Were Some Early 1960s Melodies Copyrighted By Dylan Created By Other Folks?

If you check out some of the "Bob Dylan" songbooks that were first published in the early 1960s, you'll notice that the authorship of the "words and MUSIC" of the songs included in the songbooks are claimed by "Bob Dylan" and copyrighted by Dylan and his publisher. Yet as Micharel Gray noted in his 2006 book, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia:

"In Patrick Humphries' 1984 interview with the Clancys, Paddy [Clancy] suddenly offers this...story about Dylan..: `You want to know where Dylan got his stuff? There was a little folk club here in London, down in the basement; we sang in it one night...Anyway, Al Grossman paid somebody and gave them a tape-recorder, and every folk-singer that went up there was taped, and Bob Dylan got all those tapes...' And Liam [Clancy] agrees with this, adding: `Yes, and the tune of `Farewell] [a song Dylan copyrighted in 1963 and is included in his official songbooks]...whoever was singing harmony was closer to the mike than the guy singing melody, and when [Dylan] wrote his version, he wrote it to the harmony not the melody line.'

"...The songs he probably took specifically from hearing the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performing live are: the traditional `Brennan on the Moor,' which becme his `Rambling Gambling Willie' [copyrighted 1962]..' the traditional `The Parting Glass', which mutated into `Restless Farewell'...and the...tune Dominic Behan used for his song `The Patriot Game', which the Clancys sang and from which Dylan...created `With God On Our Side.'

In response to a 1976 query about Dylan's use of the melody of Dominic Behan's "The Patriot Game" song from the late 1950s for Dylan's early 1964 recording of "With God On Our Side," Dominic Behan wrote the following in a January 31, 1976 letter from Happendon, Douglas in Lanark, Scotland:

"Thank you for the interest you are showing in my song, `The Patriot Game". Some years ago I tried to get Dylan to settle the matter as one artist to another. I rang him at an hotel in London where he had been living then. Dylan's reaction was that I didn't have the resources to take any legal action against him, and he therefore replied, `Get lost, bum! The songs I write make other people's attempts at art good.'

"Mr. Dylan was, of course, correct in his view of my financial state. I couldn't take him to court, and, my publishers in America, `The Richmond Organisation', think the whole matter too costly and not worth the candle.

"I wrote the song (words and music) on the 1st January, 1957, after Feargal O'Hanlon had been shot dead the night previously.

"Thanks very much for your interest, though, when dealing with folk as ruthless as Mr. Dylan, I doubt if you and the other honest people around can do a lot of good.

"Thanks anyway and best wishes,

"Dominic Behan."

https://youtu.be/ME6PwThp-80

Patriot Game - Dominic Behan

`Sing-Out' Magazine Editor Irwin Silber's Take on Bob Shelton/Dylan Revisited

`NY Times' Establishment Folk Music Critic Bob Shelton with Bob Dylan in 1964.

In an interview, that was published in Richie Unterberger's 2002 Turn! Turn! Turn! book, former 1960s Sing Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber recalled why he was concerned about the artistic and political direction Bob Dylan was moving after 1964 and characterized the U.S. Establishment's New York Times's then-folk music critic, Bob Shelton, in the following way:

"My biggest concern was not with electricity...but with what Dylan was saying and doing about moving away from his political songs. In fact, even saying, well, he just used that for a while in order to get a break and all that kind of...and that's what distressed me more than anything else.

"...He combined a great artistic feel with a political sense that was poetic, that moved people. And now, to find him turning his back on it, at a time when...the civil rights movement is at its height, the beginning of the protest against the Vietnam War, and so on...And the left--the new left...was developing a whole new sense of politics. And to have Dylan deliberately, consciously, moving away from it at that time.--Well, I reall felt bad about that..."

"Bob Shelton was a funny figure in all this...The folk boom unfolded, and he was already in place at the New York Times...There was an arrogance to the way in which he appointed himself, and which everybody had to relate to because after all it's the New York Times, as sort of the definitive judge when it came to what was good, what was bad, and all those kinds of things.

"And his judgments weren't always very sound. I think he had a tendency to follow the crowd, to look for things that would make him stand out. I know for sure that he was not above working hand in glove with record producers and promoters in relation to their material, their acts and so on...

"...He then began to operate as a political judge, too...He was critical of people like me and the activists and so on, who were taking what he considered a far-left position in our militant opposition to the war...He used his position in terms of succumbing to influence, not being particularly well qualified to write what he was writing about, and to the political side of it...."

1960s `Sing Out!' Magazine Editor Irwin Silber with U.S. Movement Folksinger Barbara Dane

 

Post-1981 Rock Concert Ticket Price Hikes Revisited

 

As Sean Kay recalled in his 2017 book Rockin' The Free World: How The Rock & Roll Revolution Changed America And The World:

"..The price of concert tickets (often channeled through corporations like Live Nation and Ticketmaster) went up. By 2012, the average concert ticket price had increased abour 400 percent since 1981. This far outpaced the 150 percent increase in overall consumer price inflation."

The same book also indicated how the ownership of the corporate media radio stations which air rock music in the USA became more monopolized by only a few corporate media conglomerates--after Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs [SIPA] Professor and Columbia University SIPA's Institute of Global Politics Director Hillary Clinton's husband--Bill Clinton--signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996:

"By 2012 only 6 national corporations owned 90 percent of media outlets. The Future of Music Coalition found in 2006 that the top 4 radio station owners had almost half the listeners and the top 10 almost two-thirds of listeners in the United States. Local or regional ownership had declined by one-third between 1975 and 2005. The Future of Music Coalition concluded that `...radio consolidation has no demonstrated benefit for the public.'...

"This consolidation trend results from President Bill Clinton signing the...Telecommunications Act of 1996...Large companies--many with direct interest in controlling what programming aired--bought out regional and smaller market stations...The Future of Music Coalition shows advertising revenue increased from 12 percent market share for the top 4 companies in 1993 to 50 percent market share for the top 4 companies in 2004 while playlists from commonly owned stations in the same format overlapped up to 97 percent. For example, Clear Channel (now iHeart Radio), the Future of Music Coalition showed, `multiplied its stations holdings by a factor of 30, going from 40 stations to 1,200 within 5 years of the Telecom Act.'...

"Common Cause found that between 1997 and 2005, 8 of the nation's largest communications companies and 3 of their trade groups had spent more than $400 million on political contributions and lobbying in Washington..."