[78-L] Paramount vs Third Man Records

[Doug Pomeroy]

I assume I'm not the only one who has been wondering about the Paramount boxed set and the rights which the late George H. Buck, Jr.
was known to have obtained from John Steiner to that label's recordings (or at least some of them).

Here's some info I copied from a site called Pitchfork, which I found today.

http://pitchfork.com/news/53822-third-man-records-targeted-in-copyright-dispute-over-paramount-records-box-set/

> Last year, Jack White's Third Man Records and Revenant Records teamed up to release the massive Rise & Fall of Paramount Records, Volume One (1917-1932) box set. However, as Offbeat reports (via SPIN), a non-profit has claimed that it owns rights to nearly 800 songs on the compilation.
> Lars Edegran, a jazz musician from the George H. Buck, Jr. (GHB) Jazz Foundation, claims that Buck, who owned several jazz labels, bought the rights to the Paramount catalog in 1970. Edegran claims there are documents proving ownership.
> Dean Blackwood, co-founder of Revenant, replied to Edegran's allegations in a statement to Offbeat:
> “We informed the foundation that we would gladly come to an agreement with them if they could prove ownership of the recordings,” Blackwood wrote in an email. “To date, they haven’t produced anything that proves ownership. And although there is a more than 50-year history of labels large and small reissuing this material without their involvement, we remain open to discussions with them if they can prove ownership of the recordings.”
> Edegran responded in a statement:
> “Paramount recordings have been issued under license agreements for a very long time going back to the first owners, the Wisconsin Chair Company who licensed material to Columbia and Decca and others,” he says. “The next owner of Paramount, John Steiner, licensed Paramount recordings to Biograph, Milestone, Riverside and others. GHB Jazz Foundation has license agreements with Sony, Rhino, Rykodisc, Shout, Universal, Fantasy, Fox Music, HBO to name a few. All these companies recognize our ownership of Paramount Records. It is true that a number of small labels have used Paramount material without our permission but there has been no infringement on the scale of the box set issued by Third Man/Revenant Records—close to 800 tracks of Paramount recordings.”

There is clearly more to this story and it will surely be interesting to see how it turns out.

Doug Pomeroy
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