TAKING ON NORTHWEST RELEASING CORPORATION
As my booking agency and dance band evolved I started doing a few concerts with Bill Owens, who was ten years my senior. Before long, Bill told me that Jack Engerman and Zollie Volchok, who were 17 year owners of the long-standing Seattle concert company, Northwest Releasing Corporation (NRC), had decided to sell. Bill was already working for NRC, booking and touring the college concerts, so he was first to get wind of this and he came to me and said, “Let’s figure out how to buy the company. You can be a full partner. We’ll be fifty/fifty.” I worked hard on that purchase agreement.
In the spring of 1967, Bill Owens and I negotiated an agreement to purchase NRC. I was only twenty eight years old and had a lot to learn in order to take on the regional management of national touring companies, such as Cabaret, Man of La Mancha, Mame, and Fiddler on the Roof. I graduated from being a bandleader/booking agent to the new role of concert impresario. I had a lot of management experience at that point but booking, touring and presenting big name attractions certainly wasn’t my strong suit. On January 1st, 1968, I officially became half owner of NRC, the largest concert management and promotion company on the West Coast, and began the intense, hectic scramble to buy, tour and market big name attractions. The first show that I managed and settled in January, 1968 was the National Ballet of Canada in the Seattle Opera House.
NRC had been the primary presenter of concert attractions in the Northwest and Canada for nearly twenty years and had grown to be the largest regional Concert company on the West Coast. The major banks were vying for our business. We remodeled the third floor of the Union Trust Building in Pioneer Square, sublet a portion of that space and settled in.
The former owners, Jack Engerman and Zollie Volchok, continued to mentor and guide Bill and me as we took over management of the touring attractions. It was helpful that Bill Owens had been overseeing the college shows for a few years prior to our purchase of NRC.
For my part it was a 24/7 situation. I read everything in the prior show files and designed worksheets for management of the different types of events: dance attractions, Broadway shows, pop concerts and so on. There was always a high potential for losses in the concert business. If things didn't go just right, the artist's management, general managers, agents, road managers, stage managers and your own partners would be on you like a swarm of bees. There was absolutely no margin for error in the concert business.