Doug Mcguire

Music Business and Monkey Business Doug Mcguire

This is how simple the complicated music business can be! I was sitting "shooting the bull" with the A&R man at Epic Records one day. He said, "You know what I would really like to find is a white kid that sings the blues like a black guy." I said, "I know a kid like that," or words to that effect. I then told him what I knew about Tim Williams. Tim was starving to death trying to run a Coffee House in Santa Barbara. He was only nineteen-years old, but very good. The problem was that I had no idea what to do with a Blues singer. Suddenly there was an answer to the question. The A&R man said, "Bring him down!" which meant to his office in Hollywood. When the day came to go to Hollywood we went in my car. I didn't think he had one that would make it down and back. He showed up in a pair of dark brown corduroy pants and a dark polo-type shirt, both clean, but covered with white lint. I was embarrassed to "showcase" him that way, but it could have been a sensitive subject so away we went. I didn't have a clue what to expect when we arrived at the office. In the now familiar get-to-the-point fashion the man said, "Let's hear something" after a few minutes of visiting. Tim opened his guitar case, took out his twelve string guitar and began playing as if the outcome didn't make a damn bit of difference to him. Mr. A&R man asked him to do some old standard, then something original that Tim had written. Then suddenly he said, "Sounds good, let's do a thing, make a record!" Just like that!