April 6, 1979 Gusto feature: Talent scout Tina Joan Ball

I frequently run into the subject of this little feature story these days, but I'd completely forgotten about our first encounter.

April 6, 1979 

Talent: Looking for it in pop music.

If there’s hot new musical talent out there longing to be discovered, Tina Joan Ball is all ears. And for a small fee, the 26-year-old former Buffalonian offers to be that hard-to-get connection in the music business. In essence, she’s an artist-and-repertoire person, the one who comes out from the record company to assess an up-and-coming act.

         The difference is that she’s a freelancer. And while the honchos from the record labels are usually tight-lipped about what they think, Ms. Ball has no qualms about expressing her opinions. If performers are ready for a shot at the big time, she’ll tell them and she’ll help them make it. If they’re not ready, she’ll tell them why not. She calls her service Rising Artists Inc. and her office is at 1697 Broadway in New York City.

         “Send me a tape and $30,” she says, “and I guarantee first, a receipt, and then a written response within six weeks. I very carefully and very respectfully point out where the good points are and where the bad points are. I’ll return the tape, but if the artist will let me keep it, I may get a call from someone needing a song and I can help them get the song published. I hope to do a lot of business. I’m not looking to make a quick buck in the disco market. I just know what’s good. That is my talent. I know what’s great.”

         Ms. Ball moved into talent-scouting after three years of working in promotion for three different record companies – London, Private Stock and CTI. It was during that time that she discovered a Boston-based singer named Robin Lane, whom she describes as “the most talented female performer I’ve ever seen.”

         She taped Robin Lane and lined her up with Private Stock, but the company folded. “Now she has a publishing deal with MCA and she’s getting offers from a lot of people,” Ms. Ball says. “It made me feel good because it was the first time I’d ever tried out my instincts like that and I was right.”

         She went freelance after trying unsuccessfully to break into the artist-and-repertoire staff at Columbia Records. “I practically saw my name plate on the door,” she says. “The talk was hot and heavy for two months and then they cut me off. That’s when I decided I’ll do this myself.”

         She hasn’t found another Robin Lane yet (most promising so far is a rock band from Binghamton), but the tapes have been flowing into Rising Artists ever since last winter when she put ads in the trade magazines. A notice in Circus magazine and a couple friendly mentions on New York’s WNEW-FM also helped.

         “If a tape can be done in a studio, that’s great,” she says, “but nobody should spend a lot of money on a demo tape. As long as they make it in a quiet home situation, that’s good enough as long as they feel it’s a true representation of their talent. If there are original songs, of course, they should be copyrighted.

         “With singers,” she remarks, “I find they’re not careful enough about choosing material and they don’t make it original enough. Even if they’re doing someone else’s song, they should be creative, do it differently.

         “With songwriters,” she adds, “the biggest fault I find is that a lot of the material lacks sophistication, especially the country songs. They have to learn how they’re going to tell their story in a way that’s going to get to a lot of people.”

         Eventually, Ms. Ball wants to be a record producer. In the meantime, she’s become the kind of music business mentor she wished she could have met when she was a singer in Buffalo in the early ‘70s, part of the crowd that hung out at the Bona Vista.

         “At that point,” she says, “what I wanted was one connection, one person in the music business who believed in me. If there was a company like mine, I would’ve sent them a tape.”

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IN THE PHOTO: Tina Joan Ball’s 1979 promo photo.

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FOOTNOTE: The Buffalo International Film Festival bio that accompanies details about a master class on playwriting Tina Ball gave earlier this year suggests that she long ago switched from music to the theater. It notes: "She has taught theater and playwriting at several colleges and universities, and has held multiple artistic administrative positions, including artistic director for both the HB Playwrights Foundation and the New York State Summer School of Theatre. ... Most recently, Tina has served on the national evaluation panels for both the Jewish Plays Project and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival."

        Needless to say, Tina has countless theater connections in New York City and elsewhere and she travels a lot from her current home base at her family's farm in Clarence.

        As for Robin Lane, she began performing in folk and rock clubs in Southern California in the late 1960s, sang on a track on a Neil Young album and was married for two years to Andy Summers, who went on to be guitarist for The Police. When Tina encountered her, she had a band, the Chartbusters, and they got signed to Warner Bros. Records after producer Jerry Wexler saw them performing live. The band put out three albums and the video of their greatest hit, "When Things Go Wrong," got shown on MTV's first broadcast day in 1981. Robin continues to release occasional solo albums.