Fact #11250
When:
Short story:
Handy Man by Jimmy Jones enters the Billboard R'n'B singles chart in the USA. It will peak at No2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Cover versions of the song will provide further hits for Del Shannon (No22 in 1964) and James Taylor (No4 in 1977).
Full article:
Jimmy Jones : The only thing I didn’t like about what George Goldner (producer) and them did was, after I’d write a song … they took all the publishing, which you knew they was gonna’ do that, and then they’d want to take half the writer’s royalties, and it was not just that they wanted to, they did! Like, I’d write the song, and as the writer when it come up, he’d be (credited as) half writer, and he never put a lyric in the song!
After the record hit again with James Taylor, he was tryin’ to tell me that his father was a writer on the song – I told him his father did not put a lyric in the song. People just jump outta’ the woodwork! I sued Boy George, for the ‘come-a, come-a’ (in the Boy George song Karma Chameleon), and I won – that’s from the song. They wanted to know could he have heard that song. I said he sure could have ‘cause I went into the Top Ten in England twice with that song! Columbia got some of the money, but that’s it. I didn’t want no publicity ‘cause things like that do you no good. I just wanted what was rightfully mine.
(Source : interview by Seamus McGarvey, date not known)
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After the record hit again with James Taylor, he was tryin’ to tell me that his father was a writer on the song – I told him his father did not put a lyric in the song. People just jump outta’ the woodwork! I sued Boy George, for the ‘come-a, come-a’ (in the Boy George song Karma Chameleon), and I won – that’s from the song. They wanted to know could he have heard that song. I said he sure could have ‘cause I went into the Top Ten in England twice with that song! Columbia got some of the money, but that’s it. I didn’t want no publicity ‘cause things like that do you no good. I just wanted what was rightfully mine.
(Source : interview by Seamus McGarvey, date not known)