[Dixielandjazz] Song Plagiarism - was - Night Train

[Stephen G Barbone]

Song plagiarism in one form or another has been going on for  
centuries. But like Harry C says, that doesn't make it right.

In our time (if you are over 70) perhaps the most prolific facilitator  
of the trend to "copy" was Herman Lubinsky a tightwad music  
entrepreneur from Newark NJ. He had a record store there and also ran  
Savoy Records from his store. With Savoy, his raison d'etre was to  
make and sell records, without paying royalties for the music. Toward  
that end, he hired "producers" who would line up jazz and R & B  
musicians to record "original" compositions. Then pay the musicians  
for the recording sessions but not paying royalties to anyone. (He  
owned the music recorded at the sessions as far as his records were  
concerned)

Teddy Reig was one such producer who got Charlie Parker to record  
"originals" since Lubinsky would not pay money for other peoples  
tunes. And his deal was to pay the jazz musicians for the sessions,  
but not for the music which Lubinsky would now own regarding Savoy  
Record Sales. At one point, Parker needed a final tune for a session  
and wrote it on the spot. He simply took a jazz standard, Cherokee,  
and transformed it into Koko. Result no royalties at all for Lubinsky  
on the record..

But Parker did not steal the Cherokee melody, only the chord changes.  
Koko is really a different tune and therefore is somewhat original.  
This was done all the time in music. e.g. "Five Feet Two" uses the  
same chord changes as "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" and  
"Darkness on The Delta" but they are very different melodies.

However, here's the rest of the story. During that same 1945 session  
produced by Teddy Reig, Parker wrote and recorded another original  
called Now's The Time. Uptempo blues built upon a riff. Lo an behold,  
some 3 years later during another Teddy Reig produced session at  
Savoy, Paul Williams records a tune called The Huckle-Buck. As you  
will remember, Huckle-Buck became a huge Rhythm and Blues Hit using  
the exact same riff as Parker's Now's The Time.

Reig, ever the consummate smoothie justified the steal with: "The one  
was jazz and the other was rock & roll, and we were hungry. And  
Lubinski owned everything anyway." And Paul Williams would say that it  
was not the same song because . . . one song used a frenetic be-bop  
Alto while the other used a loping Tenor. Yeah, right.

In any event, with lyrics added later, Hucklebuck became a huge R & B  
hit, went to the top of the charts, sold over a half million copies  
and breaking just about all records for popularity back then.

And the money came pouring in for Lubinsky, while Parker felt cheated.

Funny, how the exact same tune is trashed by some on one hand as being  
be-bop, yet becomes a huge R & B hit beloved by others. Funnier still  
is how Reig and Lubinsky made fortunes from cheating musicians who  
cheated other musicians by plagiarizing. Who said "You Can't Cheat a  
Cheater?"

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband