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

[simmonssomer]

I hesitate to mention this because 99% of our list members know this, but 
since the question "I Wonder Who Shine Was" has been posted several times 
I'll just explain to that minority that "shine" was the "N" word of the 
teens and Twenties.

Al S.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Tbroo at aol.com>
To: <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2009 3:43 PM
Subject: [78-L] "Shine", "St. Louis Blues" and copyright legislation


>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) >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> 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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