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Paul Terry King and Mike Waters: The eBay Auction
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The following quotes and information come from Paul Terry King and Mike Waters, who is a representative of King’s. Part of the information comes from responses sent to a person who submitted questions about the song/auction to Waters (which were provided to me, presumably with Waters’s permission), and the other information comes from King’s website.
Briefly, Paul Terry King claims to have been a songwriter on staff at American Recording Studios in Memphis from approximately 1967 to 1970, during which time Elvis Presley recorded at ARS. King claims to have known Elvis during this time, though there is no substantive evidence to support this claim. King states that in 1973, Elvis dropped by King’s studio in California and the two men composed and informally recorded two songs, “Just Like Rollin’ Uphill” and “If I’d Only Bought Her Roses.”
Let’s look at the story and the claims more closely:
Note: Information after RE: was provided by Mike Waters, who is assisting Paul Terry King with the January 2007 auction of “Just Like Rollin’ Uphill”:
RE: “Paul Terry King Wrote the song in 1973 with Elvis on Laurel Canyon Drive in a studio he operated with Tandem Almer.”
What was the name of the studio? What was the address? Over what time period did Almer and/or King own this property? Most importantly, what date does King cite as the date that Elvis dropped by, unannounced? Specific details to support the story are suspiciously lacking.
RE: “The evidence on the BMI site is pretty clear, it shows Elvis as the C0-Author of the song and it has been listed that way with BMI way past any period or right of contest.”
First, the BMI registration information in question, that Waters refers to:
JUST LIKE ROLLING UP HILL (Legal Title)
BMI Work #7600186
Songwriter/Composer Current Affiliation CAE/IPI #
KING PAUL TERRY (US - CNTRY)
BMI 127120318
PRESLEY ELVIS A
BMI 56021705
Two key points to consider:
The evidence that Elvis co-wrote the song is, in fact, not clear, and here is why: Elvis died in 1977, and we know that King did not register this song with either BMI or the Library of Congress (Copyright Office) until many years later. So, this shows us quite clearly that BMI and the CO do not take any proactive measures to authenticate authorship of any given work. Instead, they allow any name on any submission, and only if a question arises does authorship become an issue. Simply, I could register a song and claim “Elvis Presley” as co-writer, but BMI and the CO have no way of proving that either of us really wrote the piece in question. Going back to Waters’s claim that “the evidence…is pretty clear,” we see that Waters is incorrect, since the BMI registration and the CO registration provide no evidence whatsoever as to authorship.
What Waters is suggesting is that because Elvis’s name is listed as co-writer, the BMI registration is evidence that King’s claim is true because no one has contested the claim. However, this is a logical fallacy, because the lack of questioning the claim does not mean the claim is true. For example, I could state, “I am an alien and I have returned to Earth to take over the United States.” If no one challenges my claim that I am an alien, could I then say, “The lack of questions about my being an alien supports the claim that I am an alien”? No, it’s a fallacy. That no one has contested King’s claim means nothing.
RE: “On our site we are also currently paying royalties to BMI for the use of the first song he wrote with Elvis.”
If EPE owns the first song in question, having acquired it in the Elvis-A-Rama purchase a few years ago, then EPE is entitled to royalties no matter who the songwriter is. If Paul Terry King wrote a song with Hank Williams, and EPE bought it, King would owe a fee if he licensed the song…doesn’t matter that he co-wrote it. Accepting a fee does not mean EPE is by implication authenticating the lyrics, nor that they are lending credence to King’s claim.
RE: “Our main opponent to the facts of this song is Marty Lacker and although he doubts the validity of our claims he has refused our offer for a lie detector, public debates, and analysis of our evidence up close. So with that in mind you can take his opinion for what it is worth, since he refuses to debate the facts instead he just prefers to call them false.”
Refusal to involve oneself in a polygraph examination or a public debate is not evidence that there is something to hide. Quite the contrary…if Lacker believes King’s claim is bogus, why would he want to waste his time on it? Waters and King should consider other possibilities for Lacker’s refusal.
RE: “As far as evidence connecting Terry an Elvis did you notice that he wrote songs with Chips Moman, Johnny Christopher, Butch Carter, Charlie Romans. He wrote all of these songs around the same time that Elvis was at American so it would stand to reason that Elvis would have known him.”
Having met Elvis at American Recording Studios during a specific time period (before 1973) does not support the claim that King and Elvis Presley co-wrote two songs together in California in 1973. It only means that King was a songwriter working at American during a specific time period when Elvis was also recording there. That is the only connection, and it does not support King’s claims at all.
Also, according to King/Waters, “Elvis was in Hollywood and saw the American Recording Studio Letterhead. A few nights later, Elvis, accompanied by his driver, knocked on Terry’s studio door.” Here, King claims that Elvis presumably showed up at King’s studio because of the American Recording Studio reference on the letterhead he had seen. If we work within King’s story, this means Elvis was there because he recognized the American Recording Studios name, not that he recognized Paul Terry King’s name.
Another important question is raised in this statement: who was Elvis’s driver? Why hasn’t King identified this person?
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