Vincent,
I verified the "Update tags when file info changes" was checked, I was hoping this would be the easy solution.
Matt, The program was not in "party mode" but the location gave me an idea. I appear to have resolved these issues with the following steps.
1. I copied my album files from my server hard drives to my htpc player C drive where the J River program is located.
2. I created a new library and created a new file on my C drive.
3. I set the import to import files from the new music file folder on the C drive to the new library folder I created.
4. I re tagged Rubber Soul.
5. I then exited several times, the albums remain as do the tags.
The problem must have been the software's inability to access the music files on the server (Z drive). It would manually import these files fine, but auto import never worked as it would always default to wanting to scan the entire htpc C drive even after numerous changes to these import options. The Z drive was always showing in the import commands, but it would not auto import, although it would import manually. More importantly was that all albums and tags would disappear from the software everytime it was reopened regardless of every option being reviewed to prevent this behavior.
So in short, problem solved by using the C drive and creating a new library from scratch. I did not attempt to clone or sync the library as I did not want to carry over whatever the problem is. The bad news is the limited space on the C drive, but it should still be plenty for the music files and I do not use the software for video files so all is good now in my world.
Hopefully some other newbie will stumble upon this thread when they encounter the same.
Thanks to Vincent and Matt for your assistance.
--Noah