Yvonne Harris Burnley is a lawyer in the Washington, DC area and the manager of her father’s legacy and estate, the legendary jazz tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris. I met Yvonne last year at the National Music Publishers’ Association meeting in New York City where I learned about her many roles in owning and managing copyrights. Over lunch recently we chatted in some detail about her father’s legacy and her role as estate manager.

Today Yvonne speaks with us about growing up with Eddie, and the impact he has made on his family and the music industry. Also read what Yvonne has to say about the importance of managing her father’s intellectual property, and she gives some advice for aspiring artists. For more information visit, www.eddieharris.com.

Listen Here, I really want to tell you - Lyrics from Eddie’s composition entitled, Listen Here

Lucinda: What was it like to grow up in a home with someone who was motivated completely by his creative passion?

Yvonne: Growing up in a household with Eddie Harris, a musical genius, was nothing less than enjoyable. He was an Energetic man who always rose to the occasion to spend quality time with his family. He spent time talking to my sister and I about a broad range of subjects including our school work, our personal matters and his travels on the road including what he had observed and what lessons we could learn from what he had experienced. During the holidays he would stay at home with us and if on occasion he did work on a holiday, he would take his family with him. He was always willing and available to talk to my sister and I during intervals while he was practicing music. In short, he was just my dad and like many dads he was supportive and loving and caring to my family and I.

In addition to conversing with us about business and personal matters, he enjoyed re-designing our home by having additional rooms built for the purpose of strategically creating a layout for a music room for practicing and having personal space for his family and entertaining. Eddie drafted a floor plan and designed the music room so that during rehearsals and practices, the performances would not be heard throughout the house.

Eddie was also very versatile in his talents. He was Determined to carry out the many projects he involved himself in whether in the home, any involvement with family matters or in his music and professional career, to the best of his ability. His spirit was Daring and non-fearful and Inspired me to pursue law school so that one of the aspects of my career would be to handle his legal and business matters. His Entrepreneurial spirit which consisted of him writing his own compositions, inventing a reed mouthpiece and an Eddie Harris Attachment, writing books, creating an African American card game and planning to launch his own record company prior to his demise was invaluable and also motivated me to carry out my entrepreneurial endeavors of working with this aspect of the music business, lecturing to college and law students about the music business and even to children to encourage them to tap into their inner abilities and greatness.

Love is Too Much To Touch - Composition written and Copyrighted by Yvonne Harris

Lucinda: How did growing up in a creative household influence your appreciation for and involvement in the arts?

Yvonne: Eddie’s heartfelt passions for always elevating his musical ability coupled with his continued interest to pursue his goal of playing his instruments (which included the saxophone, piano and trumpet) influenced me to become his manager and agent in the 90’s, after completing law school. I held the dual role for Eddie in which I secured performance engagements for him and traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe. I enjoyed this work immensely with the exception of the smoke-filled venues in Europe night after night and the constant one nighter engagements which meant that we had to be shuffled from one hotel to another. While working and traveling directly with my father, I learned about life on the road for a jazz musician and a great deal about the music industry. I met the players behind the contractual agreements and their business associates. Although being on the road for so many years caused my father to be somewhat shrewd, he always managed to maintain his sense of humor despite the situation throughout the business transactions while he imparted advice and wisdom during many of our travels.

Upon his passing, I began to manage the intellectual property Eddie left behind (his music creations and inventions) and I continued to organize his copyrights, contractual agreements and outstanding business transactions. To manage the estate of a deceased artist effectively, I have obtained understanding and control of all the recording and licensing matters concerning the estate and realized it is critical to become familiar with and gain understanding of contractual commitments, the terms of recording and publishing agreements, royalty rates and their issuance, the rights of heirs and who handles or will handle the future of the publicity and marketing of artists.

How the legacy is represented becomes one of the central questions I focus on. The other central issue I focus on is who is involved in the management of royalties, or who was in control and should our company remain in this role and if not, what tactics must be made to remove the detrimental party. An excellent team of professionals exists which took some time to formulate but these individuals valued Eddie and his talent and wanted to assist us. Finally, personally, I am involved in the arts as a current member of BMI, a copyright advocate with the Copyright Alliance, and a former member of NAMIC and BESLA and I volunteer for various entertainment fundraising events. I am also a songwriter who has 5 songs registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Stars are born but popular stars are made – Excerpt taken from Eddie Harris’ book entitled, “Eddieisms”

Lucinda: What have been some of the challenges in managing the Estate of Jazz Saxophonist Eddie Harris?

Yvonne: In addition to hit recordings, Eddie recorded over 300 songs, 70 CD’s, had his music recorded and sampled by more than 150 artists, traveled around the world as a bandleader and with many musicians and performed at numerous festivals, concerts and venues throughout the world. However, at the time Eddie passed away in 1996, he was not signed with a major record label. This was a problem in that he received minimal publicity in that he did not have the support of a record company. Because of this, currently it has become a great challenge to obtain a record company, as it has not yet come to fruition, to release Eddie’s final recording that was recorded live (6) months before his demise. We look forward to sharing this last recording with the world as Eddie shared some last testaments regarding his life.

Another challenge I have encountered is the maintenance of the momentum of managing the domestic and foreign royalties of artists. A careful study and analysis is done quarterly by the estate as to which of Eddie’s songs are receiving significant airplay in various countries and which songs are used mostly for movies. Currently, Eddie’s compositions; Freedom Jazz Dance, Listen Here and Cold Duck Time and his recording Compared To What are his most popular hits on a broad spectrum from television to radio to movies to computer downloads on I-tunes. In addition, many artists have sampled Eddie’s songs and the sales have been successful both domestically and in foreign territories. I continue to monitor the income of these royalties.

Also, our challenge consists of making sure that Eddie’s music lives on. We do this by placing advertisements in jazz and music trade magazines, updating our website periodically, as well as attending music conferences and meeting with record company executives.

I continue to enjoy managing the estate of Eddie where I am able to respond to the volumes of emails the estate receives in which fans of Eddie and musicians write about the great influence or impact that he and his music made on their lives. Eddie was also a counselor and astrologer and people enjoyed speaking with him about their life issues and personal matters. In the emails that I continue to receive presently, people share with me how they appreciate the advice that Eddie provided them as well as what his music meant to them. Finally, it has been a pleasure to attend musical tributes in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago held in honor of Eddie and his contributions to jazz.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 2:45 pm by Lucinda M. Dugger and is filed under copyright law, creators, culture, economy, education, q&a. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.