Hi,

To comment on what Q said in his most recent post here. There are few songs that you could say the Carter Family wrote. They found the songs, they arranged the songs and sometimes they wrote songs based on fragments of other songs.

If the Carters copied someone's version, which they did some of the time, obviously they have no rights. For example "Black Jack David" is a song they just copied- probably from a recording.

There are only a few of their songs you would have trouble with a copyright... unless you sang their exact arrangement. Since there are som many different versions you would need to do what the Carters did-change the lyrics around. You can keep the same title or use one of the many other titles the song is known by.

Many of these older songs you can find a dozen different lyrics and just pick out the ones you like.

The point is: they don't own the song, just the arrangement.

Richie