Singin’ the Blues : ‘I Have Nothing,’ Says Owner of Historic Club Who Owes $9,000 in Royalties, Fees

She’s lived a long time and paid a whole lot of dues, but that’s not why Laura Mae Gross is singing the blues.

Gross, the 73-year-old owner of Babe and Ricky’s Inn, the last blues nightspot in South-Central Los Angeles, is in a world of trouble these days with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which monitors and collects royalties for its members under music copyright laws.

ASCAP says that Gross failed to pay fees on music performances at her club on Central Avenue near 52nd Street--fees she had agreed to pay under a contract.

The organization sent letters and made telephone calls, but Gross never responded. It sued her, but she never appeared in court.

Now Gross faces a default judgment of nearly $9,000--an amount that may force her to close the club where blues legends such as B. B. King, Bobby (Blue) Bland and John Lee Hooker have appeared.

Her club’s bank account has been attached by a collection agency and her checks are bouncing, turning her life into the kind of hard luck and troubles lyric she has heard so often on her stage: Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose.

“They can’t get blood from a turnip,” she said. “I have nothing. I had $300 in my checking account and they took that.”

Gross, a strong-willed Mississippi woman more at ease with cooking, cleaning and booking acts than the financial details of the music business, says she remembers the letters and the telephone calls from ASCAP. But, she says, she never took the notion seriously that she was obligated to pay royalties on songs simply because they were performed in her club.

“I didn’t think they could do this mess to me,” Gross said. “I paid my license fees to the city. I have a business license. Why do I need to pay them?”

Running a club was much easier in 1964, when Gross opened Babe and Ricky’s on Central Avenue. In those days, the way she tells it, ASCAP did not routinely send out men in suits to down-home joints to demand royalty payments. The club did not make much money, but it nurtured young artists and gave old-timers an opportunity to strut their stuff. It survives today as a remnant of a glorious era when Central Avenue, with its ballrooms, hotels and theaters, was the backbone of black cultural life in Los Angeles, a favorite haunt of celebrities such as Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Cab Calloway.

Today, Babe and Ricky’s, where the bar serves only beer and soda, draws a steady, integrated crowd from throughout the city, especially on Monday nights, when a $2 cover charge includes a fried chicken dinner prepared and served by Gross.

It is a place where, on any given night, organist Deacon Jones, a regular performer with John Lee Hooker, can be heard pounding the keyboards while a cabinetmaker from Burbank picks up bass and a college counselor from South-Central plays lead guitar. They play some of the finest blues in the city--a fact that didn’t escape ASCAP investigators.

Federal copyright law allows composers, songwriters and publishers to collect fees for music performed on radio, TV, in theaters, in restaurants, bars and even banks. Gross signed a contract with ASCAP in 1986, promising to pay the appropriate fees, but the society terminated it three years later for non-payment. The court ruled this year that she would have to pay $6,000 for two songs--”I Shot the Sheriff” and “Red House”--that ASCAP investigators said were performed during a visit they made to the club. She also owed nearly $3,000 in legal fees.

“The last thing we want is for Babe and Ricky’s not to be able to open,” said Barry Knittle, ASCAP’s director of licensing. But, Knittle said, the society has an obligation to its members. “Music is our livelihood,” he said.

In recent weeks, word of the club’s plight has led to a degree of support.

“This is the last of the 1960s-type blues clubs,” said Lee Masters, who heads the Los Angeles Blues Festival, which held a small fund-raiser Saturday. “It was an original blues club when rock ‘n’ roll came in and it has survived rhythm and blues, disco and all those other things. We hope to keep it that way.”

Many at the fund-raiser objected to ASCAP’s decision to go after the club.

“I could understand it if this were some bar in Westwood where they serve $5 drinks,” said Jonathan Hodges, a musician and property master in the motion picture business who regularly visits the club. “It’s places like this that keep the music alive. She keeps it alive for music and musician.”

“The club is history; it’s home,” said guitarist Bobby Bryan, a musician by night who works as an educational coordinator at Cal State Northridge. “This community can’t lose this place.”

The sentiments were comforting, Gross said, as a band on stage performed Z. Z. Hill’s “Down Home Blues,” but she still didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.

“At this point,” she said, “I take it one day at a time.”