Is Dark Hollow a Traditional Song?

[HogTime]

I'm working on releasing a CD of mine that has mostly original songs. I want to include a version of "Dark Hollow" that my banjo picking buddy and I did.

I thought it was a traditional song, needing no licensing. However, the Harry Fox Agency site shows the author as being Bill Browning.

Doing some googling, it seems that maybe old Bill used a traditional song as a basis for his.

Anybody got any scoop on this?

Guess it's safest to license it, anyway. I'll probably only produce a few hundred CDs, so the cost isn't that much.

Thanks,

[JeffD]

There are numerous websites where you can look up the song and see who ownes it, if anyone does.

CCLI, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SongFile, Music Services

to name a few.

[Jean Fugal]

Bill Browning and the Echo Valley Boys 1957
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utJSRa-rRas

[MikeEdgerton]

If you look hard enough you'll find that many tradtional songs have been claimed. There are a few threads someplace that discuss this.

[allenhopkins]

Harry Fox Agency, (http://www.harryfox.com/index.jsp) which JeffD referenced as "SongFile," is where most of the people I know go to ID copyrighted songs. Grateful Dead song sites do list "Bill Browning" as author of both words and music. A Joe Val website gives a lyric copyright attribution to "Carlin America Inc., Windswept Holdings LLC." Guitaretab.com says David Bromberg wrote it. So it goes. I'd say the Fox Agency probably has the most definitive answer.

It's kosher to copyright an arrangement of a traditional song; I've heard that John and Alan Lomax made some buxx out of sticking their names on traditional material, after which some recording companies would give them royalties. I remember Tom Paley of the New Lost City Ramblers complaining about that as long ago as 1962.

Dark Hollow has been recorded so many times, probably often without attribution or license, that it's unlikely to have its copyright defended -- if one exists. I'd want to do the right thing, if there is a valid copyright.