Guitar Rag / Steel Guitar Rag Attribution

Sylvester Weaver's 1923 recording of Guitar Rag was one of the first blues guitar works recorded and has remained an important work. One interesting thing I discovered today after adding the missing images to the release was that blues singer Sara Martin was co-credited on the Okeh label. Sure enough she is as well on the copyright and on ISWC so I have updated the Work. They did work together but I'd never seen anywhere that didn't fully attribute the tune to Weaver. Hoping someone has inside story.

A couple decades later Leon McAuliffe copyrighted his Steel Guitar Rag. We currently have it set up as an adaptation but I would like discussion on that. It sure sounds like the same song to me and the couple sites I saw said the same thing and I'm not used to seeing music only adaptations when the songs sound virtually the same (except blues vs country style). So did we only set this "adaptation" up because McAuliffe registered it and he's credited everywhere for it or because we actually heard a distinct enough musical distinction to make this an adaptation (which doesn't seem to exist to me). So should Steel Guitar Blues actually just be treated as a Cover Peformance and not as an Adaptation (despite the registry)?

Jojo just recommended they be combined as well

"Yes," in answer to Mark's question, but of course this is still yet another example of the bewildering (and disheartening) accuracy-vs.-registration feud.

(See, also, e.g., https://secondhandsongs.com/error-report/29393.)

Jeff, thanks for responding. This one is a little different in that we set up an adaptation. We need to have had something musically or lyrically adapted so to speak to allow for an adaptation and I'm not sure anything was really adapted other than the musical style from blues to country. An adaptation isn't created by a new registry. I have set up a number of A.P. Carter Works because he registered them and then later found earlier recordings of essentially the same song and had to remove the attribution to Carter (and documented it). I was more wanting people to weigh in if they actually think the Steel Guitar Rag tune is distinctly different from the Guitar Rag tune, because if not, then we must do the same here (and clearly document it if we do so).

Quote from mduval32323

Jeff, thanks for responding. This one is a little different in that we set up an adaptation. We need to have had something musically or lyrically adapted so to speak to allow for an adaptation and I'm not sure anything was really adapted other than the musical style from blues to country. An adaptation isn't created by a new registry. I have set up a number of A.P. Carter Works because he registered them and then later found earlier recordings of essentially the same song and had to remove the attribution to Carter (and documented it). I was more wanting people to weigh in if they actually think the Steel Guitar Rag tune is distinctly different from the Guitar Rag tune, because if not, then we must do the same here (and clearly document it if we do so).

I agree with both of you, JeffC and mduval32323 . I think we should only set up new adaptations when there is a significant new musical or lyrical element. Otherwise we'll never know to which work subsequent cover versions should be linked. That said, I've seen other similar threads where this is discussed, for example this one with Oliver One , where Bastien sets out why he prefers to follow the PRO databases.

Last edit: 2023-08-30 09:20:54 UTC by sebcat

"...we'll never know to which work subsequent cover versions should be linked."

And here's an example of that:

https://secondhandsongs.com/error-report/33147

Well Sebastian. It's one thing to have a standard for all of what I'll call the "modern" Works and another for what I'll call the Public Domain eligible works. Most every Work that I add is a very old Work. Many times I will find oodles of people that later covered a song have registered it as their own that at best they arranged. I'm adding a 1929 rag tune as we speak by Charlie Stripling (of the Stripling Brothers) called "Kennedy Rag". It's not in BMI or GEMA (nor would I really have expected it to be just as Guitar Rag wasn't). Norman Blake and his wife covered the song and sure enough they registered it on BMI (and they are the only registry on BMI and none on GEMA). All one has to do is listen and make an easy call not to set Blake's up as an adaptation. The album that Blake's song is on is even titled "Songs That Are Mostly Older Than Us" (and they were old when they recorded it). So I'm most certainly not setting Blake's up as a Work or Adapatation because I did the homework.

Jeff's mentioning the other thread deviates somewhat from what I thought was the intent of that thread. I thought it dealt with original attribution (e.g. did Marley write it and just give credit away and so should we really credit Marley...did Flatt & Scruggs write it or their wives...). It's a different story when people come along after the fact and re-register a song as their own - which happens all the time with old works that are in the public domain or weren't copyrighted. I have added songs before that were registered by 10 or more of the people who recorded it - and I overlooked that.

But with Steel Guitar Rag vs. Guitar Rag all I was intending was for a couple more people besides Jojo to listen to it and confirm back that they are the same tune or no, they are not the same tune. I'm still hoping someone will do that besides Jojo as he already voted to combine them.

Here's a great example. We set up Big Ball's in Cowtown by Hoyle Nix (Bob Wills/George Strait.............)

Well there were a bunch before it and we had no clue clearly. So now I'm working on those. There are a bunch of Big Balls in Town that may say Big Ball's in Nashville or Memphis or Texas and then Holye Nix came along and said Big Ball's in Cowtown and his version was covered in the modern age by Bob Wills & George Strait but he only credited himself and we set it up that way. So for now I have it set Nix's up as an adaptation but I mean some of these predecessors vary wider than Nix's. It's really just a flip of the coin on how you set stuff up. Clearly we didn't do much homework on Big Ball's in Cowtown as the predecessors involved some of the kings of the stringband world.

The set-up of Steel Guitar Rag looks good to me. I added the "disputed credits"-tag too.

As for the wording:

Bob Wills recorded a steel guitar version of Sylvester Weaver's "Guitar Rag" in 1936, that Wills called "Steel Guitar Rag". Wills' guitar player, Leon McAuliffe, registered the work as his own, but it's the identical tune, just a countrified version of Weaver's blues rag and really shouldn't qualify for adaptation status.

I think mduval32323 did a great job in giving background info on this work. The only thing I would change is leave out and really shouldn't qualify for adaptation status. Not because I don't agree, but because that's an information directed at the editors in my opinion, not at our visitors.

Bastien I removed the last part you said I editorialized on. But again if we are in agreement that they are the same tune then it’s really not okay that we ignore this and still credit it as we have. It’s not okay to set up an adaptation of Tune A when Tune B is the same tune. It makes zero sense. We just originally set this up as a McAuliffe song because we didn’t know any better at the time but now we do. But at this point I’ve moved on as I can only do so much. If the Editor who set this up thinks he did a great job then so be it.

We spend too much time trying not to offend instead of being firstly concerned with precision. You wouldn’t believe how many Works of my own that I had to later overhaul after gaining more knowledge of the song family. It’s an evolving process. Jojo has set me straight on many an occasion too. I love it when people improve my submissions. I’m not a “just copy a BMI in a Work box, hit enter and move on to the next one kinda guy” - you can’t be on these older Works as the credits weren’t subject to the same standards we have now. Anything registered pre 1950s should always be questioned.

Last edit: 2020-10-16 13:58:11 UTC by mduval32323

I devoted the fourth chapter of my thesis 'Across the South: The origins and development of the steel guitar in western swing" to this topic. My conclusion is that there is no doubt that McAuliffe used Weaver's second recording of the tune (1927) as a starting point for his composition.

The dissertation is a free download from this site.

https://guycundell.academia.edu/research

What I would like to know is if Weaver has descendants because this would appear to be actionable.