Sony owns America's music

It is true that Sony owns the rights to all that great '20s-'50s music -- in North America. But trademark laws are different in England and the rest of Europe. Almost everything you mention is in the public domain there. So anyone over there can put out this stuff -- and then ship it to the USA! Many of them do. An international corporation like Sony (or Universal, which owns Decca and much else) is unlikely to put out vintage stuff that they only own in North America.

HM: True -- as for a long time, some classic jazz, essential to serious students of the art, have been available in exemplary editions from small firms located outside the US and North America, in the UK and European countries. I've enjoyed Robert Parker's "classic jazz in digital stereo" series and John R.T. Davies remasterings of King Oliver, Jelly Roll, Armstrong, et al, both imported common domain productions. These imports are probably easier to obtain now online than they've ever been in retails stores, though jazz-and-beyond purveyors like the Jazz Record Mart in Chicago and Downtown Music Gallery on the Bowery in Manhattan have often been able to stock them, though distribution in the U.S. has never been widespread or assured.

Hi, Howard;

would we face a similar lack of reissues if Sony were American-owned? I believe we would as unfortuantely bean-counting experts have the same mentality world-wide.

Interested in knowing if I am wrong on the above.

Best,
Mauro from Italy

HM: Mauro, your point is well-taken: Bean-counters are a nation unto themselves. I harbor an unsubstantiated and dangerously idealistic notion that the nation of those who love America's musical legacy -- and that the dedicated would include citizens and maybe even gov't agencies of the U.S. who consider that legacy an inherently national treasure -- would be better protectors than corporations run by people who have no national interest in that legacy at all. But there are those who argue that the Parthenon's "Elgin" marbles have been better maintained by the British Museum than they would have been if returned to Greece.

The real deal is that Sony's purchase could institute a moment in which all of us who care about the musical past begin to clamor for its availability. What can we listeners do to encourage Sony (or any corporation) to regard their intellectual possessions as a cultural trust? With one corporate entity to lobby instead of two, maybe it would be easier to persuade powers-that-be to make our music accessible. Letter-writing campaign? Backed with info on potential profit to be derived from online issue of out-of-print music? Any other, better ideas?

As a jazz enthusiast born outside the U.S.A.(on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean) I use the Internet a lot for purchasing jazz records, thereby getting to know music I would otherwise never ever hear. I am a frequent customer of two great Internetstores: www.jazzloft.com and www.truebluemusic.com, the latter leading to an extensive collection of Blue Note/Mosaic records. But I have not yet found an equal to these two companies when it comes to the Columbia/Sony music, much as I would REALLY like to buy and collect some of Columbia's great jazz records. It would be priceless for all present and future jazz enhusiasts (all around the world) to see Columbia's heritage loved enough to re-release all those gems AND build a proper Columbia Internet record-shop, dedicated to American jazz.

With best regards from Iceland,
Lana Kolbrún Eddudottir
jazz program producer
Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (=NPR)

I suggest that in the future you work on checking your spelling.

I cringed when I saw "Jimmy Rogers." Jimmie Rodgers is known as "The Father of Country Music" and it is not that difficult to learn to spell his name and show him the proper respect.

I also noticed "Alicia Keyes" and couldn't keep from crying. It should have been "Alicia Keys."

HM: Thanks for the corrections, Elston -- posted in haste. I had that twinge about Jimmie Rodgers when I wrote it that I ought to have looked it up. Alicia Keys, too, is someone I always need to check, and I didn't.