Michaelr, my point was not to 'complain about someone' but to describe a situation and ask for suggestions on dealing with it.

DebC, hi, yes it's me and I agree that when legal issues are raised the location is important, but I did not spell out the set(s) of law involved in part in the interest of maintaining anonymity of the persons involved but mainly because I am not so much concerned with the legal aspect (which I think it is plain is not an issue; there seems no legal leg to stand on) as with appropriate ways of dealing with the situation.

To me, a reasonable approach might be to 'bow' to the original performer as most traditional musicians I know do quite regularly, by saying for example "I learned this from the singing of the great ___" or "This song was written by ___ and many people have heard it as sung by ___" or "This song is from the ___ area and brought to current audiences by ___" but not to sing them or to even consider that one must pay to sing them to my mind does not do justice to song, famous singer, or current singer.