Louie Roy said, in part:

and this tune was the first tune on the CD so I have to assume he did take credit for a song he rearranged

Why would that make you assume he took credit? (Assuming is always dangerous.) I could record, say, "Lord Randall", and that doesn't imply that I take credit for writing it, regardless where on my CD or other recording form I placed it. And that's so whether or not I changed a word or a line for modern understanding, or even with the idea of creating a copyrightable version.

Now, for my "slightly changed" version of "Lord Randall." on CD there would be two kinds of copyright that I might own, depending on my relationship with the record producer, who might be somebody else, might be me.

(1) The changed text is a "new" entity, as far as those textual changes I made. Anyone can continue to sing a traditional form of "Lord Randall" which doesn't have my text changes, and my copyright doesn't apply. Even if they sing the same version I sang on the CD, with my changes, it may be that any claim I make under copyright might be defeated in court by showing that others before me had seen the desirability of that change and made the same change that I, all unknowing, came along later and made. In other words, unless the changes are original to me I have no protection under that phase.

(2) The recording of my rendition would fall under copyright. Never mind that people have sung "Lord Randall" for many hundreds of years, and maybe even with the exact version of the words or tune I wrote. My presentation of the song (as opposed to the song itself) is copyrightable. So you can't (legally) play my CD on the radio without copyright exposure even if you know for a fact that the words I used are all traditional. My voice, my inflections, my individual take on the rhythms, are mine, unique, and that recorded presentation of the song is protected under copyright.

Now I will go out on a limb and assume something: The fact that he changed some inconsequential parts of the song for his version leads me to believe that he knowingly was doing it to create a version which, if it should take off in a big way, might yield him some copyright fees if people copycatted him and sang his popular version. If they used his version, they are trying to gain from the popularity or excellence of his work, and why shouldn't he get something for it?   The changed parts are merely his fingerprints, as it were, on the song, so that it can be shown that it's HIS version they are copycatting, not the public domain version.

Now things could get confusing: Let's go all the way and say you sing and record the traditional song exactly as I did--pauses, little quivers of the voice, the same words and tune, the same accompaniment. Let's even say it can be shown that you learned it off my CD, just that way. NOT copyright protected! That (2) copyright protection above has to do with the physical CD I produced, not my peformance. Performances as such are not copyrightable.

But your assumption as to what he claimed, just from his slightly different version being first on his CD, is baseless.

Dave Oesterreich