Earlier this yr, a musician named Kinny Landrum despatched Planet Cash an e mail, and he made an uncommon proposal.
Again within the Nineteen Seventies, Kinny defined, he was the keyboardist for an instrumental funk band known as Sugar Daddy and the Gumbo Roux. This was the peak of the “stagflation” period, when stagnating development and skyrocketing costs have been wreaking havoc on the American economic system. The band collaborated with a singer named Earnest Jackson, who had written a track with lyrics that captured that period’s zeitgeist. The track was known as “Inflation.”
Sugar Daddy and Gumbo Roux recorded a demo of the track in 1975 at a well-known studio in New Orleans known as Sea-Saint Studios. The demo, nonetheless, was by no means launched. The band broke up. And the track disappeared. So did excessive inflation, after the US Federal Reserve hammered it down within the early Eighties.
Quick ahead to 2021. “Inflation” is making a roaring comeback. And Kinny will get a textual content message from a pal, Arthur Rouse. Kinny had given Arthur a cassette copy of “Inflation” a long time earlier than. The surge in costs rekindled Arthur’s recollections of the track — and, it turned out, he nonetheless had the copy. Hastily this dusty recording had resonance once more.
That is when Kinny reached out to Planet Cash, and requested we do one thing with the track. After all, Planet Cash isn’t within the enterprise of publishing information or selling musicians. We make podcasts. However we started to research the story behind the track and brainstorm what we might do with it.
Lots of the members of Sugar Daddy and the Gumbo Roux went on to have strong careers within the music trade, enjoying in profitable bands, writing jingles, and scoring films. Essentially the most well-known member, Randy Jackson, went on to be a music government and co-host of American Idol. However, sadly, regardless of his unimaginable expertise, Earnest Jackson (no relation to Randy) by no means made it. Even worse, he is felt burned, exploited, and forged apart by the music trade.
However now Planet Cash is attempting to alter all of that.
The creation of Planet Cash Information
As a result of we love Earnest Jackson — and we love his unimaginable track concerning the financial development of our occasions — Planet Cash has determined to again him (and the band) to attempt to proper the wrongs, and provides him his shot at stardom.
To make this occur, we licensed the track and have become our personal file label. Planet Cash Information has the only real function of releasing and selling Jackson’s “Inflation” track. The journey to create that label was a dizzying and intimidating leap into the unknown for us, and it gave us a novel alternative to discover the enterprise and economics of the music trade from the within.
In organising our personal file label, Planet Cash needed to keep away from the shady practices which might be all too widespread within the music enterprise. It is an trade the place artists often get pennies on the greenback for the songs they create. That has at all times been the case, however the dying of bodily file gross sales and the rise of digital streaming has solely made issues worse for musicians.
We realized that the standard file contract fingers solely about 20 % of earnings to the artist and the opposite 80 % to the label. We determined to do one thing radically totally different, which you’ll study in our collection. You might determine we made a horrible enterprise choice, however, to be honest, we’re not within the music enterprise!
After all, it wasn’t sufficient to license Earnest Jackson’s track. We even have hopes to create merchandise, plan a music tour, and work out how on earth to make this track widespread. Within the coming months, we’re trying to discover subjects like how streaming has revolutionized the music trade, how payola works, and the best way to manufacture a success.
We hope you will tune into our collection. Maybe extra importantly, it’s best to try the track! “Inflation” is a throwback funk tune that speaks to the present state of the worldwide economic system. You will discover it on Spotify and Apple Music.
Greg Rosalsky, Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and Arielle Retting contributed to this story.
Planet Cash explains the financial forces that form our lives. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You may as well sustain with us on TikTok and Instagram, and subscribe to our newsletter!
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