[78-L] "Shine", "St. Louis Blues" and copyright legislation

[Tbroo at aol.com]

I wrote about these in "Lost Sounds". Shine was originally published in  
1910 as "That's Why They Call Me Shine," by Cecil Mack and Ford Dabney. It's  
clearly p.d. because it is pre-1923. All songs published before 1923 are  
p.d. in the U.S.; recordings are not. The 1910 sheet music featured Aida  
Overton Walker (George Walker's wife) on the cover and is reprinted in the book  
"35 Song Hits By Great Black Songwriters" by Dave Jasen (Dover, 1998). I 
believe  Williams & Walker sang it on stage, although I do not know of any 
period  recordings by them or anyone else. There's a whole interesting story 
about who  "Shine" was.
 
The song was re-published as "Shine" in 1924, with "revised" lyrics by Lew  
Brown, and that version is still under copyright (until 2019). It was much  
recorded from then on. I haven't compared the two versions but Brown's 
revisions  seem to have been fairly minor; the 1910 version looks a lot like the 
song we  are familiar with.
 
This may have been a case of altering a song to renew the copyright.  
However it you want to perform the 1910 version you're home free.
 
The first recording of "St. Louis Blues", an instrumental, was indeed  the 
Columbia by Prince's Band in December 1915. It's a fascinating recording,  
full of musical intricacies (including the habanera counterpoint during the  
opening bars). The first vocal, if you want to call it that, is the Ciro's 
Club  version in England (that was a Clef Club band led by Dan Kildare), but 
there are  only short vocal interpolations amid the frantic banjos. The 
first full vocal  version seems to be a tie -- Al Bernard's version on Emerson 
7477/9163 (he  recorded it later for other labels) and Ernest Hare's on 
Gennett 4513, both  released ca. May 1919. There is  a table of all the early 
versions on  page 435 of LS. (What, you don't have Lost Sounds!!!!)
 
BTW, regarding stevenc's lament (with which I totally agree) about  
recordings in the U.S. being tied up until 2067, some of you may have heard that  
ARSC recently got legislation passed that directs the Copyright Office to 
launch  the first-ever formal study of this issue, namely the effect of keeping 
 pre-1972 recordings under state law until then. The CO is specifically  
directed to look at the effect on preservation and access to those  
recordings, to take public comment on the issue, and to report to Congress  within two 
years with recommended changes in the law. This is the first step, we  
think, in getting this bad situation addressed. It was quite a battle just to  
get this far.
 
Tim B.
 

Message: 13
 Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:26:48 -0400
 From: David Lennick <_dlennick at sympatico.ca_ 
(mailto:dlennick at sympatico.ca) >
 Subject: Re: [78-L] Shine
 To: 78-L Mail List <_78-l at klickitat.78online.com_ 
(mailto:78-l at klickitat.78online.com) >
 Message-ID: <_49DE6818.5050906 at sympatico.ca_ 
(mailto:49DE6818.5050906 at sympatico.ca) >
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 I have it as 1924, per Nat Shapiro. Lew Brown was born in 1893..Dabney is 
old 
 enough to have published in 1910, which would have been pre-ASCAP in any 
case.
 
 dl
 
 _soundthink at aol.com_ (mailto:soundthink at aol.com)  wrote:
 > Does anyone know if the song ???Shine??? is P.D. in the U.S.? Written by 
Lew 
 Brown, Ford Dabney, and Cecil Mack (the alias of Robert McPherson) in 
1910. If 
 it were properly published then, then it would be P.D. everywhere except 
in 
 countries where the term is Life + 70 (Brown & Dabney died in 1958; Mack 
in 
 1944).? ASCAP shows it to be still controlled by Shapiro Bernstein; I have 
a 
 source that shows the publishing date to be 1924, which would make it 
protected 
 in the U.S. All this makes me wonder if something went wrong with the 1910 
 copyright. ? An alternate title for the song is ???That???s Why They Call 
Me 
 Shine.???
 > 
 > Cary Ginell
 


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