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

[SoundThink at aol.com]

Thanks, Tim. A detailed, fascinating answer, as usual.
 
Cary Ginell
 
 
In a message dated 4/10/2009 12:44:16 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
Tbroo at aol.com writes:

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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