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By
Ron Simpson
Orrin
Hatch made the cover of Billboard Magazine.
Maybe
that’s not as great as being on the cover of Rolling Stone, the
goal Dr. Hook sang about on his 1973 hit (“Gonna see my picture
on the cover / Gonna buy five copies for my mother”), but Utah’s
songwriting senator made the cover of Billboard–a close second by
any music insider’s reckoning.
 Yet it wasn’t the senator’s music that got him the Billboard
coverage (Sept. 20, 2003), it was his leadership on a suddenly-hot
issue: the widespread illegal downloading of music files. Hatch,
whose seniority has given him the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, is a frequently-quoted ally of the music industry on
this issue, which seems a remote one to some of his Utah constituents,
who know him and vote for him as simply a conservative. They seem
baffled by his stands on complex national issues such as this one,
and he recently confessed that “the amount of public backlash to
his comments [on this issue] ranked among the highest in his career.”
(SL Tribune, Oct 5, 2003)
Perhaps
some of those who complain don’t realize that Orrin Hatch has had
a long standing and sincere love affair with music and the business
that drives it: he played music as a young boy; and his folks scraped
money together so young Orrin could attend concerts of the Pittsburgh
Symphony. As a student at BYU, Hatch discovered a talent for writing
poems, which would later be a natural springboard into the world
of song lyrics.
The Sons of Mosiah
 I first met Orrin Hatch when he was a young Salt Lake
lawyer and I was a media composer and music entrepreneur. It was
about 1969 and Utah had just spawned what might have been its first-ever
Mormon-rock showband. Called The Sons of Mosiah, the band featured
strong local-name personalities of the time such as Lynn Bryson
and Alan Cherry and captured the imagination of large numbers of
Mormon youth. With dreams of bigger things, the band retained a
Salt Lake manager who also had dreams of bigger things, and felt
that The Sons of Mosiah might be a good vehicle to propel both him
and the band.
The
manager was Orrin Hatch. While he and the band had a good ride together,
Hatch’s burgeoning law career and the lure of politics began to
consume his attention.
For
me, consulting with Orrin Hatch about The Sons of Mosiah and their
possible chances for major-label success clarified one thing and
defined my relationship with him from that day forward: he really
understood the music industry and he seemed to love it.
The
positions he would later take as a senator with respect to music
issues would not be due to any inordinate grandstanding or selling
out to big interests, they would be informed, responsible positions.
And Orrin Hatch was also very well aware–almost ahead of those of
us who were already in it–that there was a growing creative music
and arts community in Utah just beginning to reach maturity. It
would, he believed, have huge potential. Hatch’s awareness dawned
well before the Osmonds’ highly-publicized return to Utah.
Fast
forward to 1992. Senator Orrin Hatch is now an experienced politician
with enviable seniority, and he is an oft-quoted source in a hot
and turbulent period in the arts and the entertainment industry.
He is invited to give a speech to the School of Music at BYU. Continued
federal funding of the arts is in jeopardy, and censorship of rock
and rap lyrics is being debated in the press and in the living room.
(Remember Tipper Gore?) Many think the National Endowment of the
Arts should be dismantled.
For
that 1992 appearance at BYU, Sen. Hatch strode to the podium armed
with a prepared speech relating to the political issues and the
limits on freedoms being proposed and discussed at that time. But
then he paused for a moment, set his text aside, and just talked,
revealing a lot about himself, his working-class upbringing, his
introduction to classical music, and other factors which form the
backdrop from which he both views the arts and positions himself
on arts-related issues. Then he went on to deliver a condensed version
of his prepared material, which was received generously by a diverse
audience with varied opinions and political predispositions.
His Music Move
Just
a few years later Orrin Hatch made his music move. I checked my
calendar, and it was in March, 1997 that I bumped into Steven Kapp
Perry, and he told me they were recording an album by new songwriting
collaborators Janice Kapp Perry and Orrin Hatch. When I heard him
say Randy Cox had flown out from Nashville for the sessions, I couldn’t
believe it. Cox was a contact I had long courted, the head of the
Christian music division of Tree Music, for some years the largest
independent publisher on Music Row in Nashville. Somewhere in the
90s, Tree Music was sold by founder Buddy Killen to Sony, accelerating
the “corporatization” of the folksy Nashville music scene. Knowing
Tree and Randy Cox, and the perpetual chill that exists between
the Christian music establishment and anything Mormon, it just didn’t
make sense that Cox would be sitting in the control room of a Provo,
Utah studio, encouraging these two Mormon song partners, the veteran
melodist (Jan Perry) and the rookie lyricist (Orrin Hatch).
It
didn’t make sense because I didn’t know the whole story.
John
Perry, who runs the business side of Janice Kapp Perry’s catalog
and also manages Orrin Hatch’s music sales, points out that a year
earlier, in 1996, his mother heard about Orrin’s poetry and approached
him about writing with her. Sen. Hatch felt complimented, but didn’t
take the offer seriously until four months later when they bumped
into each other again, and Perry renewed her request. In a rush
of creativity, he sat down that weekend and wrote lyrics for ten
songs for her. Those ten songs were the foundation of their My
God Is Love album.
And
there was another development in 1996: Hatch was contacted by singer/songwriter
Billy Hinsche, a Beach Boy since 1974, and a front line member of
the 60's group Dino Desi And Billy before that. Billy Hinsche, well
connected in the music publishing world, wanted to co-write with
Sen. Hatch.
Following
their sixth song, legendary lyricist Marilyn Bergman, by now an
officer of ASCAP, the performance-rights royalty organization, contacted
Orrin to suggest that his songs had great potential and that she
was passing them on to Donna Hilley, head of Sony/ATV Tree in Nashville.
She felt Donna was in a better position to advise Orrin about the
future of his songs.
Orrin
Hatch reports that he received a phone call from Ms. Hilley, offering
publishing on two of his newly-created songs. “We would like to
demo them for you. Would you be interested in coming down to see
how we do it?"
Hatch
was on his way, and it was Randy Cox who produced the demo sessions.
And so, the following March, when I heard that Randy Cox was in
Utah, I didn’t realize the contact had been made by Orrin Hatch
at Sony/Tree in Nashville the year before. For a beginning songwriter,
a storybook start indeed.
+ + + + +
Orrin
Hatch and Janice Kapp Perry have continued to be a prolific team
through the 90s and into the new millennium. Their catalog can be
found at hatchmusic.com or at janicekappperry.com. Thinking back
on the Hatch/Perry music I’ve heard, I decided I might single out
“Heal Our Land” as a personal favorite and a likely standout in
the catalog. I asked Steve Perry if this were an accurate assessment.
“Yes,”
he said, with obvious family pride. “It’s been performed at Robert
Schuler’s Crystal Cathedral [radio and television shows emanating
from Costa Mesa, CA], and Senator Hatch was even invited to ‘witness,’
or bear his testimony on the show.
“And
then the reverend Windley Phipps, a 7th Day Adventist
and a friend of Sen. Hatch, sang “Heal Our Land” on Oprah, and put
it on one of his own albums.” (This is a favorite rendition of mine.
Rev. Phipps has a deep, warm, baritone not unlike Paul Robeson.)
“Yes,”
echoed John Perry, when the same question was put to him. “It’s
even been sung by the Tabernacle Choir, definitely one of the most
successful individual songs.”
+ + + + +
 As you’ve possibly heard, Orrin Hatch picked up the
humanitarian award at the most recent Pearl Awards in Salt Lake
City. Well deserved.
He
is a thinking, scrapping, well-respected representative of the people
of Utah–including those in the creative community, with whom he
walks side by side as a colleague and the co-writer of the songs
on nine CDs.
And
as a Utah-based musician, I must confess it feels good to be from
a small, mostly- rural state which is represented by a senator who
not only has some seniority and a reputation for legislative muscle,
but also gets his photo on the cover of Billboard Magazine.
All photos courtesy of John Perry.
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© 2003 Meridian
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