When Pete used Jim Waters' tune for the "Great Silkie" for his setting of the poem "I Come and Stand at Every Door," he thought he was using a traditional tune. The moment he learned it was written by Waters, he made a point of informing Columbia and others. Dylan, for all his creative contributions, did claim Words and Music by Bob Dylan on many songs when only the words were his. To me, there is a difference. Guthrie may have been naive in his use of some Carter Family tunes, but often the tunes had not actually originated with the Carter Family either ("Oh, My Loving Fathers," for example, which was the basic tune for "This Land is Your Land"). I don't know the Paxton examples you refer to; Utah Phillips, when we talked with him years ago, was not copyrighting his song material, as he didn't believe in "owning" it (more of a political action than a theft, if the tune was borrowed). Leadbelly was, perhaps, innocently (?) led by example into allowing sophisticated publishers to copyright much of what he sang. Clearly, he claimed authorship of material he didn't actually create, but John A. Lomax, his mentor, was claiming ownership of a lot of traditional material at the same time.

I'll admit it's a can of worms, and I generally try to avoid these discussions, but there was something deliberately deceptive about Dylan's claims of "words and music" on all those early songs (the ones that formed the basis of his storied reputation) that offended my sense of propriety. Still does. How costly would it have been to simply say "tune: traditional; new words by Bob Dylan?"

Sandy