No Truth in Truth in Music - Chapter 2

And the saga continues . . . It has been flying around the last few days that Jon Bauman has submitted his personal statement, or perhaps a statement on behalf of Truth in Music or the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, in a court case brought by Herb Reed Enterprises (Herb is dead) against Monroe Powell stating that Buck Ram began a new company in 1970 to promote a group called The Buck Ram Platters. I can tell you for a fact that is not true. This case is yet another battle over the ownership of the name The Platters. If you count the little skirmishes that lasted a day or two, there have been at least a hundred cases over the last sixty years. The correct information is that Personality Productions managed The Platters from 1953 until 2006. Buck Ram SOLD Personality, a management company representing thirty-three acts at the time, to Jean Bennett in 1966. Buck stayed on as Music Consultant. That's it. He washed his hands of the whole Platters mess on 1966 - except for music. On that score he had the final say. Buck had been a successful songwriter when Herb Reed and the other "original" singers were in diapers. The guys who started the group before Reed and Tony Williams joined were younger and weren't even born when Buck was hanging round the Apollo with Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Chick Webb and writing songs with them. It is true that The Platters began to be referred to as The Buck Ram Platters about the time Bennett bought the company because of all the counterfit groups springing up around the world. But it was not Jean - or Buck - who began referring to the group as The Buck Ram Platters. It was the bookers. They wanted to make sure they were getting the group whose music and performance came directly from the master. Although Buck threw in finacial support if needed, Jean, not Buck, fought the battle for the group and the name from 1966 until she'd had enough. With Buck and all the singers passed on, I'm still trying to figure out what these people bringing lawsuits today - and there are at least two and maybe more in courts at this moment - have to do with The Platters or the success of the group. Herb Reed did not start the group. He was reportedly in the Army when they began. They were originally a bunch of high school kids. Cornell Gunter was 16. Herb Reed and Tony Williams were 25 or 26 years old when they got involved. And what has Bauman or Reed's manager, who is apparently now claiming rights to the name, got to do with The Platters?