Lisa Dawn Miller, the award-winning producer, singer, songwriter and daughter of legendary Motown songwriter Ron Miller, whose 600-song catalog includes standards like “For Once in My Life” and “A Place in the Sun,” this month took her rightful seat at the table in managing her father’s legacy after winning a long-fought battle for the rights to her father’s catalog. A portfolio currently at the height of its all-time value. After a legal battle that began in 2007 to win back performance royalties and more, Miller finally shook hands with Sony Music Publishing in agreement, working alongside the company’s leadership to reimagine her father’s many classic hits, many of which have been covered by artists including Barbra Streisand, Ray Charles and Michael Bolton.
You spent part of your career as a successful business executive, serving as First Vice President of Investments at Morgan Stanley. How did this experience help you to navigate a complicated decade-long legal battle?
Buying call options on Apple certainly helped! Just kidding (not really)! Seriously, at Morgan Stanley I put portfolios together for my clients and helped them to map their financial future. Fighting to get the rights and royalties back to my father’s legacy catalogue required a lot of planning, vision, and passion. Just like the market, the legal battle had highs and lows but ultimately, I triumphed because I stuck with it and put a lot of time into educating myself about the legal arena, the music business, and the circumstances of the case. When I started out as a young stockbroker, there weren’t a lot of females in the business. I saw this as an opportunity to pave the way, just as I see winning this legal battle as a big step in asserting, protecting, and advocating for artists’ rights.
What were your emotions during this battle? Did you feel you would win?
You learn quickly that the sooner you can be objective and remove your emotions from a legal case that will be based, and ultimately decided on, facts and evidence, the more you can accomplish. There were several layers to the case which caused pain for several family members, but my parents taught me how to keep going, against all odds. With regards to winning, I didn’t feel I would win, I knew I would win! As long as you’re on the side of what’s right, how can you lose? Many of us have to start off at minus 100 and work so hard just to get to zero. That’s a good thing because it strengthens you. From those life lessons, a warrior is born – courageous and strong, yet compassionate with a deep sense of gratitude for everything and everyone that got you to that point. From there, bring it on!
Tell us about your father, Ron Miller.
Wow! How much time do we have? Ron Miller was one of the most prolific and extraordinary lyricists of all time. His songs include standards like “For Once in My Life,” “Touch Me in the Morning,” “Heaven Help Us All,” “Yester-me, Yester-you, Yesterday,” “A Place in the Sun,” “I’ve Never Been to Me,” “Someday at Christmas,” “If I Could” and many more. He was sensitive, compassionate, humble and had a rare “once-in-several-lifetimes” kind of talent.
His songs are timeless because he had a way of connecting to how people feel and expressing it in the most poetic of ways. His wisdom, kind heart and hope for a brighter tomorrow shine through his lyrics. He wrote about things 50 years ago that are even more profound today. He could articulate the complex emotions we feel in a way that continues to resonate because it came from a place of truth. He was the best father. I always felt like he was connected to a higher place and that the love he gave and wisdom he shared was divine. I’m so proud and grateful to be his daughter.
You are a successful singer/songwriter. Share your favorite moments in your music career.
I’m very grateful for having had the opportunity to perform at some of the finest performing arts centers across the country. As a performer, seeing people moved by my performance or when they express it to me is very meaningful. As a writer, watching the audience dance or sing to a song or show that I’ve written/produced is so rewarding. Being invited by Stevie Wonder to perform for his House Full of Toys Benefit Concert was a dream and watching him take my then 10-year-old son’s hand, Oliver Richman, to share the stage with him will always be one of my all-time favorite moments.
Your music publishing company, LDM Publishing, which allows you to market and brand your father’s legacy song catalog as well as your own original songs. Tell us about your company.
I started LDM Publishing as part of my overall plan to brand the legacy of Ron Miller and use my talents as a creator myself to come up with unique ways to tell my father’s story. This includes exploiting the songs in my father’s vast catalogue which have never been heard before and writing new songs to support it and my own career as an artist. During the time I was fighting to get the intellectual property rights back to my dad’s songs, I worked diligently to collect information about each of the 600 songs in his catalogue. We developed an online database where people can listen to and share my father’s songs as well as my music. For my father’s songs, this was a huge research effort that has taken years to compile and I’m very excited. We launched LDMP in March and so much is happening already!
How are you a game-changer with what is done with legacy song catalogues?
There’s been so much talk about the copyright acquisition frenzy happening right now. While this pushes multiples, I’m wondering what new rights holders are planning to do differently in terms of exploiting their new song gems. A lot of artists are selling their catalogues. It’s a business transaction. For me, it’s personal. It’s my life. I’m not selling. It took me too long to get everything back. Instead, I’m partnering with the top people in the business who get it, who understand that the biggest success tomorrow will come from the legacy catalogues of yester-year. I want to be the model case to prove this. I’m an expert at Ron Miller. Now there is one person, one team working on 600 songs rather than a handful of people working on millions of songs. I’m passionate, focused, driven, motivated, highly competitive, and have a lot at stake and invested, both personally and professionally. I have had the good fortune of working directly with Brian Monaco, President and Global Chief Marketing Officer of Sony Music Publishing. He gets it, is incredibly supportive and has put me together with some amazing people. Sony’s Chairman and CEO, Jon Platt, is a great guy and I’m excited about the future.
LDM and J-Wall Records works with multiple artists on original songs. What is offered to new artists?
The same passion we have for the legacy catalogue of Ron Miller, we put into working with new artists. We are creating a legacy for tomorrow. Sometimes this involves creating something new or collaborating with artists to find new ways of interpreting our legacy catalogue. There’s a lot of opportunity for a new artist in particular because we’ve worked for years cultivating relationships in the music and entertainment business and in the marketing and branding of our entertainment offerings.
LDM Publishing was the recipient of 5 Telly Awards in 2021.What do you look for in artists?
Yes! I am so proud of this. It’s very special because 4 of the awards went to my son, Oliver Richman who is a student at NYU Tisch. His masterpiece, “Chasing Time” was also named Best Non-Broadcast Short Film. He wrote and directed the musical piece after my soulmate, James E. Wallace, Jr. passed away suddenly last year. It’s about life, loss and connection – the ways we grieve and the ways we move forward. We also won a People’s Telly Award for Best Social Video for my song, “This is the Moment” which I wrote and co-produced with Mark Matson. The video was produced by filmmaker Zatella Beatty (“Iverson”) and edited by Stephen P. Perry for 214 Films. James brought the project together just before he passed away to help get out the vote.
Many of your father’s songs have profound meaning today. Tell us more.
Over 50 years ago, my father wrote, “Heaven help the black man if he struggles one more day – heaven help the white man if he turns his back away, heaven help the man who kicks the man who has to crawl, heaven help us all.” He also wrote, “Someday at Christmas men won’t be boys, playing with bombs like kids play with toys – one warm December our hearts will see a world where men are free.” I think his hope speaks for itself, period.
Tell us about your new song, “There You Are.”
I wrote this song for the most beautiful man there ever was, James E. Wallace, Jr. I started writing it years before we even met, composing the music but I couldn’t finish the lyrics at that time. Sometimes when that happens, I believe it’s because the story is still being written. After James passed away, I would go out to our favorite spot in Malibu and cry from morning until night. I’d look up to heaven and ask, “where are you?” Then I realized he was right there with me, like he had always been – in my heart forever, thus, “There You Are.” The song is the title of my new EP which I am releasing this fall. Every song on the EP was written for and/or dedicated to James including the first single, “Rhythm of Me.”
What can we find on your podcast, “One in a Million?”
Everything in my father’s life had a one-in-a-million chance of happening. Same in my life. The podcast shares stories about the journey and everyday struggle to become the one-in-a-million story that will change the world in positive ways. I’m excited to have honest and real conversations with amazing people as well as share the storybook of my own life. We are also featuring new, up-and-coming artists and the songs from the LDM Publishing catalogue which include my father’s songs as well as my own.
What is next for you in 2021?
I have the release of my new EP, “There You Are”; the launch of my new podcast, “One in a Million”; two new recordings I produced with my partner Morgan Dorr of my father’s song “For Once in My Life,” with the very talented artist, SayGrace; my show, “Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack” goes back out on tour in the U.S. and Canada for our 12th season; I gain control of the U.S. rights for my father’s biggest song, “For Once in My Life” on July 15th which happens to coincide with the release of the popular group, Il Divos’ new single release of “For Once in My Life,” also the title of their new album and worldwide tour; my father-in-law, Buddy Hackett is being inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame; and my son’s show, that he is writing, directing and performing in, “Reality Show: NYU!” will be at Radio City Music Hall in August and at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in October; oh, I’m also writing and developing a new show for Broadway about my father, James and me.
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Jules Lavallee is a Celebrity Writer in LA.