When Your Moonlighting Artist Gets Famous

As luck would have it Whitney Houston sang on three of my demo tapes way back in 1982. Like Phil Upchurch (George Benson’s 2nd guitarrist) she was moonlighting as an unknown before signing with Arista.

So now I realize I am sitting on some fairly good songs, one that has her as a back-up and the other two with her as my lead singer. At the time I was using MOONLIGHT DEMOS in Hollywood, and I paid them $300 for a conversion of my cheap acoustic guitar and singing into a full-fledged production. As the financier, I own all the work done for hire. Including Whitney’s voice.

Any advice on where I might go from here? By the way, I am not ready to upload the mp3 but I can refer anyone interested to the soundtrack you will hear on my Youtube video. Just search for “Angels on the Wire” (user “thebobweb”) and you will hear the young and undiscovered Whitney at the front and back of the 10 minute US Navy documetnary video.

My very first step, as you may figure, is that I am trying to get the original contract with Whitney’s name on it, from David Vasques of MOONLIGHT STUDIOS (actually still in business!) because otherwise I would probably have to have some “expert” verify that she is who she is, like I heard about with a newly surfaced Elvis tape recently.

Anyway, open to your thoughts here. Thx