From Richard Bridge on an earlier thread:

to be pedantic, the date of expiry of copyright is the 31st December after the 70th anniversary of the death of the author - no broken years.

(Let's not get picky about odd exceptions to this rule, it fits most of the world).

Okay, so who gets to be out of copyright on Hogmanay?

Looking at timelines on the web I can find King Oliver and Robert Johnson. In literature, Thomas Wolfe and Osip Mandelstam, neither of them exactly singable, and Cesar Vallejo, who might have been but I can't trace any settings.

1938 also saw the invention of nylon, the electronic digital computer, the Biro, the xerox machine, Fannie Mae, instant coffee, seeing eye dogs, colour TV, Superman, Scrabble, LSD, bluegrass and electric shock therapy.