Collector May Be Allowed to Keep Hank Williams' Notebook

Posted: Mar 16, 2007 Collector could keep Hank's notebook
Theft case brought by Sony thrown out

A notebook containing 17 songs that Hank Williams wrote but never recorded may wind up in the hands of a collector who bought it from a janitor who found it in a box of Sony/ATV Music Publishing trash.

The collector's case grew stronger Thursday when a judge here dismissed theft charges brought by Sony in October, a lawyer for the defendants said. The case now shifts to a Sumner County court, where the notebook is being kept until a judge rules in a lawsuit over who owns the music treasure.

"(My clients) are the ones who rescued a piece of Americana," said Stacey Middleton, an attorney with Drescher & Sharp, P.C., who is handling the civil case and had no part in the criminal part of the case.

Middleton said she could not comment specifically about the impact that Thursday's ruling would have on ownership claims being made by music collector Stephen M. Shutts and business partner Robert Reynolds, though she said she was "confident" that it helped support their case.

Shutts, 42, and janitor Francine Boykin, 50, had been charged with stealing Hank's notebook, valued at as much as $250,000. General Sessions Judge Michael F. Mondelli said there was not enough evidence to support the charges against Shutts and Boykin.

The janitor, who worked on a cleaning crew at Sony/ATV Music Publishing in Nashville, found the notebook in a box of trash taken from Sony's Music Row offices.

Boykin and her husband, Ronald, sold the box for $1,500 to Shutts last summer. It contained the Williams notebook as well as other items from Roy Orbison, Buck Owens and Conway Twitty.

In court on Thursday, Ronald Boykin, who managed the Sony/ATV cleaning crew, testified that several boxes had been stored in a break room and that he asked a Sony/ATV executive to mark which ones were trash.

"And instead of me throwing them away, I took some of them home with me," Boykin said in court, according to courtroom footage aired on WSMV-TV, Channel 4.

Troy Tomlinson, president and CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing Nashville, testified that the company did not have an inventory record of what had been taken.

"So you didn't know what all had been taken?" Tomlinson was asked by defense attorney Jon Peeler.

Responded Tomlinson: "No, sir, we don't have an inventory of (those items)."

Shutts, who said he had been facing several years in federal prison had the decision gone the other way, felt that justice had been served.

"This is a classic case of corporate America using highly paid, loudmouth attorneys to bully people around," Shutts said. "With Sony, it was a classic case of out with the old, in with the new."

He added that in the midst of this notebook saga he and Reynolds were contacted by a producer, and have since signed with the William Morris talent agency, to create a television show about collecting music memorabilia.

The notebook is known among Music Row historians, and contains roughed-out lyrics to the unpublished songs and various musings written by Williams between May 2, 1947, and 1949. Williams died in the back seat of a Cadillac traveling through West Virginia on New Year's Eve in 1952 on his way to a show in Ohio.

The notebook was originally held by Acuff-Rose Publishing, which moved into Sony/ATV's Music Row offices after a 2002 merger.

-RYAN UNDERWOOD
TheTennessean