Staff Songwriters 1967-68

1968 Guy Webster photo

Folk singers Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley began their careers separately on the coffee house circuit. After meeting in 1964, they crossed paths over the next couple of years. It was three years later, when both ended up in California attempting to make it in the emerging folk-rock music scene, before their first collaboration took place.

Michael was the first to California and he tried his hand in the short lived duo Mastin & Brewer. The duo quickly landed a record contract with Columbia Records, but despite their early promise, Mastin & Brewer dissolved suddenly when Mastin inexplicably split. Their Columbia Records debut single essentially complete, was released without Mastin's vocals as a Brewer & Brewer single.

Around this time, Mastin & Brewer’s man at Columbia, Alan Stanton, left Columbia to take a job with a new record company being formed by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss called A&M Records. With Brewer & Brewer failing to take off, Stanton took Michael with him to A&M and he was hired as a staff songwriter.

Shortly thereafter, Tom Shipley arrived in L.A. and rented a house around the corner from Michael’s. Tom recorded a single with Ruthann Friedman for A&M released as The Garden Club. Tom was collaborating with Friedman who was writing "Windy" for The Association," and also collaborating on songs with Michael. Soon Tom was also hired by A&M as a songwriter. Michael recalls, "Tom looked me up and rented a house near mine. We started hanging out and writing, and it clicked. Since we had the same folk background, it wasn't hard to come up with stuff."

So in 1967, three years after they first met on the folk curcuit, Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley's first partnership was as staff songwriters for A&M Records' song publishing subsidiary, Good Sam Music.

Michael and Tom immediately began earning their keep as staff songwriters. In 1967 and 1968, Michael & Tom’s songs were recorded for seven different singles and six album cuts by a diverse group of artists including The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Poor, Glen Yarbrough, Noel Harrison, The Afex (UK), H.P. Lovecraft, and Bobby Rydell.

Good Sam Recordings

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1967 The Poor "She's Got The Time" single & album cut	1967 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band "Truly Right" single & album cut	1967 Glenn Yarbrough "Comes & Goes" album cut
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1967 Noel Harrison "Sign Of The Queen" album cut	1967 The Black Sheep "Feeling Down" single	1967 The Afex "She's Got The Time" single
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1968 The Poor "Feelin' Down" single & album cut	1968 HP Lovecraft "Keeper Of The Keys" single & album cut	1968 Bobby Rydell "Time & Changes" single
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Early Songs playlist
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Despite their ability to write songs for others, Michael & Tom didn't enjoy the corporate songwriting process. Michael recalled: "A&M signed us as songwriters. They wanted us to go into an office and crank out songs, like a regular office job, but that wasn't our cup of tea. In fact, it made us hate tea. I had a large closet in my house with a window and a sawed off tree stump table. We wrote all the songs for our first album there."

Staff songwriting required them to record demos for the songs to be pitched to other artists. It was also something they never felt comfortable doing. Tom recalled: "We saw ourselves as singer/songwriters and performers in the model of Vince Martin and Fred Neil. We wrote a lot of the songs but never had much luck pitching them. We were very stylized and never figured out how you go about pitching tunes."

Recognizing that Michael & Tom had developed their own unique sound, someone at A&M had the good sense to green-light them to record their own songs for an A&M record album. The former folk singers turned staff songwriting partners, started recording their debut album, Down In L.A., and began performing in clubs together, officially beginning the duo of Brewer & Shipley.

Brewer & Shipley Bio