Dear MMDers: Today, New Year's Day 2024, all works copyrighted in the
United States in 1928 entered the public domain in the US, independent
of whether those works were renewed for a second 28 years of protection
or not. The most famous work in this regard is of course Walt Disney's
first version of Mickey Mouse, as has been mentioned in the news
extensively.

Among the musical works that are now public domain that might be of
interest to MMD readers, there are a few well-known songs by George
Gershwin such as "Clap Yo' Hands" and "Do-do-do", a couple of blues
tunes by Lemuel Fowler "Down and Out Blues" and "Gin Mill Blues" (not to
be confused with several other tunes of that title by other composers),
the songs by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf that they were commissioned to
write for "Keep Shufflin'" and the couple of songs by James P. Johnson
that were commissioned for the same show (e.g., "'Sippi"), and the songs
that are registered as having been composed by Jimmy McHugh with lyrics
by Dorothy Fields for "Blackbirds of 1928" like "Diga Diga Doo" and
"I Can't Give You Anything But Love". However, it is well-known that
there are fairly good reasons to believe that that last-named song was
actually written by Waller and Razaf and sold to McHugh.

I have chosen to include the great Waller/Razaf song from 1928, "Willow
Tree", as the example of a newly-public-domain work here. As a trivial
example of the things anyone can now do with such a work, I have
modified a single word of the lyrics to render them acceptable in the
21st century.

Now, in the media reports about Public Domain Day 2024, a musical
work that is mentioned as an example of what is now public domain is
Gershwin's wonderful tone-poem "An American In Paris." Although it
is certainly true that Gershwin composed the work in 1928 and it was
first performed in 1928, it turns out that he did not get around to
registering the copyright for the then-unpublished score until February
15, 1929.

Now, it is certainly true under the present copyright law in the US,
a work is automatically protected by copyright as soon as the form of
the work is fixed. For example, a song is protected the instant the
composer records it in some way -- he or she need not write out a lead
sheet or some such thing. But I do not believe that this was the case
in 1928; the registration was compulsory to gain copyright protection.
So I would think that in the case of "An American in Paris" the period
of copyright protection began only in 1929, so I would think that the
work becomes public domain only on New Year's Day 2025, no?  Can legal
experts provide an opinion? Unless one is sure, I wouldn't try to do
anything with "An American in Paris" _this_ year!

This question, it seems to me, has a bearing on a number of issues
regarding copyrights on musical works of interest to MMD readers, not
just this one case. For example, James P. Johnson made his first piano
roll of his signature instrumental number "Carolina Shout" in 1918
(it might have been made in 1917, but Artempo released it in 1918.)
Then Johnson made a better roll of it for QRS in 1921. That roll is
marked "Copyright 1921 by James P. Johnson", but there is no record of
a copyright registration of the composition until October 16, 1925,
when a lead sheet is registered as an unpublished work.

In this particular instance, the difference is moot as the work is
now public domain in any case, but there are many other examples in
which a composition was created for piano roll and never published or a
copyright registered for it. The point is that under the copyright law
at the time, issuance of a work on player piano roll did not constitute
a "publication" of the underlying musical work.

Certainly today a roll would constitute "fixing the form" of the
composition so it would be protected by copyright the instant the roll
was made, whether or not the roll was offered for sale to the public,
but that was not the case in the 1910s or 1920s.

Bob Pinsker
San Diego, California

 [ Willow Tree by Thomas Waller and Andy Razaf, 1928.
 [ https://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/24/01/02/240102_022002_Willow%20Tree%20(Waller%20and%20Razaf,%201928).pdf