ALL: I am in receipt of a certified letter from one Nan Bostick, which
states, in part:
"Unfortunately, your Side A cut called "Walking the Baby Home" may
not be claimed as an original composition on your part. [...] you
have unwittingly generated a marvelous arrangement of the entire
chorus of my great uncle Charles N. Daniel's tune "Chlo-e, Song of
the Swamp". [...] Therefore some remedy needs to be implemented, if
for no other reason than to protect your credibility as a composer.
"My suggestion is that you immediately replace all your cassette
labels with ones that list "Walking the Baby Home" by its true title
-- "Chlo-e, Song of the Swamp", and credit Neil Moret as the
composer, [and] you the arranger. That would perhaps be the
easiest method of protecting your reputation and satisfying my
desire to see my great uncle credited where credit is due.
"However, you should know that the Daniels' and Kahn estates are
still active and should Daniels' son or Don Kahn (Gus & Grace LeBoy
Kahn's son -- music publisher himself and quite prominent in the
songwriter's protection organizations) learn about this, I could try
to intercede on your behalf, but could not guarantee the results."
Accordingly, I am instructing Cassette Duplication Services to cease
distributing "Nickelodeon Toe Tappers". In addition, the few people
I have sent it to on commission will be receiving similar instructions.
It is no longer available.
Any of you who have linked "Walkin the Baby Home" to your web pages
should forthwith delete the reference. I have removed the MIDI from
the WWW page.
Why am I doing this? Because I have no time for such complications in
my life. If Ms. Bostick wishes to lay claim to that 1% of "Walking the
Baby Home" that could possibly belong to Mr. Daniel's estate, then she
can now lay claim to something that no longer exists. There will be no
re-issue of the roll. Perhaps in 2004 I will think about it.
In the meantime, "Nickelodeon Toe Tappers" is withdrawn pending my
re-editing of the tape to delete that which threatens to cause me an
infestation of lawyers. It could take a while.
George Bogatko - gbogatko@intac.com
http://www.intac.com/~gbogatko
[ She doesn't mention the big (C)-word, so I presume that "Chlo-e" has
[ passed into public domain and is no longer protected by (C)opyright.
[ Well, so has "Humoresque" (Dvorak), and there were lots of adapta-
[ tions of that famous melody. Would Nan be satisfied with a sub-
[ title saying, "Interpolating 'Chlo-e' by Neil Moret"? Don't throw in
[ the towel, George -- your song is too good to withdraw! -- Robbie
|