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Tarpon singer hopes for comeback
By EILEEN SCHULTE
© St. Petersburg Times, TARPON SPRINGS -- Can it be? Bertie Higgins' hit song Key Largo is 20 years old next year. Higgins still hangs out in Tarpon Springs, the town he grew up in, and the town he came back to after tasting the big time. He gets around in an old Mercedes Benz 560. Bertie casual is shorts, button-down shirts and long curly dark hair. He eats fried seafood platters at Pappas' Restaurant and sits in the stands at Tarpon High football games. But the news -- and it has been a long time coming -- is that Bertie might be back. He has a new studio album, Island Bound, which he hopes will be released by Sony soon. There even will be a release party for Island Bound this Wednesday at Atlanta's Hard Rock Cafe. And although that might sound glamorous, you should know that Higgins himself will be doing a lot of the grunt work: planning the gig, setting up the lights, editing the videos. His record deal, as it turns out, is not with Sony's big-shot divisions, Epic and Columbia. They are busy with huge acts such as Cake. When the St. Petersburg Times contacted Sony's public relations department, the young woman on the other end had no idea about a new Higgins album and promptly hung up the phone. But Sony's special products division, an arm that provides music for promotional uses such as giveaways by major companies, does know about Higgins. It has agreed to distribute Trop Rock, Higgins' 1999 20-song greatest hits package, on a limited basis. That means it will not be sold at record stores. And if a recut version of Higgins' old tune Just Another Day in Paradise does well on the radio, Sony also will distribute Island Bound. But that release, too, will be limited. "This record will not be available in retail stores," said Sony's Harold Fein. "There might be some opportunity to use the songs in commercials." So why have a release party? Because Higgins insists his work is going places. "They (Sony special products) deal with Kmart and Wal-Mart, places that sell CDs off the main track," he said. It has been a long time since Higgins has experienced interest from record companies. After his ballad Key Largo was an international hit in 1982, almost nothing was heard from Higgins, at least not musically. But there were plenty of news stories about arguments and arrests. The 1980s and 1990s were rough on Higgins as he wandered in a murky world of instant semistardom. As he slid from the charts, he would listen, he said, to his "nonfat Olean type of song" on the radio, and watch as his follow-up records flopped. His marriage was in trouble and ended in divorce. He admits he drank a lot. And he was arrested in Tarpon Springs for making threatening phone calls to the mother of the man dating his ex-wife. He spent a night in jail on that charge and four months in jail after he crashed his Chrysler New Yorker into a car carrying two teenage girls and then tried to ram a Sheriff's cruiser in Holiday in 1995. He was convicted of DUI and still is on probation for that incident. But now that he smells a comeback, he's "focused on business." He is writing both songs and press releases from his tiny home office. "I'm sorry those things happened," he said of his troubles. "But it gives you something to write about. It lets you reflect on how you screwed up at times and pull yourself up." For Island Bound, he wrote several new songs, including In Christiansted, The Gulf of Mexico, Bojanglin' on the Bayou, and Sand and Foam. The rest are covers of songs by other artists. He said that the 1995 DUI crash was a "wake-up call I listened to" and that he no longer drinks alcohol. "I don't do anything," he said. "I damn sure did enough in my past. You can only be self-destructive until you self-destruct." He said he is disappointed in "how I may have let my kids down." He lives with his two sons, Julian, 17, and Aaron, 14, both Tarpon High School students, in a small brown condo in Innisbrook within earshot of traffic along busy U.S. 19. "My kids are not saints, but they're great people," he said. "They don't give Dad a lot of crap." As for his personal life, he is seeing a woman named Rhonda but would not reveal her last name. Why is he trying to make his comeback at 56? "I want to leave a legacy for my children," he said. "I want them to say, 'Dad left his mark for us.' " Also, he needs the money. "Julian said, "Daddio, I want to go to college,' " Higgins said. In a few months, just about the time he is scheduled to get off probation, Island Bound may be released. It was mixed and mastered by Rodney Mills, who has produced albums for the group 38 Special, and Jeff Cook, who has produced records for Alabama. Higgins' manager, Doug Ollis, of Key Largo Productions said there is a market for tropical music. "You got two people who do tropical island music," Ollis said. "One is Jimmy Buffet, the other is Bertie. There is a demand for that type of music." Ollis said Higgins has a lot of talent and is emerging from his personal problems. That's why he and others who are connected with Key Largo Productions agreed to back him financially. "It is a turning point in Bertie's life," Ollis said. "He's got his personal problems taken care of. We wouldn't have done it to start with if he hadn't." When asked what it's like to be on top of the pop charts for eight weeks and then practically fade away, Higgins said he hadn't thought about it for a long time. "You have to understand the nature of the business," he said. "You can't be on top all the time. I didn't have great management. I'm still having a great time. Like preparing this party. "I do it all," he said.
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