04 · Archive

Joy Coleman — “The Man You Used to Be” / “Carolina Rain”

A 45 rpm single, cut in northeast Mississippi in the fall of 1982. My mother sang it. For more than forty years the only trace of it anywhere was the stack of copies in our family’s possession. This page is what I was able to piece together about the record, about the people who made it, and about why you won’t find it in any discography.

She died in her sleep in 2015.

Both sides

Both are transfers from the original vinyl.

Side A — “The Man You Used to Be”

Transferred from the original vinyl. Watch on YouTube.

Side B — “Carolina Rain”

Transferred from the original vinyl. Watch on YouTube.

The record

The single is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, and that registration is the only official documentation of it that exists. Here is what it says.

Registration number
SR 42976
Registered
January 7, 1983
Created
1982
First published
December 1, 1982
Format
One sound disc, 45 rpm, 7 inch
Label & catalog no.
Music City, MCJC 11282
Place of publication
“Boonsville, MS” — the Copyright Office’s spelling of Booneville, Mississippi, the county seat of Prentiss County, up in the northeast corner of the state
Copyright claimant
“© ℗ Freaky Stan Publishing Company, solely owned by Nina Taylor”

The registration describes “Carolina Rain” as being on side B of 1 sound disc, which settles the running order: “The Man You Used to Be” is the A-side, “Carolina Rain” is the B-side.

The catalog number decodes about as plainly as a small-label catalog number can. MCJC is almost certainly Music City / Joy Coleman, and 11282 is November 1982 — the month the record was made, a month before it was published.

Who wrote it, who sang it

My mother was the singer, not the songwriter, and the registration reflects that exactly. Its title line reads:

Carolina rain / Robyn Wilburn, Nina Taylor, Mike Cunningham [i.e. James Michael Cunningham; performed by] Joy Coleman.

And the authorship statement:

lyrics, music: Robyn Wilburn; lyrics, music, sound recording: Nina Jean Taylor & James Michael Cunningham.

So the songs were written by Robyn Wilburn, Nina Jean Taylor, and Mike Cunningham, and the music was Cunningham’s. My mother’s contribution was the voice on both sides.

One small mystery survives in that credit list. Robyn Wilburn, born 1961, appears in exactly one record in the entire copyright database: this one. One song, one credit, and then nothing before or after it, ever. If you know who that was, I would like to hear from you.

The people behind it

The single was not a garage project. Behind it were two working songwriters with real Nashville publishing connections.

Nina Jean Taylor (born 1945) and James Michael “Mike” Cunningham (born 1949) were a writing and production team who ran two publishing companies — Freaky Stan Publishing and Watch Cat Publishing — and later their own label, Chain o’ Hearts Records. Copyright records track their output from 1978 through 1988.

They worked the way regional operators did: find a singer, cut a custom 45, register the sides, push it to local radio. Other singers they recorded include:

  • 1979 Kim Whitley — “If You Don’t Want My Loving (Don’t Play With My Heart)” / “Mister Heartache Mender” Honey Bee Records HBR 1002
  • 1985 Angie Streetman — “Mr. Heartache Mender” / “Together We’re a Song” Chain o’ Hearts AS 41385
  • 1985 Randy McKinnon — “He’s Just a Friend” / “Arizona Sunshine, California Rain” Chain o’ Hearts RM 51485
  • 1985 Shelia Rainwater — “The Man You Used to Be” / “Living Without You” Chain o’ Hearts SR 21985
  • 1986 Stacy Pollard — “Dragonrok” / “Let’s Live This Dream Together” Tandra Recordings SP 8870

Two details in that list matter to this record.

“The Man You Used to Be” was cut twice. Shelia Rainwater recorded it in 1985, three years after my mother did. My mother’s version was the first one released.

The song had a major publisher. “The Man You Used to Be” was separately registered as a composition — registration PAU 479730, filed February 16, 1983, written in 1980, words and music by Nina Jean Taylor and James Michael Cunningham. The claimants were Ensign Music Corporation and Sweet Avalon Music Company. Ensign was the publishing arm of Paramount’s Famous Music. An earlier Taylor/Cunningham song, “Mister Heartache Mender”, was co-claimed in 1979 by ATV Music Corporation, which at the time owned the Beatles catalog.

That is the part I did not expect. The song on the A-side of my mother’s 45 was administered by a major publisher, and the people who wrote it had placements with another. This was a small record, but it was not made by small-time people. Somebody in that operation heard her sing and decided she was the one to put it on.

What isn’t there

I checked Discogs, MusicBrainz, 45cat, 45worlds, and ordinary web search. There is nothing. No entry for Joy Coleman as an artist. No entry for the Music City label. No listing for either song under these writers. The record never charted and no collector ever cataloged it.

As far as the public internet is concerned, the two transfers on this site are the only copies of this record in existence, and the copyright registration is the only official record that it was ever made.

That is not unusual for a regional custom pressing from 1982. Thousands of these were made. Most of them vanished. This one didn’t, because my family kept the copies and because somebody eventually digitized them.

How this was traced

For anyone trying to do the same thing with a record in their own family, the path was short once I had the right database.

The U.S. Copyright Office’s Public Records System covers registrations from 1978 forward, which means essentially any American record from 1978 on is in there, no matter how obscure the label. It is free and open to the public at publicrecords.copyright.gov. Searching the song title plus a surname was enough to surface the whole registration: label, catalog number, town, publisher, writers, and the exact publication date.

The collector databases — Discogs, 45cat, MusicBrainz — only contain what a collector bothered to enter. The copyright database contains what was filed. For a record nobody collected, that difference is everything.

Open questions

  • Who was Robyn Wilburn? One credit, 1982, and nothing before or after.
  • What do the labels actually say? The physical 45s carry the printed credits, the producer, the publishing affiliation, and matrix numbers scratched into the run-out groove.
  • Where exactly was it recorded? The registration gives Booneville as the place of publication, not necessarily the studio address.
  • Did local radio play it? WBIP in Booneville was the obvious outlet, and a local singer’s first 45 was newspaper material in 1982 — the Booneville Banner-Independent and the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal are both worth searching.

If you knew her

If you knew my mother, knew this record, or recognize any of these names, I would like to hear from you. Contact details are on the about page.

Sources