I may be "in the game," but I've never tried to own folk music. Even when Frank Proffitt recorded for me, we only obtained copyrights on songs he had actually written. The traditional stuff was credited to "trad."

Rick is right, however, when he observes that a lot of the big-time folk acts of the great folk-scare era who were recording for major labels were encouraged to claim authorship or, at the least, "arrangement" rights in order to protect the label from lawsuit. Someone once told me how many claims to copyright existed in the Library of Congress' Copyright Office on the ballad of Barbara Allen, but I've forgotten the figure. There are a lot of 'em!

I do recall looking through one of Oscar Brand's books and reading at the bottom of every page that copyright was claimed for "new words and music by Oscar Brand" on such songs as "Yankee Doodle," only I couldn't spot any of the new words and, while I'm not a musical expert, neither could I see much change in the melody. Publisher's choice of self-protection, I assume.

I will admit to having obtained a copyright on a number of Sara Cleveland's versions of her lovely traditional ballads and songs. They were grouped into an "Opus" and filed under one copyright claim. This was done to avoid their being exploited by commercial performers who might perceive their beauty and record them without giving credit to their source. This, of course, after the "Tom Dula" experience of Frank Warner and Frank Proffitt. Proffitt didn't write the song, of course, but the version performed by the Kingston Trio (for which Dave Gard claimed authorship -- and he didn't write it either!) was based on the version Warner had collected from Proffitt in 1938. I was determined that nothing of that sort would happen to Sara Cleveland, if I could do something to avoid it. The decision to do that has never bothered me, since I had no intention of exploiting the material commercially, but was determined that no one else should either.

Here's another interesting example. Jim Waters wrote the tune for "The Great Silkie" that almost everyone knows while he was a student at MIT. Most people have assumed it was a traditional tune, as Pete Seeger did when he put the words to "I Come and Stand at Every Door" to that tune. When Pete learned that Jim had written the tune and assigned the copyright to Folk-Legacy, he immediately arranged for royalties to come to us. No one could have been more honorable! On the other hand, not a penny was ever forthcoming for the Joan Baez recording, even though the introduction to the ballad in her Ballad Book (is that the title?) states that the tune is by a James Waters. Different strokes, folks. That's the way it is in the world of "music as commodity."

Sandy