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Awards
Don Black: BMI icon
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 6 October 2010
If you’re not familiar with the career of lyricist, and one time artist manager and music plugger, Don Black, just take it from me, it’s pretty darn impressive. Bond themes, Oscars, West End and Broadway hits, the only Michael Jackson song my mum likes and that eternal classic ‘Born Free’ – it’s quite impressive for a man who originally intended to be a stand up comedian.
“I realised comedy was in my soul, but not my act”, he joked to the audience at the BMI London Awards bash last night as he collected the BMI Icon trophy. “I wrote my first song during a stand up gig in Darlington, while I was waiting for a laugh”.
The US collecting society’s Icon Award is an exclusive prize previously given to the likes of Donovan, Peter Gabriel and Ray Davies. Black is the first winner to be a jobbing songwriter who doesn’t perform his own work, meaning he will be less well known to the man on the street, even though his songs are legendary. Though, after a lengthy introduction to his career from BMI boss Del Bryant at last night’s awards show, Black quipped “at least you won’t need to Google me now”.
Black’s career obviously continues to this day. One of his more recent collaborators, Bond theme creator David Arnold took part in the tribute by leading an a capella version of Michael Jackson’s ‘Ben’. My mum would have been pleased.
Elsewhere at the London awards, the collecting society dished out a stack of gongs to UK and European songwriters it represents whose work received muchos airplay on American radio in 2009, a lot of it Euro-penned tracks performed by US R&B stars.
Prizes were also given to older songs that have recently reached airplay landmarks, such as Ray Davies’ ‘Lola’, which has just passed the three million performances point, to the aforementioned ‘Born Free’ by Black and John Barry, that has now had five million plays, up to Sting’s Police track ‘Every Breath You Take’, which has had a very massive and rather impressive ten million plays (though I suspect that includes plays of Diddy’s ‘I’ll Be Missing You’, though don’t quote me on that, I forgot to ask).
At the start of the night Bryant reported that 2009 had been a good year for BMI, given the state of the music industry and wider economy, with a slight growth in profits. Though, he said, these were still tricky times. Alluding to recent US court rulings that have limited efforts by BMI and rival American collecting society ASCAP to expand the definition of performing rights in the digital domain, he said “It’s been tough defending our member’s rights this year, but no expense will be spared in ensuring our songwriters get what they are due [from new digital services]”.
Black was more philosophical about the challenges of the digital era. “It’s no surprise internet companies struggle to put a price on our music”, he mused. “When you get it right, a song is priceless”.
