The Criminal Assault of Music’s Virginity

How the Songwriter and Woodstock Legend Melanie Died Protecting Music’s Virtue

Blog entry written on 21 July, 2025, by Corinne Devin Sullivan at the Archive Coffee & Bar located at 102 Liberty Street NE, in Salem, Oregon.

Photography at the Archive Coffee & Bar by Corinne Devin Sullivan.

The songwriter Melanie and I talked for some time about integrity in the music industry before her passing in January of 2024. I’d like to share this perspective.

Melanie was amazing to be around. She was incredibly intelligent. She had the most interesting stories to share from life as a professional music maker. She had started America’s first mainstream independent record company, Neighborhood Records (1971-1974). It was one that also rivaled the major music companies of her day. She was Billboard’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 1972. She wrote songs for two major motion pictures and won an Emmy for penning the lyrics to the hit television series from the 1990’s entitled, Beauty and the Beast.

Yet, Melanie was tired. She had suffered abuse. Her husband Peter had suddenly passed away in 2010 leaving her with no hero anymore. She was seriously ill. She had ignored her body’s messages. She was as beautiful as she had been in 1968, when she first met her husband Peter Schekeryk who launched and managed her history-making career.

Between 2013 and her passing, I would learn details of her music being stolen from her. It was something like tens of millions of dollars. There was no way for her to solve this without an attorney and she couldn’t. So, she stayed out on the road on any tour she had booked and, when she wasn’t traveling worked on her new songs in her home music studio.

In 2019, I started the Article 27 Music Project based on the 27th human right from the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document deals with copyright protection on the artists’ behalf. I absolutely cherish this document and have used it to launch a successful campaign.

From 2019 onwards, Melanie and I were documenting what had really happened to her so that her story would never be lost.

Both of us had a spell-binding moment together in 2013. That’s when we met in Nashville, Tennessee, for the first time. We spent a few hours in conversation. We were enraptured by each other’s commitment to truth and the American Way. Neither of us had ever met a person who swore by the same values.

For my entire life, my commitment has been to truth, the American Way and religion. Melanie felt the same except that instead of religion, her lifetime commitment had been to honest music. Melanie believed firmly that the arts require supreme dedication to honesty. And this is the topic that I enjoyed listening to Melanie speak about for hours.

Melanie also spoke a great deal about her husband whom she was with from 1968 until his passing in 2010. She was certain that Peter made her a star. She was planning on being an actress and he encouraged her to record two songs. He organized everything for her from that point forward. Tragically for Melanie, after Peter’s passing, he was falsely pointed out by representatives from ASCAP as the scapegoat. She knew this wasn’t true. Peter had been trying to get ASCAP to let her go off their roster from the 1990’s until he died. So, this subject made her feel sick. She talked about it at length.

Real music is almost like a virgin waiting to be had or a partner who is faithful. But some people believe that virgins are naïve and partners are meant to be used up, one after the other.  

Great music never is taken, I don’t think, because making music in a dishonest manner is not very nice to be in spaces with. The message lags and we, the audience, sort of pretend. When it flows, it is gracious and never-ending, and that’s something we get from respecting the integrity of music.  

I’m smiling to myself because if Melanie was here now she would listen to me read this and tell me she loved it. She did that all the time. But, once in a while, she would read something I had written and ask, “Corinne, did I write that?”

And with my honesty in tact I would respond, “I’m not certain because you might have.”