» I Always Called Him Son

L.B. Fred and I used to work out song ideas over coffee when we both worked at the University of Dayton back in the eighties and nineties.  This song was one of our earlier collaborations, based in part of L.B.'s own experiences as a stepfather (the song in no way represents his actual experience with his stepdaughter; we were simply tapping into the issues and emotions of being a stepfather). Its original title was "He May Not Call Me Daddy."

I believe it was in 1992 that we entered the song in the monthly lyric contest for American Songwriter Magazine.  The song didn't win (I later won the contest with the lyric "It Took All of History" along with my first acoustic guitar - still my favorite instrument to play), but it led to what was probably the most important event in my songwriting career.

My wife and I came back from a movie night to find a message blinking on our answering machine. When I played it back, we heard, "Hi!  My name is Jimmy Dunne.  I wrote 'Nobody Loves Me Like You Do' for Anne Murray and Whitney Houston among others.  I saw your lyric in American Songwriter and was wondering if you had a melody for it.  If not, I'd like to give it a try."

L.B. and I did have a melody for the lyric, but we quickly forgot it.    I called Jimmy back and told him yes, and then several things happened.  First, we got a single-song contract with Tom Collins, which I was able to use as a credential to open many doors in Nashville later on.  Second, it began a collaboration with Jimmy in which he taught me everything I needed to learn about songwriting to earn eventually my staff songwriting contract with Chris Keaton.

Ironically, "I Always Called Him Son" died an early death in the music publishing business.  Not long after the song was demoed and Collins started pitching the song, two things happened:  Jimmy broke off his relationship with Collins Music, and the plugger who loved the song left the company.  Several years later I met with Vanessa Gray, the then-current plugger at Collins Music, to find out if I could revive the song from the Collins catalogue archives.  She was very nice and explained to me that while she also loved the song, she had an obligation to the current staff songwriters to pitch their songs and "Daddy" wasn't strong enough to outweigh that obligation.  Also, in response to our request, Tom Collins himself had arefused to revert the copyright back to L.B. and me.

So there it sits in amidst the cobwebs of the catalogue.  Collins Music has long since ceased to exist, and its catalogue has doubtless changed hands at least once.  I have no idea who actually owns the copyright now, but it's not me.  I was honored to find out today during a web search, however, that Jimmy has posted the song on his own website - but for some reason changed the wording of the last two lines of the chorus, even though those lines are not what is sung on the demo.  That's okay - I owe him so much, he can do whatever he wants.