Details of the lawsuit that was aid to be the first major copyright battle in American musical history.
Jim Carroll

Among the curious who came to gape at the wreckage was the telegraph operator at Franklin Junction, David Graves George. It was either George or a pair of Fries, Virginia textile workers named Charles Weston Lowell and Fred Jackson Lowey who took a song called "The Ship That Never Returned" and reworked it into "The Wreck of the Old 97." The dispute between the two parties was to be the first major copyright battle in American recording history. The route from the wreck to the courtroom less a story of its own.
Long before it was first recorded, the song was widely known in southern Virginia and North Carolina. Sometime around 19l4, a loom fixer in Fries named Henry Whitter learned the song from a fellow mill worker named Frank Burnett who, it turn, had learned "Old '97" from Noell and Lowey. Whitter had ambitions of becoming a professional musician and in 1923 he made his way to New York to audition for the General Phonograph Company. The record industry was not quite ready for country music, but after Fiddlin' John Carson's success in Atlanta later that Year, the company called Whitter back. On December 12, 1923, he made the first recording of "The Wreck of the Southern Old 97," twenty years after the event.
It was released early in 1924 and caught the attention of Vernon Dalhart. In August, 1924, he recorded it for the Victor Talking Machine Company. That record is said to have been the first million-selling country music record. Victor bought the rights to the song from Noel), Lowey and Whitter.
When David Graves George learned of Dalhart's success, he sued Victor over the rights to the song. The ensuing trial from 1930 to 1933 involved hundreds of witnesses. Danville and Fries residents testified to the length of time the song had been sung in their respective communities. Robert W. Gordon, the first director of the Archive of Folk Song in the Library of Congress acted as an expert witness concerning the song's distribution in oral tradition. In the first trial, George was awarded $62,295, but a subsequent appeal reversed that decision in favour of Victor. The recording of "Old 97" on this album has a significant place in the story of that controversy. Kelly Harrell was another Fries millhand and a friend of Henry Whitter. Whitter tried to get Harrell to record with him, but he was reluctant until he heard Whitter's recording. Convinced he could do no worse, he auditioned for Victor. In August, 1925, Harrell and Whitter went to Asheville, North Carolina to record for Okeh. Harrell was specifically asked to record "Old 97" because his singing was far clearer than Whitter's. The 12-inch record released was unusual for its length and obviously meant as a challenge to the Dalhart recording. Harrell was later called as a witness in the Copyright trial.
Harrell's version less typical of the intriguing mix of fact and inaccuracy in most versions of the song. Some of these might be explained as the effect of oral tradition. "And the lie was a three- mile grade," for example, originated as: "And at Lima there's a three mile grade. "Verses two and eight in Harrell's version are uncommon, and may have been collaboration by Harrell and Whitter. Joseph Broady, the engineer of 97 usually identified as "Steve Brady" in the song, was nicknamed Steve by his fellow railroaded after a New Yorker who won brief fame by surviving a fall from the Brooklyn Bridge.