[Dixielandjazz] Harry Fox's hustle

[Charlie Hooks]

on 10/30/02 10:54 PM, John Mumford at john@jazzbanjo.com wrote:

> I have heard too many stories where
> people have tried to use the website and they were told they had to pay
> royalties for songs such as "Camptown Races" (because it is listed for
> arrangements).

    Sho' now!,  Y'all call me up and ask, and I'll tell you that you owe me
money for the Gutenburg Bible!  Ask the fox about them chickens!

    You that dumb, you might just as well pay me: if I don't skin you,
someone else will!

cordially,
Charlie

PS: But with all my wise-assed comment, I still haven't a clue how to deal
with the earnest lady at the radio station who just must have "the
documents" that prove beyond a doubt the rights to this song going back to
the day before the earth was formed.  What would satisfy this fearful
cover-my-ass person?  A letter, say, from Stephen Foster granting permission
to play "Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair"?   No way.  How would she
authenticate that letter?  And were someone to authenticate it, then how
would she ever authenticate that authentification?  Infinite regression....

Fact is: only people who can legally grant permission, sign the grant and
have it notarized, are all--DEAD!  Have been for years.  This never comes up
with live people who can be contacted, talked to; only with dead people.

So I regard this as a "Catch 44": that is, twice as bitchey as Catch 22.

Chas.