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Bunk Johnson, a pianist and bandleader, is quoted in Dizzy Gillespie's autobiography "To Be or Not to Bop" (page 298) as follows:
A lotta guys who weren't keeping up with what was going on [with copyright law] would get a [recording] date, so the [record company's] A&R man, or some fellow, ofay or whatever, would say "O.K., gimme a riff. You know, just make up a head. We don't need no music; we're gonna record."
So the cats would record, make up something. And they're actually creating the music right on the record date. Now, when it comes out, they wouldn't completely beat them, but usually the guy, the A&R man, had his own publishing firm or his buddy's got one and right away he would stick in all of this material — because you have recorded it and you didn't have it protected — and in order for him, he says, to sava the material, he's put it in a publishing company. The publishing company would give you one of them jive contracts, where you'd never get no royalties. So this was a rip-off.
The music industry's historically poor treatment of jazz, blues, and popular musicians led to a recent editorial in the June 10, 1995 issue of Billboard magazine, part of which states:'
One of the music industry's best-kept secrets for decades centered on an ugly period of economic injustice often perpetrated by owners of masters and song copyrights against artists and songwriters who mainly made their way (if not much of a living) in the R&B and blues fields.
An article accompanying the editorial notes that
Old recording contracts often saddled unrepresented artists, most of them African-Americans, with royalty rates as low as 3% of wholesale or 1% of retail price. Still other artists accepted no-royalty "buy-outs" of between $50 and $200 per record.
Mr. Chairman, I do not raise these points to disparage the music industry or to suggest that these represent today's practices. But this unfortunate past is relevant to H.R. 989, because as currently drafted, the bill will enforce these very contracts for another 20 years.
Nor Mr. Chairman, am I saying that all publishers are evil or
'' The entire editorial is attached to this statement.