Raleigh startup CEO portrayed in Elton John's biopic, "Rocketman"

RALEIGH – Sometimes working in pop culture puts you in a movie. Ray Williams, founder and CEO of Crumbs Music Media of Raleigh, an Internet music licensing start-up, discovered Elton John after publishing a talent ad in a music magazine in 1967 and then led the star in his first five albums.

Williams, who was only 20 years old in 1967, is incorrectly described in the movie "Rocketman," according to Grunge.com, "as a broken-nosed kid," despite his already considerable experience in the industry. music. Williams, in an exclusive interview with WRAL TechWire, calls the movie "a fantasy," which explains his presentation. Williams says the film "mixed all the stories."

Nevertheless, Williams hopes that the "notoriety" from the film will help attract attention as his young company, Crumbs, moves from the construction phase to more aggressive marketing and sales, a new website offering additional services are planned for mid-June.

Williams, who has not yet seen the film "Rocketman", said trailers showed him to Dick James' service: "Feet on the desk, I slip two envelopes. It was a bit more complicated.

Announcement culminates in the discovery of Elton John

Williams, who was then working for A & R at Liberty Records, made an ad in "New Musical Express" in June 1967, in which it was written, "Liberty is looking for talent. Artists / composers / singers / musicians to form a new group. "

"I have received thousands of letters, calls and demonstration cassettes," Williams said. He opened them all and eventually met Reg Dwight – the real name of Elton John – who felt "lost", playing mostly backup music in the club Bluesology group. Williams asked Dwight to play some tunes on the piano and then record demos. They did not have immediate success at Liberty.

Williams, however, felt that the singer had a remarkable voice and talent, but Dwight admitted he could not write the lyrics. Then Williams arranged for the singer to meet another person who had responded to his ad, the poet / lyricist Bernie Taupin, and as one film critic wrote: "The rest is history."

Taupin wrote the most famous of Elton John's hits. They collaborated on thirty albums and Taupin wrote the lyrics of "Rocketman", "Crocodile Rock", "Yellow Brick Road" and many others.

Williams led Elton until he was fired by Dick James, but helped the singer when he sued James in 1982. Their relationship further deteriorated after Elton played down the role played by William in his career in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2011.

Williams, however, learned that Elton would be in North Carolina as part of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour this year and reconnected with the star. "His appointment at Raleigh failed me, but he sent me a nice note and invited me to his concert in Charlotte in November." The star is the godfather of William's daughter.

Work with music stars

Born on June 16th. In 1947, in Gloucester City, England, Williams claimed to be in the music and film business since the age of 16 when he met Cathy McGowan, the presenter of the legendary British music show Ready Steady. Go. She invited him to the show. became an unpaid assistant at age 15. This led to a concert for a former Beatles public relations executive who brought them to America and who represented Sonny and Cher, among other stars and bands.

He has endless stories about his work for various celebrities. Once, when he summoned Sonny and Cher for a concert in London, he took them to their hotel, which refused to register Sonny because he was "badly dressed," dressed in clothes. one of his pop star costumes.

He has supervised the music of many films, ranging from independent offers such as "Saving Grace" to major productions such as "The Last Emperor".

"I enjoyed working on a lot of movies," he said. "The last emperor took three years before if it was over. For "Sheltering Sky", I had to go to Africa and meet the novelist Paul Bowles. "He has also worked as a musical supervisor for independent director Lars von Trier on" Dancing in the Dark "and" Dogville ", among other projects.

"I was a kind of musician Forrest Gump," he said, referring to all the experiences he has had since the beginning of his career in music as a teenager. "It was a wonderful trip."

Come to Raleigh

His first impressions of Raleigh were formed during a stopover 40 years ago and he thought it was "a charming place".

When Bill Lowery Music, based in Atlanta, offered him a contract a few years ago, he did not want to move to Atlanta, where traffic is often as serious as in New York or Los Angeles. He and his wife settled in Chapel Hill a friend there.

In the UK, he had originally created Crumbs as a storage location for several film tracks he had worked on, "My crumbs," but he had an idea to help young and talented musicians concede their works to licenses for their content creators. Television and movies on websites.

He pointed out that licensing music for a movie or other uses can be complicated. He wanted a David Bowie song for Lars von Trier's "Breaking the Waves". Despite his knowledge of Bowie, he had to go through a small army of publishers, directors and others to get the rights associated with the relatively low royalty he enjoyed. to offer.

The basic idea of ​​Crumbs Music Media is to "simplify music licensing" for an online brand, movie or other uses, while offering young musicians an opportunity to exploit their rights, explains Williams. The five-person company was formed about four years ago with investments from Tizbi, a software development company based in Williams and Raleigh, and a partnership with Octopus Media Technology.

He also collaborates with Imurj, a collaborative collaboration between art and music from Raleigh, which refers to artists found at Crumbs.

He has been active in the entrepreneurial community of the Triangle. He has worked with entrepreneurial Chapel Hill programs from the University of North Carolina and the University of North Carolina, on projects such as the "digital jukebox," among others.

Crumbs users consult a proposed music menu, choose the rights they wish to purchase, the validity period of the license, pay with a credit card, all online and "erase it immediately," Williams said. . The rights are non-exclusive. "We have offers ranging from $ 50 million to $ 18," said Williams.

Williams said the company was putting a "new face" on its website in June, expanding its offering to other services and looking for partners and investors.