SUPER KING

Don Meehan Biography
Although Don Meehan, born and raised in Beaumont, Texas, with his tremendous talents and some big time breaks, never had a big hit record nor a big name in show business, he can be placed somewhere up there near the top. He's not a rock star nor a noted millionaire or billionaire, nor a great Hollywood star with pads everywhere like Malibu, Southampton, or the likes, and hasn't sold millions of records. These types appear to be of great importance to journalists, reporters and historians with their stories that the general public thrives on reading about the everyday lives of the superstar, but Don Meehan has a great story to tell. Like top race horses who have almost made it across the finish line first, but a fraction of a second or more behind can be applied to the name Don Meehan with his many successes. He was always there in the struggle for success and "also ran."

His latest feat is that he was just recently inducted into the Museum of the Gulf Coast along with including Janis Joplin, Big Bopper, George Jones, Tex Ritter, B.J. Thomas, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Tracy Byrd, Mark Chestnut, and Harry James among sixty other stars from that area.

Along with Gold and Platinum, Don has over 35 RIAA Multi-Platinum Engineer awards working with and recording artists such as Simon and Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand, Bob Dylan, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Little Steven Van Zandt, Janis Ian, the Manhattans and many more. He's had a long tenure at New York Columbia Records and has released over thirty artist singles & 3 albums of his own songs, as well as the album, "The Song and Dance Man, now on the Smithsonian Folkways Label at http://www.folkways.si.edu/don-meehan-and-the-dave-carey-orchestra/song-and-dance-man-popular-american-song-hits-1913-1928/american-popular/music/album/smithsonian. He maintains his home studio and continues to mix and master as well as write, sing, play, produce, record and release on his Barkroom label, many of which are on SOUNDCLOUD see https://soundcloud.com/roughmixdon. His musical ear is so developed that he can write songs in his head, hearing the melody and the chords as he writes it down on manuscript paper, with no need of an instrument.

Don has been singing since he was 6 years old. He could sing at least 50 songs at that time and even had a weekly radio program on the new Beaumont radio station KRIC, with his sister accompanying him on the piano. He started some piano lessons in his early teens. Practicing became a problem, since his piano teacher lived next door, and could always hear when he practiced or not. She would scold him for not practicing enough. He learned to play the guitar in his early teens and played with the Beaumont area country bands of Clif Bruner, Moon Mullican, and Shelley Lee Alley as well as pop bands around the area. One night while playing guitar with Alley, the bass player passed out from booze and Shelley turned to Don and said, "play bass." He'd never played bass and looking back, he reports that he "thumped" at that time. However, his interest grew with the bass and he bought an old one and had it restored.

By the time he was in junior high school, having great ears as a musician, he picked up on learning enough bass on his own to enable him to play in the Lamar (College at time) dance band and other pop and country bands in the area. He was even invited to sing solo at a performance of the all girl singing group, the Melody Maids at the Beaumont City Hall Auditorium, now the Julie Rogers Theater, in his early teens. Saturday mornings during that time would find Don down at the Beaumont Jefferson Theater Organ Club, competing with George Jones and others for the prize of winning tickets. He remembers and tells of Jones' mean like stare at him when he would win with a pop song. He continued his singing and bass playing into high school, singing everything from classical to country, while also favoring and singing like the crooners of the day, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Mel Torme. He and JP Richardson, later the Big Bopper, sang tenor side by side, and he treasures JP's signed graduation photo in a Beaumont High School yearbook.

His musical aspirations had him singing country and pop, while his high school music teacher had him singing classical and even a lead in an opera and she wanted him to pursue a career singing classical music. She had even procured a scholarship for him at North Texas State Teachers College, now University. But by then, Don was beginning to hate classical and loved his country and pop leanings and turned it down. He traded his old bass for another which he still has and plays, the treasured seventy-five year old bass.

Soon after high school graduation, barely eighteen, he connected with a band in Tulsa, Oklahoma, travelled and played in several states and landed in Denver, Colorado at the old Park Lane Hotel. Here, he had his actual very first and only lessons on bass. Yearning to go East he connected with a band that ultimately landed him in New York and instant success there, playing upright bass and later bass guitar and singing with bands, writing songs and doing demos for songwriters and publishers. In addition he had signed with several top record companies, releasing singles which he had self penned.

After a few months of playing and singing club dates (weddings, parties, etc.) in about every hotel and club in New York City, Don landed the best and highest paying musician job in New York City with a small band at the famous old Astor Hotel on Broadway in Times Square at the ripe age of nineteen. He was featured singer on several recordings with the band on King Records, one hit being "The Skipper of the Flying Enterprise." That summer, the five piece band moved to the Astor Roof being the relief band for big bands of Freddy Martin and Sammy Kaye. Lately, he has rewritten that story with the "Ballad of the Flying Enterprise," that's featured in his new album, "From The Heart" released February, 2017.

The following year, while still playing and singing at the Astor, one of Don's song demos landed on the desk of RCA Victor's head of A and R, Steve Sholes, who later signed Don to an artist contract. Summer came and again the five piece band moved to the roof as the relief band. A first occurred with the Grand Ol' Opry booked on the Astor Roof. This brought together many of the big country artists and managers that Don had come to admire, the main one being Colonel Tom Parker. And so, one night, Steve Sholes huddled at a table with Tom Parker and song publisher Al Gallico listening to Don sing formed a plan to send Don Meehan to the "Cradle of Stars" Louisiana Hayride, where Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Elvis later sprang from with those same people calling the shots. Parker wanted to manage Don and the plan was for him to return to Beaumont, perform on the Hayride in Shreveport on Saturday nights, just like the Grand Ol' Opry. He would travel with bands, build a following for a few months and then go to Nashville and record with Chet Atkins and the Nashville players.

Although Don had spent many months trying to get rid of the Texas accent and develop the "yankee" voice sound with a top vocal and dramatic coach in New York, he gave his notice at the Astor and headed for his big break at the Louisiana Hayride. Sadly, the day he arrived in Beaumont, his mom greeted him with, "Son, you got your draft notice." He trekked from Beaumont to the Hayride in Shreveport for about four Saturdays with a very heavy heart and then reported for duty at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He had just about the flattest feet of anyone and the doctors recommended that he not go in. But he learned much later by accident that the Commanding Generals of Third and Fourth Army both wanted Don for his singing talents after basic training. He would have replaced Vic Damone at Fourth Army Headquarters in San Antonio, but was shipped to Alabama for basic training, with the promise of returning and replacing Damone. And so, he suffered through basic training there, didn't go back to Texas and was shipped to Third Army Headquarters in Atlanta. General Bolling had won.

Don finally was able to do his Victor session recording four sides in Nashville right after basic training in a split session with Porter Waggoner. Lately, someone has put Tom Parker's favorite song of Don's session, "That Long Long Road of Love," up on YouTube at https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=sgm&hsimp=yhs-sgm_fb&hspart=SGMedia&p=that+long+long+road+of+love+don+meehan#id=1&vid=2279e623f2663c75c83d0e006ba7abbf&action=click. A few big Nashville names backed Don up there, including Chet Atkins, Owen Bradley, Tommy Jackson, and Jerry Byrd. He tells that episode at his Blog at https://www.roughmixdon.com/2013/07/elvis-hank-and-me-and-them-higher-than-high-society-higher-than-high-with-the-guy-lombardo-band/ By now though, Tom Parker had lost interest because of the Army hitch and no Louisiana Hayride. Two years later Parker had Elvis on the Hayride and signed with Steve Sholes at Victor.

Don was part of a group put together by General Bolling to entertain the Third Army troops. Country great, Faron Young came aboard as well as jazz great pianist, Wynton Kelly, and they all made the most of it travelling to Army bases throughout the Southeast. Some great irony was that Wynton's Military Occupation Specialty (MOS) was for a gas mask specialist and Don's was for a pianist, even though he didn't even play piano. He later sang with the Third Army Band where he met actor Barry Newman playing trumpet. Barry was doing comedy at the time, and so, the two briefly attempted a comedy routine together. Don met his first wife at Fort McPherson. They married and had their first child the day after he got out of the Army.

The big dilemma was whether to head for Nashville or New York. And New York it was, since he had more of a chance for work in New York and he also knew people there. He'd have to start all over in Nashville. He already at least had a job connection with a relief band for Ray Anthony's big band at the Hotel New Yorker Terrace Room for a few months.
For that winter, what could be better than to spend it playing with the same little band down in Florida? So, he headed for Nino's Continental Restaurant in downtown Palm Beach. It was THE high society hang out. The only problem was that society people only liked to dance to fast two beat music. So, every song, whether a ballad or up tempo had to be played only in that manner. Every song was the same and you couldn't really get any kicks playing jazz or four beat or even slow two beat. Even worse was that it was working seven nights a week. So, as a musician, playing a high society job would become quite boring after several hours, however, it paid the rent.
It was a tough gig, he groans, but exciting inasmuch as most of Palm Beach high society were there nightly, giving a glimpse of how some among them enjoyed their nightlife. People like Horace Dodge Jr. from the Dodge clan, Henry Ford II and wife, Anne, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were regulars among many. There was also Jimmy Woolworth Donahue, the son of Mrs. Jesse Woolworth Donahue, a Palm Beach resident, and reportedly one of the wealthiest, of the Woolworth clan. Mrs. Donahue also frequented Nino's.
The King had adjudicated and renounced the English Throne to marry perhaps the most famous divorcée in British history. And he went from being King of England to being the Duke of Windsor, and hung out with high society among the Palm Beach crowd. It was a seven nights a week gig and Don said that they never stopped playing even if there wasn't a soul in the place. When they got their five minute on the hour break, they'd hang out in the kitchen and see how some great dishes were made, and fight over leftovers like shrimp scampi.
Well, after witnessing higher than high society and their higher than high falutin', it was back to New York with a long band job in New Jersey at the Mayfair Farms, (it's still there) and 18 months at the RCA Institutes studying radio, audio, and television. Don's interest in audio and recording grew and he entered the RCA Institutes in New York for some intense studies in the radio and television area, and focused on learning all he could about audio and recording. He stayed with the five piece so-called "society band," but away from Palm Beach they could play "civilized" music, he recalls. It was full time school and full time work, playing six nights a week in New Jersey, commuting from Bayside, New York. During that time, he developed an interest in multi-track home recording and started to build his first home studio. By then he was also singing on demos for many New York publishers and songwriters, which took him to practically every recording studio in the city. These experiences brought him in close contact with the engineers and more insight into the actual mike placement and recording methods in most of the studios there.

Don got call one day from musician friend Bill Comstock in L.A wanting him to come out and join the new group The Four Freshmen. It would have meant pulling up stakes and moving 3000 miles and he turned it down. Looking back, he laments that it would have been a golden career on a silver platter.

Don was still writing his songs and doing his demos, when one day he walked into MGM Records with his demos and asked to see Frank Walker, the president. He knew that Walker had originally signed Hank Williams, and since Hank's death, he had been looking to find someone to replace him. Don dropped a name of one of Walker's artists whom he said sent him and he walked right into Walker's office and played his songs.

"Well, damn if he didn’t sign me," remarked Don. "I guess I really impressed him, because he sent me out to produce four country sides of my own songs in New York on my own. My records were released and damn if they didn’t have me sounding like Hank Williams on at least one of them." Walker had put in a bid for Elvis’ Sun Records contract along with RCA a couple years before that.
It wasn’t long after that MGM session that Music Corporation of America (MCA) agent, Larry Funk, called Don one day and said he would like to place him singing and playing with Guy Lombardo. It would be a springboard to singing like others had done, including what Merv Griffin did with Freddy Martin. Don joined the band on a Capitol Records New York session and they went on the road working their way out to the Las Vegas Desert Inn. LV STRIP HISTORY asked him to write about the times there for their publication and he couldn’t resist. And his piece is still there (scroll down to 1957. "We were there for at least two months, seven nights a week in the big room. I sang and played upright bass with Guy Lombardo at the time at $350 per week. I was by far, the youngest in the band, and they all called me Junior and kidded me. Larry Funk of MCA booking and big band fame put me with the band to use a spring board like other boy band singers (Merv Griffin- Freddy Martin, etc.)..."
They came back to New York in October of ’57 to a Command Performance and reception for Queen Elizabeth II at the huge Park Avenue Armory. They also did the Ed Sullivan show once, and then on to the Roosevelt Grill, Guy’s old stomping grounds. "Well, I lasted a little bit past New Years Eve, 1957 to 1958, when they decided they didn’t need an upright bass and a tuba," Don related. "I always felt out of place with all the old(er) farts. And they referred to Kenny Gardner as the best singer in the world." So, Larry Funk’s idea of Lombardo being a springboard for Don Meehan was a bust.
Don, although for a time worked on doing a nightclub act but discarded the idea of struggling with building an act and travelling and decided it was best to settle down with a day job two babies later. Interest and experience in home recording and free lance studio work led to a job at the UN recording department, which led to a long tenure at Columbia Records and two more babies. Don learned to sight sing and joined the top NY studio background group, the Anne Phillips Singers, and they were also busy doing radio and tv commercials. Their biggest success was the "Pepsi Pours It On" campaign, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYjILveI25Q. That one commercial for Pepsi turned into many thousands of dollars down the line. At one period of time, he was a member and paying union dues to SAG, AFTRA, AFM and the IBEW Electrical Workers unions in New York. He confessed that he couldn't complain, since he was making money in all of the jurisdictions. When kidded about all of the moonlighting he did while at Columbia he kids back about all the songs he ever sang with "moonlight" and "moon" in the title, Moonlight Becomes You, Moonlight in Vermont, Moonlight Serenade, Fly Me to The Moon, Blue Moon, Moonglow, etc. and he started singing one of them.

After a bad divorce, Don met Fran and they married. They were granted custody of Don's five children later and Crystina was born. They raised them all.

When digital recording arrived, Don was on top of the times with Pro tools, Vegas Pro and now Logic Pro, which he swears by, continuing with top notch albums and singles. His Blog is recognized internationally. He writes it at https://www.roughmixdon.com/2013/08/industry-standard-in-the-music-recording-industry-is-it-fact-or-fiction/ about what has become the "Industry Standard" DAW recording, editing and mixing program and its competition. He laments that it's not his favorite.

More of Don's many talents extend into art, miniatures, songwriting, bookwriting, screenwriting and photography. His work in making tiny little miniature chandeliers appears in several museums. He perfected the art of shooting miniatures so as to appear realistic, and wrote a book on it in 2004.

One of Don's many feats and show of talent was his experimentation with overdubbing his own voice many times. Several of his Columbia Records releases were the result of this. His new album, "From The Heart" at https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/donmeehan12 contains the song "America the Beautiful" with him singing a world record of overdubbing his "Chorus of One" voice 233 times for 233 years since 1776. Guinness World Records turned him down stating that there was no way of proving it was all him, even though he had all the digital recordings, documentation and a detailed description of how he did it. Don claims that there were also other ludicrous demands, like how many records did he expect guaranteed to be sold. He explained in his Blog at https://www.roughmixdon.com/2013/06/overdubbing-with-roughmixdon-meehan/ how he recorded so many of his voices on eight and sixteen track tape. Later, with digital recording, the sky is the limit now with the ease of adding more and more voices. Thumbing through his many posts at his Blog at www.roughmixdon.com, one will find many music and recording stories of interest that add to these pages.

In addition, being into making miniatures, Don researched over several years and developed a new way to listen to 5.1 surround sound, with small miniature loudspeakers surrounding the listener a mere inches away. This led to several years of research into a new and unique way to listen to 5.1 surround sound, with small miniature loudspeakers surrounding the listener at just a few inches away. He wrote up the description, legal papers, did all the artwork and fought with Patent Examiners for many months and was finally issued U.S. Patent 8654997. see https://www.google.com/patents/US8654997?dq=8654997+don+meehan&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIlubbqevLAhWEWx4KHdnUA7QQ6AEIHDAA about his extraordinary invention. He intends to spend the coming months promoting this new invention to interested companies. The photo shows the placement of the speakers inches away, and also a must for video gaming.

Don will demonstrate the invention at his lessons.

Don continues to write, produce and record in his home studio and recently released his Holiday album, Its December, on CDbaby that includes a world record feat of singing all 136 voices on Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, soprano, alto, tenor and bass. He also added a big rock band to his acappella rendition. Also, he sings a fifty voice overdub on six time Grammy winner Ray Moore's arrangement (in fourths) of Silent Night. He has done at least sixty-five music videos on Youtube, but his favorite is his Silent Night Out There Somewhere at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4gG_8qdRdU, where Don1 is trillions of miles out in space and discovers life on another planet. Global probes into the far reaches of space, and especially the recent Orion Project to probe possible life on Mars, has prompted Don Meehan to produce this video. Thanks to some Public Domain images and videos from NASA, Hubble, and STSci, and the video from Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology of "Curiosity Entry/Decent and Landing celebration," this video strongly suggests a realization and belief of a possible Christmas event with the birth of Jesus on some other planet, light years away from Earth.

Don has three albums on CDbaby and all of their affiliates, the latest, "From the Heart" is at https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/donmeehan12. He maintains his home studio and continues to mix and master as well as write, produce, record and release on his Barkroom label. His albums and over 30 artist singles, all of his own songs, are all at https://soundcloud.com/roughmixdon. He has written three screenplays and one of them, "Celibate Secrets," was an Official Selection among a very few selected for the Oaxaco (Mexico) International Film Festival, and recently an Official Selection for the Beverly Hills International Film Festival, to be held in April, 2017.

More Internet sites for information on Don Meehan
http://www.roughmixdon.com
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/don-meehan-mn0000180536/credits
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/one-man-band-singer---one-man-video-crew-cast---he-delivers-strong-message-in-song-about-courtroom-brutality-62233877.html
https://www.linkedin.com/in/don-meehan-146aa99
http://www.airplaydirect.com/music/DonMeehan/
http://top40-charts.com/news.php?nid=50309
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjU_TZtLZ2c COURTROOM BRUTALITY VIDEO
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/donmeehan1 ITS DECEMBER ALBUM
http://www.folkways.si.edu/don-meehan-and-the-dave-carey-orchestra/all-alone/american-popular/music/track/smithsonian SONG AND DANCE MAN ALBUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmfXzq8hT9g
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/philadelphia-recording-veteran-sets-world-singing-record-recognized-for-accomplishment-50-years-later-300005390.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3eRt4H9mw
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