Boy, Alex, you're opening a can of worms there. So many of the classic blues songs came from recordings done in the 1920s and 1930s - but only those from 1923 and earlier are clearly in the public domain. Those songs ought to belong to somebody, and it shouldn't be to corporate executives with white skin. But tracking down ownership of the rights to such songs is a herculean task.

We did the best we could to get proper licenses for the songs we used in the Blues chapter of the upcoming Rise Again songbook; but in the end, I sure wasn't satisfied that the money we were paying was going to the right people.

But the alternative is to neglect all these impossible-to-license songs and buy stuff that the corporations want to sell.

In the process of doing research for the songbook, I had an interesting correspondence with Michael Taft, the former director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. You might enjoy this thread (click) about his Talkin' to Myself collection of blues lyrics.

-Joe-