If Only I Had a Big Rack
By: William, Dollar Bill
Tags: Memoir, Metoo, Music Business, Culture

If Only I Had a Big Rack

I recognize that women have been — and still are — the oppressed gender. They play an inferior role in a man’s world even in our so-called enlightened society. They work the same jobs for less money and all too often, are relegated to the position of housewife. Being a chick sucks. I get it. But not always. There are times when a pretty face and/or a big rack rules the day — and leaves flat-chested and hairy-faced schmucks like me out in the cold.

I harken back to two events that occurred in my early 30’s which illustrate the point. One was meaningless in retrospect. But the other might well have changed the course of my life.

For a few years in my relative youth — and while a musician — I somehow networked my way into playing behind name-brand R & B artists the likes of Stephanie Mills and the Main Ingredient, usually as token honky in an all-black band.

Not only did I view my minority standing in an exalted light, I at once loved playing with whom I considered superior musicians worthy of my admiration. As a journeyman grinding out a living with my guitar, I would often find myself turning a buck with some pretty dismal players. It certainly was not lost on me that the musicians in these bands were of a much higher quality than say, the guys with whom I played weddings off and on.

So anyway, one weekend night, the Main Ingredient had a gig at a theater in Philadelphia. This was 1981! The act had had a couple of hits 5 to 10 years before and was sort of bridging the gap between a hip current versus tired oldies band. While we played some fairly snazzy venues in New York City, nothing really felt big time.

I figured the Philly gig would be more of the same. But I was wrong. Billed with Blue Magic, a similar soul aggregation with a big hit or two at about the same time as the Main Ingredient, the two acts drew a sellout crowd — and in a plush venue.

Sitting three feet from me on her synthesizer was a bandmate who two years later would write “You Give Good Love” for Whitney Houston, a number one pop hit. If this wasn’t the big time, it was getting pretty darn close all of a sudden.

One of the background vocalists for the band was a girl named Connie, who’d sung background for just about everybody you could think of including Steve Winwood. She also had a huge chest. Connie and I were old friends. We’d met when both of us were hired to back a tone-deaf RCA recording artist a few years before.

While we performed in the first of two shows, Connie spotted Teddy Pendergrass in the audience and frothed in my ear “Teddy’s in the crowd. I’m gonna go meet him.”

For me, that would have been a pipe dream. Teddy was the #1 male R & B vocalist in the world at the time. Why would he want to meet me? But Connie was a different story. A mega babe with a giant chest?

Not only did she meet him…but two weeks later, she gave the band leader notice. Teddy had hired her to sing background for him on the road. She was leaving the Main Ingredient.

Had I been in Connie’s body? I’d have switched over to backing the world’s biggest heartthrob with my guitar. But without those big tits? The Main Ingredient band broke up and I was unemployed a month later. Ya see how that goes? The guy’s left out in the cold. And the woman got the job.

Just about the same time, I had my own record (as producer) out on a CBS affiliate run by John Hammond. There was no budget for promoting my record. But the company had a short list of dance club DJ’s, a Pitney Bowes (for mailing), and a phone and desk I could use.

“You want your record to happen? Here ya go, Billy. Ya got a phone, a list, and a smiling machine. You’re now a promotion man!”

Now, this might have been beneath some producers/artists. But it wasn’t for me. I tore into that list calling 100 Billboard reporters imploring them to play and list my record for two months. Eventually, I broke through and my record entered the Billboard dance chart at #66 with a bullet.

I was stoked. But there was a small problem. The production I’d given this company (I received no advance) was actually a B-side. The A-side had been sold to a fledgling label that paid me a big advance a few months before. And that record stiffed due to poor promotion by a label that didn’t know what it was doing. The flip side I’d hyped onto the charts for the CBS affiliate wasn’t my best effort. I’d have done much better with the A-side.

Still, I’d made some friends over at Black Rock (the CBS building) in the process of promoting my record. And when I heard that CBS was about to hire an in-house dance record promotion man (or woman as it turned out), I and a few other people who worked there, thought I should get the job. After all, I’d taken a B-side, and hyped it onto the charts with a bullet. That should have counted for something.

The guy whose responsibility it was to hire the new promotion person was a blue-blood/silver spoon kind of individual who I distinctly recall having a huge, gold-plated tuna fishing reel on his desk in his office. In other words — expensive equipment for a hobby that required big dough to pursue.

This was a job I wanted — and deserved — as far as I was concerned. A week later, I got the word. Arma (his name) hired a chick with big tits.

Ok! Maybe she was more qualified. Who knows? Gale was known in the dance record community. Her appointment wasn’t totally out of left field. But still, I have to think that if I’d been a chick with a big rack, I’d have had a better shot at the job. With all the work I’d done, I felt slighted.

CBS gave me some free studio time to make another two records. But by the time they were finished, the label wouldn’t release them after I’d had an acrimonious parting with their affiliate. So I placed my two new productions with a small label that gave me a nice advance but never released the song, and the other with Salsoul, a going concern, that was on its last legs (something I didn’t realize at the time).

Neither record happened and I went on to lick my wounds playing in a shitty band at a hotel in the Catskills for the summer.

The point: I get that women have it tough. I mean…if you didn’t fuck Harvey Weinstein, you could forget about making it in Hollywood. But there’s another side to that coin. I’m convinced my life arc would have been different had I been an attractive woman. And quite possibly for the better. Sometimes being a woman can pay off in this world. That’s all I’m sayin’.