Featured this week on the Not Just Jazz Network: Netcom Music with its latest release “Lost In Time (A Tribute to Bill Pursell)” by Laura Pursell, which captures the heart about family, loss, and love.

Bill Pursell and Raymond Clawson merged their efforts and created Netcom Music to fund Bill Pursell’s music and his daughter’s, vocalist Laura Pursell, with the new release "Lost In Time (A Tribute to Bill Pursell)”.

Half brothers Raymond Clawson and Bill Pursell met for the first time in 1990. Ray was a long-time entrepreneur and businessman. Bill was a musician, session player, arranger, and composer as well as a Professor at Belmont University in Nashville. Neither Bill nor Raymond had any idea that either one had a half-brother 20 years apart in age. They started exploring the possibility of working together and starting a music company, and in 1999, Netcom Music was born.

Their first project was “The Goodyears of Music,” a rollicking and wistful collection of instrumental standards with Bill on piano, Craig Nelson on bass, and Buddy Harman on drums.

Soon after, “Millennium” was recorded, which included a remake of Bill’s hit record from 1963, “Our Winter Love” and a beautiful original composition for his daughter, “Laura’s Song”. They finished the album with an instrumental original entitled, “A Time Remembered.”

Raymond and Bill took over Laura’s LA burgeoning project of jazz and swing standards under the Netcom umbrella, and “It Had to Be Swing” was released in 2000.

Soon after, “Unkissed” was released. The single “What Only Love Can Do” received generous airplay.

Bill and Laura recorded A Christmas album comprised of fifteen-holiday songs and two originals, the title track “That’s What Christmas Used to Be” and “Under the Mistletoe”. The title track continues to receive airplay every holiday season.

Netcom Music produced five albums in the span of two years. “The Very Last Dancehall Left in LA” and “I Wanna Look Good For My Man” were recorded in 2015. Bill wrote the arrangements on seven of the songs and Steve Mauldin, who was in charge of production, did the others.

In 2018, Bill’s wife Julie passed away from vascular dementia. It was his dream to honor her memory with an album. He penned music and lyrics to a haunting orchestral piece, which he named “Lilacs (Lost in Time)”. This last album started coming together in August 2019, with Bill and Laura back in the studio to record 3 songs at The Tracking Room - “Sweet Dreams”, “Motherless Children”, and of course, “Lilacs”.

Bill began working on the arrangements in 2020, then Covid arrived and everything came to a halt. He had finished the arrangements on “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground”, “Convince Me” (an original song that Netcom Music discovered 20 years earlier but never recorded), “Faraway Places”, and “Every Love”. 

Tragically, Bill passed away from Covid on September 3, 2020. Raymond and Laura were determined to finish the album and in January 2022, they went to Ocean Way Studio on Music Row to complete it. They recorded the four tunes Bill had arranged, and three more, including “Tender Wish”, the last piece of music Bill had ever written and played in the summer of 2020 as a gift for Raymond and his new wife Kay.

“Netcom Music has emerged with a classic formula proven to be successful. Netcom Music offers great artists, well-crafted songs, beautiful arrangements played by the most highly skilled musicians, expounding the universal struggles of mankind and our journey through life.  Each project appears like a breath of fresh air in a stale atmosphere of stagnant musical styles”, says legendary producer Steve Malden.

“It was my Dad’s dream to finish this very personal album.  He wasn’t able to do it in his lifetime, and I’m so grateful to Netcom Music for allowing me to complete it”, says Laura Pursell.  

“We are very proud and excited at Netcom Music to release our newest Album, ‘Lost in Time'.  This collection of songs contains the last work of my brother, Bill Pursell, and the brilliance of his arrangements of this music truly embody his spirit and musical genius.  We know you will love it!” says Raymond Clawson, owner of Netcom Music.

In honor of the tribute to Bill Pursell, Raymond and Laura coordinated two events to kick off these musical works, one on May 13^th at the Hard Rock Cafe, 6901 Hollywood Blvd., Suite 105, Los Angeles, CA, with Laura Pursell’s band celebrating the last music of her father.  The event will be hosted by Leeza Gibbons, to raise awareness of Leeza’s Care Connection, which is close to the family’s heart due to Laura’s mother, Julie Pursell, who passed from vascular dementia. 

In addition, another event in Nashville is slated at the well-known venue 3rd & Lindsley, 818 3rd Avenue S, Nashville, TN, June 15th, 2023 with Laura Pursell and the Nashville All-Stars. 

“It is an honor to feature such a beautiful project, ‘Lost In Time (A Tribute To Bill Pursell)’ - it is a musical keepsake, for it takes you into the heart of love and family,” says Jaijai Jackson of the Not Just Jazz Network.

Be sure to stop by and enjoy the feature at http://notjustjazznetwork and to learn more and purchase go to http://Netcom-music.com.

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