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

[Steven C. Barr]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <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!!!!)
>
Note that the ORIGINAL version of "St. Louis Blues" includes one
chorus/stanza played as a TANGO!

...stevenc