APACHE JUNCTION AZ (IFS) -- He was born Kenneth Smith in Bakersfield, California, the second of seven brothers and sisters. Raised in the little town of Rosamond, California, Smith always gives praise to Howard K. Siegel who placed a pair of drum sticks in his hands and had him practice on a chair, teaching him how to count beats and measures and eventually to learn notes of music, staffs, and bars.
As Smith was starting up the D-Town/Platinum Sound labels, Gwendolyn Gordy Fuqua would not let Smith out of his recording agreement with Motown, only if he gave them several recordings to release his contract. Smith's end agreement only released him from the recording end, and not the songwriters' agreement which Smith is still part of that agreement that his songs have been transferred to EMI Music and later in 2008 to Sony Music.
Only in the third grade, it took Smith the first year to learn how to count. By the fourth grade, Smith had managed to play his way up to the number #1 chair in the drums and percussion section of the local Southern Kern Unified School District Band.
It would be in his Sophmore year at Antelope Valley High School that would change his life forever. The girl next door in the school lockers in the hallway happens to be the sister of one, Merrell Fankhauser, of Merrell and the Exiles band, who at the time was in 1963, was all over the country with their smash hit records "Please Be Mind" and "Too Many Heartbreaks".
It was that end of summer at the Antelope Valley Fair, that Merrell and the Exiles took to the stage and rocked the crowd. It was the first time, Smith got to see the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department rush to the stage and pull the girls off the stage as the group played their smash hits. This was before the Beatles came to America.
In Rosamond, the kids that Smith went to school with came from everywhere, as their parents were in the military and they traveled all over the world. Their music collection was very strange too. He never knew that B.B. King made so many albums. Smith never heard of Howlin' Wolf. He never heard of a lot of the band and groups that were in these amazing record collections from his school mates.
The top of the charts in Smith's early days of high school was Perry Como, Doris Day, Mitch Mitchell, Hugo Montenegro, The Four Freshmen, The Maguire Sisters, and Andy Williams. You get the idea. Make no mistake, that these artists were great for their music and television.
Smith's greater goal in his young life was to be the president and CEO of Capitol Records and the governor of the State of California.
Smith always said that he was lucky, but never good enough to compete with the major artists of his day. He managed to talk himself into a record deal with then RCA Records A&R boss, Rick Jarrett who also had signed the Jefferson Airplane. Smith had learned the art of record manufacturing from Glen MacArthur of Glenn Records of Palmdale California. Smith understood that recording companies hated to spend a dime on anyone to make a recording. However, after learning one of the key secrets of James Brown and his deal with King Records where he paid for his own records to be made, Smith realized the holy grail of any record deal.
Smith is credited with the advent of two bands under the same venue. In the old days, when attempting to get gigs, the club owners wanted a group that could play rock, and others wanted a group that could play the top forty songs of the day. So to get the job, you just renamed your band and gave it another persona and you did the gig and got paid. So the early bands of Smith's included "Purple Olive" and "Rhonghei" (ronn-gee) when that added Bobby Mandolph as the new vocalist.
It became a standard practice among bands, especially, Duran Duran with their counter group with drummer Carmen Appice of Vanilla Fudge.
Smith's new recording label MasterTrack Records had signed the group Papa's Results, Bobby O's Blue Bombers, and several other acts. It was in the middle of making a deal with Motown Records as Smith had signed with them and Gwendolyn Gordy Fuqua passed on the group. which prompted Smith to look elsewhere to Playboy Records with Harvey Johnson. When Gordy-Fuqua turned down the group, Smith decided to go with IRDA of Nashville for distribution, while not keeping her out of the loop, Gordy-Fuqua purchased the song from Ollie McLaughlin for the Jobete Music catalog, which she decided to name Stone Agate Music.
As the single of Love Makes The World Go Round started its climb up the musical charts, the interest in the record generated offers from TK Records, RCA Records and Atlantic Records. As with everything with kids and parents who want to be in control, I received $10,000 and a termination notice and the parents signed them to Atlantic.
As a songwriter, record producer and artist at Motown Records, Gordy-Fuqua decided to place a hold on all of our productions. We did not understand why. Lee Rogers had enough of her back and forth, but a power struggle within the organization was at the top of the list, and as "employees" we had no knowledge how bad the fight was. Gwen was fighting for her life as Motown Records was on the chopping block and she was losing her position as co-owner and Vice president.
Gwen told me, that she was not going to put good money after bad money, and then in the middle of the night would call me over to the Beverly Hills house, and put a check in my hand to help produce Lee's recordings.
So as an indie producer, Smith started shopping around the songs that Gwen rejected. The Cardella DiMilo single of "Gimme Whatcha Promised Me" to Frank Slay's Claridge Records opened up several new opportunities for Smith to produce and distribute his music.
Gwen Gordy-Fuqua continued to support our efforts and let us have the recordings that we produced at Motown. She minced no words and gave us complete access to distribution and promotion. Little did we know that she was dropping bombs at the Motown corporate level with our outside productions.
Rogers and Smith started to flex their muscles and ventured out of the box and signed a young Debby Clinton and released her single "Love Confusion". Rogers and Smith decided to re-activate D-Town Records, mostly to block record pirates from pressing Lee's records as the label had set idle for over ten (10) years and they wanted to stop the illegal pressings.
With the moderate success of Cardella DiMilo's recording and Coleman, Kestin & Smith's label coupled with the sell of Claridge Records to Sir Paul McCartney's MPL Communications, Smith and Lee Rogers revived D-Town Records with Smith as the head of Platinum Sound Productions. It did not take Smith too long to push releases on the new labels.
Rogers and Smith really needed a new kind of star for the label, and Merrell Fankhauser had just returned from Maui, Hawaii, it was just a matter of time that we signed him to D-Town records to give us that push.
The Bobby O Band from D-Town Records of 1985, included Flame, Debbi Lori and Bobby Ormsby among the greats of the day. The group is performing at Tommy James and the Shondells' bass player, Larry Wright's house for his birthday
https://www.reverbnation.com/thebobbyoband
By the end of 1986, Smith was pairing down the record business and was devoting his time to computer programming and writing software. He told his partners and friends that computer software was going to be the only game in town in the future. So along with his borrowed Apple Computer and IBM PC, Smith moved head-on into the programming.
To keep his fingers into the business, he produced and promoted Bernadette Bascom of Seattle and other local groups. However, his main interest was the young cassette radio programming label that he started by the name of KDRC. As the years went on, this little cassette label evolved into KDTN Radio One, with it's opening on a little small platform on Pan Networks bulletin board. By the time the internet had open for business in 1993, Smith's little radio station on Mark Cuban's Broadcast.Com that was free radio for listening. After Cuban started to charge operating fees, Smith moved his radio station to Live365.com where he stayed for many years.
The model for radio stations and artists have not changed. They only want to know that they are on the playlist and playing in a regular rotation. If as an artist you just set in front of your radio waiting to hear your music, you are in trouble. So the low listening numbers was a new marking tool for Smith. These were known as the Artist's radio stations where they were on the playlist and did not need to babysit the station to find out if they were playing. The artists could list their songs on their publicity flyers to encourage new station to add their music, and they did.
Also, what was started as playlists for recording artists, became the basis for thousands of indie radio stations worldwide, they began to use the service of SDC RadioWorks to create M3U playlists to program their own radio stations, that has expanded to over 66,000 generated playlists every day.
Smith has written many books and stories that he gives away. Smith has his own version of Black's Law Unabridged Dictionary for PC's that he produced back in 2005.
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