Huw Williams, who now manages Calan, trvelled to America to make a programme about the Rock Island Line for Radio Wales, repeated on BBC Radio 4 in 2010.

From timscoverstory; We will finish with one more observation about Lonnie Donegan. He frequently complained that he received only a £10 fee for his recording of Rock Island Line, his biggest hit. Technically, this is true – Donegan was paid “scale” as a musician for recording the song.

However, Donegan conveniently forgot to mention that he had copyrighted the song Rock Island Line. Thus, although the song had a substantial history before Donegan ever encountered it, and though Donegan basically produced a note-for-note copy of Leadbelly’s tune, Donegan subsequently received all of the music royalties from the song.

Furthermore, if someone later produced a version of the song, Donegan would then receive additional songwriting royalties! So, not only did Lonnie Donegan reap a bountiful harvest of copyright royalties from Rock Island Line, he did so at the expense of Leadbelly, and conceivably also Kelly Pace who fashioned the first modern version of this song.