways after repeated efforts. In this case, it was an effort to give an old song some new life and hopefully as a result, see it receive the respect and attention it deserves.
It all began eight years ago when we purchased a record label (Just Right Records) and a publishing company (Bigger Hammer Publishing). Since it was an investment in a music business, in considering how we would start paying off the newly incurred five-figure debt the answer seemed obvious: release a full-length recording of Packers songs! And in so doing (we thought), why not kick it off with the oldest Packers’ fight song in existence dating back to 1931, that being “Go! You Packers Go!” written by Eric Karll?
It seemed like a good enough idea both to help sell copies of the album and generate publicity because it was not only the first Packers’ fight song but so far as we could determine, the oldest of any team in the NFL! However, in looking for a copy of the song, all we could find was an instrumental version that had been part of a collection on an album of “NFL Marching Songs” released on RCA records in 1960. It had thirteen fight songs from 13 teams in the league and they were all instrumentals. After obtaining a copy of the sheet music for the song, it seemed a real shame because it had a nice set of lyrics and was a football fight song, after all!
We contacted the Karll family, explained what we wanted to do and asked if we could get a copy of an old—or even new—recording of the song with the lyrics being sung. The answer was “no” we were told because to their knowledge, there are none in existence.
“What,” we thought, “how could that be?!” It seemed hard to believe that a song which had been around for almost 80 years and was loved by so many, namely Packers fans, had never been recorded with the lyrics being sung! Back in the day, the Packers’ Lumberjack Band used to play it before every home game, so one would think there had to have been an old ’78 recording made of it at some time. But we contacted a lot of people and nobody was aware or knew of one. And even if one did exist, maybe it was just another instrumental version!
At that point, we asked the family if we could record one at our own expense to be included on the album for which they would receive the royalties. They said yes to that idea and so we contracted with local musician James Kocian to do the recording project in his home studio. He produced a fine, modern-day rendition of the song that was true to the sheet music. However, the family didn’t like it and asked us not to release it.
Difficult as it was, we honored that request. There would be no additional sales of the CD as planned (or at least hoped for), much less any publicity from having the first release of the song with the lyrics being sung! However, the thought of taking another run at it somewhere down the road had entered and was now firmly planted in our minds and would prove to be something that we wouldn’t ever be able to shake (not even if we’d wanted to!).
Several months later, we received a call from Brian Murphy of HBO Sports, who was looking for a copy of the song with the lyrics included for use in the Lombardi documentary HBO was producing for release that winter!
After trying to find a copy of it everywhere with no success, he had called the Packers. They said they didn’t have or even know of one, either, but if anyone might, they thought it would be us. We explained that while we did have one, it had remained unreleased and we told them why. They asked us to send them a copy regardless.
They passed on it, saying it was too modern-sounding for their purposes but Brian described it as “an invaluable piece of Packer history that has been missing!” With those ten words, he had made it all worthwhile, which it would continue to be no matter what was to happen going forward! This despite whatever financial sacrifices and consequences there had been–and would be–because now, there was no choice but to record another version of it and do so very soon!
The “Go! You Packers Go!” project had just made the transition from being a nice, musical diversion to a mission from above! To really do it right would take some time and effort, not to mention cash but now it really needed to be done! This next effort would be what a marching band would have sounded like playing it in a holiday parade going down Main St. in a small Wisconsin town back in the thirties.
I had arranged to have the music scored, so it could be played by a band reading sheet music. Now, it was just a matter of finding a cracker-jack band of talented musicians to record it.
I immediately thought of an old high-school buddy who had formed a wedding band years ago that was still playing out on a regular basis.
I called him and asked if he would be interested in doing the project because “it would be a paying gig—regular full performance fee!” He said he would but on one condition: that we call the band whatever we liked except by their real name! When we wondered why, he said it had something to do with local musician politics, so we let it go at that.
We rented a wedding hall on Thanksgiving weekend that year—on the only Saturday it was available for the next few months—which was, of course, “Deer widows” weekend! We booked Green Bay’s own Yankee Man studio to come out “on location” and do the recording “live.” When the recording was mixed, mastered, and ready for release, we put out a CD “single” version with the new, “old-style” recording as well as the Kocian version with the modern sound recorded two years previously. While it was too late to make it into the HBO documentary, at least now an old-fashioned version of the song with the lyrics being sung (as they had intended to be) had been recorded by Curly’s Curmudgeon Band and was available for sale to the general public!
Sales of the CD were not spectacular by any means with the net result of the project being a loss of several thousand dollars. But it really didn’t matter! (Uh, hear that, honey?) We had achieved our goal with the recording coming out the way it was intended to sound and be heard! Additionally, there was plenty of room to build upon what we now had “in the can.”
But I had a nagging feeling inside me that there was still something lacking in the recording and at first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on just what it was! However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was the vocal track. We had recorded it “live” and “off the cuff” with everybody there on the day of the session just joining in and singing along. We hadn’t really rehearsed it together except for a couple of times on site before we did the takes.
It sounded fine for what it was; which was just a bunch of people singing it together without having had any practice or rehearsal time. But I really felt it could have been made to sound so much better—it was easily the weakest link in the whole production chain! The next question was how could it be arranged and played to have a 1930s sound, to which the answer was obvious: a barbershop quartet!
After doing some research, I found a group of young men in a local barbershop quartet called “Vocal Fury.” We gave them copies of the sheet music and CDs of the musical portion that had been recorded at the previous session.
After allowing for sufficient time to rehearse and practice it, we did the session at Made Ya Look Studio a couple of weeks ago. It came out great, due to the time and effort put into it by the group consisting of Michael Blair, Chris Vander Pas, Jay Carey and Nathan Seager. Of course, engineer John Gibson at Made Ya Look is accustomed to seeing—and hearing–every recording he touches sound great, and our session was no exception!
When all was said and done, we finally had a recording of a great song which fully measures up to the stature of the original composition itself! And even if it never does anything or goes anywhere, just knowing that we got it there and did it right after numerous challenges, road blocks, detours, obstacles and of course, efforts, is a great feeling in and of itself!
And in this case if I may say so, “The Journey Is the Reward!”