Jackson song flap proves Anka has a good head for business on his shoulders

When Michael Jackson's single "This Is It" debuted online Monday, it took seconds for the song to circle the planet.

Paul Anka may have started writing and recording music long before the Internet, but he proved he still moves pretty fast. He has had his share of hits in a career spanning more than 50 years. He knows his own work when he hears it.

As fast as the Jackson estate had rushed to promote the title song to the singer's upcoming documentary, its representatives rushed to include Anka as co-author of what promises to be a musical coda on the King of Pop's tumultuous career.

On Tuesday, with the "All Michael, all the time" paparazzi camped out near Anka's Thousand Oaks, Calif., home, the singer-songwriter downplayed the gaffe that might have resulted in litigation, but instead ended with a 50 percent share of the song's copyright.

It pays to keep your sense of humor, but it pays better to keep your copyright.

"The phone's going nuts today," he says, juggling calls. "It's insane, unbelievable. It's been an incredible course of events. But it's mended itself. It's positive. They admitted a mistake was made and finalized the deal very quickly. I think they've done a great job with the record. I think it was an honest mistake."

For most people, thoughts of Anka fall into one of two categories: hits or trivia. His hits range from "Diana" and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" to "(You're) Having My Baby" and "One Man Woman/One Woman Man."

Anka is the answer to so many trivia questions that he could have his own board game. Who wrote "The Tonight Show" theme? Who gave Frank Sinatra "My Way?" Who saved Kodak with a song?

In addition to a hall-of-fame singing and songwriting career, Anka holds a doctorate in the business of the music industry. The racket is riddled with nightmare tales of singers getting ripped off by managers and record labels, but you'll hear no such stories associated with Anka.

That's no accident.

"I learned at a young age that this is a business," he says. "I got taken advantage of when I was very young, but early on I realized I had to get some business acumen. I realized it was a business along with a passion."

Anka, 68, cherishes the lessons he learned from the late entertainment manager Irving Feld, who these days is probably best known as one of the men behind the incredible rise of Siegfried & Roy. Feld was a master deal maker.

"I became a business guy under his mentorship," Anka recalls. "After his death, I just carried on in that fashion.

"I wanted to be the string, not the yo-yo."

In 1983, Jackson visited Anka's Carmel, Calif., home and worked on several songs Anka was planning for a duets album. In the interim, Jackson created his record-setting "Thriller" album. Suddenly back on top, Jackson floated into the netherworld of pop superstardom and left the duet undone. Anka, himself a former teen idol, kept the snub from the pop star in perspective.

The song, originally titled "I Never Heard," surfaced a decade later in a recording by Sa-Fire with Anka and Jackson credited as co-authors. The song vanished after that, and Anka says he hadn't thought about it in years.

Until Monday.

Jackson estate administrator John McClain told Anka he believed the song was an original, but quickly stood corrected. Anka recalls how years earlier one of Jackson's associates snagged a copy of the recording session. It was that copy, with Anka on piano, McClain found at Jackson's residence.

"The beauty of our business is you never know from day to day what the next phone call's going to bring," Anka says. "You've got to keep working, and then stuff happens, no question about it."

Good stuff -- but only if you remember to maintain the copyright.

"This Is It" is bound to make its mark given the hype surrounding the drug-linked demise of the King of Pop, but you haven't heard the last of team Anka and Jackson. Earlier this week, McClain played Anka another recording from 1983.

Anka laughs. He says, "I told him, 'That's my song, too.'"

The song is titled "Love Never Felt So Good."

In case anyone is wondering, music business professor Paul Anka owns the rights.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.