All Big Record Labels Passed On Russell Morris' Top Ten Album
He tried to make the deal as alluring as possible.
In July last year, veteran popster Russell Morris released a new album, Sharkmouth, based on stories from Australia's Depression years and some of their colourful characters.
The album became Morris' first to make it into the ARIA top ten, hitting tenth spot in April 2013. The delicious irony for Russell was that he'd originally presented the album to the major labels extant at the time and been rejected.
“I originally did four tracks – Blackdog Blues, Ballad Of Les Darcy, the song about Phar Lap, Big Red and Sharkmouth – and I thought I'd see if anyone was interested, and we did the rounds and went to all the record companies, and all of them said no. So I thought, 'Damn it, I don't care. I really like the project myself so I'll do something that I really want to do'. So I finished it and thought, 'Gee, this is good', so we tried it again.
"So we went back to them again and this time offered not only the album but also the publishing on the album and my old publishing, on songs like Wings Of An Eagle and Sweet Sweet Love. And they still said no! I thought, 'Oh well, it doesn't matter. This is the state of my career these days'. I've been around, and you sort of become like an old pair of slippers that people are not unkind to – people really like the old pair of slippers – but they don't want to wear them so much.
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"So I thought I'd do it myself, enjoy doing it and sell them at gigs and make some money back. Then [former MD at Warner Music Australia] Robert Rigby, from Ambition [Entertainment/Records], was presented it through a friend of mine, and he said he'd like to take it. We'd already pressed 500 to sell at shows, which he said we could keep for that and he'd take it on from there. Totally unexpected.”
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