Judy Roberts

Tree Publishing, Sony Music Publishing

In the mid-1960s, hometown girl Judy Roberts walked into tiny Tree International on 16th Avenue South and asked for a job. She was hired as a receptionist, but soon became executive secretary to then company president Buddy Killen. Tree International had only five writers and five staff people in its early days. Today that company is Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Judy is its historian and resident expert on its catalog of songs, one of the largest in the world. Tree International was a pioneer in acquiring catalogs including Pamper Music, Buck Owens' Blue Book Company, Merle Haggard's Shade Tree, Jim Reeves' Tuckahoe Music and Conway Twitty's Twitty Bird. Judy's long years with the company gave her a unique knowledge of an endless list of hit songs that made Tree the greatest publishing organization on the Row. She knew all the songwriters who came and went over the years including Roger Miller, Hank Cochran and Willie Nelson. Nearly every one spoke of Judy as a sweet girl with a soft drawl who had nothing but kind words for everybody, even on the most hectic of days when everything seemed to happen at the same time.

Today although semi-retired, Judy sits at the front desk of the tiny company that started out as Tree International and grew up to be Sony/ATV Tree, applying her wonderful people skills to the benefit of all who walk through its doors or call the company on the telephone. She still loves the company that she has served for so long.