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Topic: PBS Country Music Special |
Tom Keller
From:
Greeneville, TN, USA
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Posted 21 Sep 2019 2:14 pm |
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| There were many people collecting songs before A.P. Carter, for example Cecil Sharp and Alan Lomax comes to mind. People on both sides of the Atlantic were heavily involved in collecting songs. |
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Brooks Montgomery
From:
Idaho, USA
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Posted 21 Sep 2019 5:43 pm
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| b0b wrote: |
| Bill McCloskey wrote: |
“ both copied the melody to the Great Speckled Bird. ‘
You mean the carter family, I am dreaming tonight of my blue eyes, which is where the melody for the great speckled bird came from |
And actually, that fact was called out by the narrator in the series.
What I don't understand is why A. P. Carter's "collecting" of songs wasn't considered theft. The Carters made a lot of money off of songs that he had essentially stolen from poor people. So did Jimmy Rodgers. Was folk music so common and banal that it wasn't considered to have real value in those days? Until the record industry proved different, of course. |
b0b, I think that’s sort of the nature of artistic evolution. It all builds on what came before. Much of it either influenced from, borrowed, or just plain stolen. It’s true with literature, painting, sculpture, dance....music.
Even in the absurd: in the world of flyfishing, there have been many drunken arguments in Mac’s Last Cast Bar about the origin of a trout fly. “You sonfa bitch, I invented that rubber legged booty bugger!â€
“No you dint, I added those two pheasant tail fibers to the tail, and it’s my original!â€
And the beat goes on.
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A banjo, like a pet monkey, seems like a good idea at first. |
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Scott Thomas
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Posted 21 Sep 2019 6:00 pm
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| Yep. That part had me thinking it's not as easy to get away with now, but at the time it was like anything goes. I didn't know that Gene Autry started as a Jimmy Rodgers clone who undercut his sales by sounding just like him at a cheaper cost per record. |
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 22 Sep 2019 4:28 am
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“There were many people collecting songs before A.P. Carter, for example Cecil Sharp and Alan Lomax comes to mind. People on both sides of the Atlantic were heavily involved in collecting songs.“
The difference is, AP did it specifically so he could copyright them and collect t he royalties. |
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Erv Niehaus
From:
Litchfield, MN, USA
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Posted 22 Sep 2019 5:52 am
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Ah, you just can't beat free enterprise. 
Erv |
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Charlie McDonald
From:
out of the blue
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Posted 22 Sep 2019 6:56 am
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I think the practice was common then. John Jacob Niles went about collecting songs; Bob Dylan lifted some melodies that he could count on being 'traditional.'
It's as if public domain weren't a consideration; that is, chances were good that whatever the tune, it came from someone or somewhere else,
before copyrighting became the practice. Just guessing.
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Those that say don't know; those that know don't say.--Buddy Emmons |
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 22 Sep 2019 7:14 am
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| My understanding from the documentary was that AP didn’t read music and was mostly stealing the lyrics, not the tune. They said he would come home with scraps of paper filled with lyrics. |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 22 Sep 2019 9:02 am
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| Bill McCloskey wrote: |
| My understanding from the documentary was that AP didn’t read music and was mostly stealing the lyrics, not the tune. They said he would come home with scraps of paper filled with lyrics. |
He probably kept the tunes in his head.
_________________
-𝕓𝕆𝕓- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
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Tom Keller
From:
Greeneville, TN, USA
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Posted 22 Sep 2019 9:13 am
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| For those who are interested, There's a wonderful book on The Carter Family, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone by Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg. |
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 22 Sep 2019 9:14 am
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| Or the tunes were commonly known. Fiddle tunes were very regional. And everyone might have been drawing on the same pool of tunes. |
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Tom Keller
From:
Greeneville, TN, USA
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Posted 22 Sep 2019 9:46 am
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| According to the Will You Miss Me When I am Gone book A.P. would collect the lyrics and bring them home where Sara and Maybelle would go about creating a melody for the collected lyrics. |
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 25 Sep 2019 8:35 am
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| b0b wrote: |
What I don't understand is why A. P. Carter's "collecting" of songs wasn't considered theft. The Carters made a lot of money off of songs that he had essentially stolen from poor people. So did Jimmy Rodgers. Was folk music so common and banal that it wasn't considered to have real value in those days? Until the record industry proved different, of course. |
Believe it or not, there was a day when people didn't think about monetizing every aspect of their lives.  Everyone builds upon the shoulders of those who have gone before. I once went to a steel jam where someone was selling the "Leavitt tuning", as if you could copyright and protect something as simple as the order of notes on the open strings. You may not agree, but I feel the extreme attempted control of music nowadays (related to "performance rights") has done much to impede the appreciation and enjoyment of music. |
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Jim Cohen
From:
Philadelphia, PA
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Posted 25 Sep 2019 8:46 am
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| Donny Hinson wrote: |
| I once went to a steel jam where someone was selling the "Leavitt tuning", as if you could copyright and protect something as simple as the order of notes on the open strings. You may not agree, but I feel the extreme attempted control of music nowadays (related to "performance rights") has done much to impede the appreciation and enjoyment of music. |
But weren't they really selling instruction of how to use the Leavitt tuning, tab transcriptions, exercises, etc? Nothing wrong with that...
_________________
www.JimCohen.com
www.RonstadtRevue.com
www.BeatsWalkin.com |
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 25 Sep 2019 9:41 am
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Just occurred to me that you could have Acuff sing Great Speckled Bird, followed by a Carter singing I'll be Thinking Tonight of my Blue eyes, followed by The Wild Side of Life and finishing up with It Wasn't Got who made Honky Tonk Angels.
And the audience would have heard the same tune 4 times in a row.
"Believe it or not, there was a day when people didn't think about monetizing every aspect of their lives."
Clearly that was before AP's time, cause he certainly monetized every aspect of his life and everyone he could steal a song from. |
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Brooks Montgomery
From:
Idaho, USA
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Posted 25 Sep 2019 11:39 am
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Pretty hard to trademark/copyright I, IV, V
But then Ohio State tried to trademark “Theâ€
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A banjo, like a pet monkey, seems like a good idea at first. |
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 25 Sep 2019 12:15 pm
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| Can’t trademark chord progressions, but you certainly can copyright a melody. As the great jazz bebop players demonstrated |
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John Brabant
From:
Calais, VT, USA
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Posted 29 Sep 2019 7:43 am
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For those of us who couldn't find the time to catch these episodes when first aired, you can stream the earlier episodes from the PBS.ORG website. I have a Roku TV and installed the PBS app, so have been playing catch up. Will be weeks before I can find the time to see then all, but did see the entirety of Ep. 7 which was really good.
_________________
John Brabant
1978 Emmons D-10 P-P |
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Colin Swinney
From:
Wisconsin, USA
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 29 Sep 2019 2:36 pm
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| Jim Cohen wrote: |
| Donny Hinson wrote: |
| I once went to a steel jam where someone was selling the "Leavitt tuning", as if you could copyright and protect something as simple as the order of notes on the open strings. You may not agree, but I feel the extreme attempted control of music nowadays (related to "performance rights") has done much to impede the appreciation and enjoyment of music. |
But weren't they really selling instruction of how to use the Leavitt tuning, tab transcriptions, exercises, etc? Nothing wrong with that... |
No, I asked. They wouldn't even tell prospective buyers what the tuning was unless you paid. |
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 29 Sep 2019 2:45 pm
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“prospective buyers what the tuning was unless you paidâ€
And prospective buyers can keep their money. If someone wants to sell a tutorial and not reveal the tuning to Non-buyers, and people still buy, well that is called good old capitalism. |
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Doug Beaumier
From:
Northampton, MA
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Bill McCloskey
From:
Nanuet, NY
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Posted 29 Sep 2019 4:09 pm
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| In the old days your tuning was a competitive advantage and closely held secret. |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
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Posted 29 Sep 2019 9:31 pm
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| Bill McCloskey wrote: |
| In the old days your tuning was a competitive advantage and closely held secret. |
Life must have been very dull. I remember reading about guitarists who wouldn’t reveal how they played such n such because they felt they would be giving away part of their soul. Seems a bit pretentious to me now, but I actually fell for it back in the goodle days. |
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Kenny Davis
From:
Great State of Oklahoma
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Posted 30 Sep 2019 2:23 am
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| I didn't realize the "Old Days" were in the early '70's! |
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