| March 29th, 2005 11:39 AM |
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| parmeda |
WHO OWNS RARE IMAGE OF AUTHOR OF "SWEET HOME"?
Chicago SunTimes
March 29, 2005
BY: MITCHELL PACELLE AND BEN GOLDBERGER*
The first time Robert Harris remembers hearing about legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson was when his late Aunt Bessie brought over a stack of his records to the family's Maryland home.
"I was about 8 or 9 when I found out who he was" recalled Harris, 41, a musician himself who now lives on Chicago's Northwest Side. "I had one of those close-and-play record players and Aunt Bessie put one of his records on.
"That's your namesake," Harris remembers his aunt saying. "That's your uncle Robert."
He had no idea at the time, but Aunt Bessie's words foreshadowed Harris' place at the center of a pitched legal battle between Johnson's heirs and the white blues collector who helped make the once-obscure Mississippi bluesman -- among those credited with writing "Sweet Home Chicago" -- into an international musical icon.
TRIAL DETERMINES HEIR
In about 1935, Robert Johnson mounted a stool at Memphis's Hooks Brothers Photography studio, picked up his Gibson L-1 guitar, tipped his fedora and gazed into a camera lens.
Nearly four decades later, Johnson's half-sister dug the resulting photo out of a cedar chest to show to a dogged blues historian who had tracked her down. The trunk she opened that afternoon in 1973 has since turned into a Pandora's box.
That now-famous photograph and another one that was buried in the chest have become the subjects of a convoluted tug-of-war between the blues sleuth and relatives of the legendary musician, who died penniless and without a will in 1938. At stake: Who is the rightful owner of the iconic images, the only known photographs of the legendary musician, and who holds their lucrative copyrights?
The dispute is the final chapter in a legal struggle entering its 15th year over Johnson's legacy. Earlier, a dramatic trial elevated a sole heir from a handful of contenders, entitling a once-poor truck driver to share in the lucrative rights to Johnson's music. Now the fight over the photos is proving just as tangled, thrusting the historian and his business dealings into the spotlight.
''This has been an odyssey every bit as turbulent as the life of Robert Johnson himself,'' says Connecticut lawyer Stephen Nevas, who represents Harris and his surviving aunt, Annye Anderson.
MISSISSIPPI BROWSING
For decades after Johnson's death, little was publicly known about him beyond the 29 haunting country-blues songs he recorded in Texas in 1936 and 1937, including ''Love in Vain'' and ''Hell Hound on My Trail.'' When CBS Records' Columbia label released a batch of them on a 1961 LP, the company apparently assumed he had left behind no likenesses of himself, and no heirs. The album was illustrated with a drawing.
Blues historian Stephen LaVere, now 61 years old, first learned about Johnson's half-sister, Carrie Thompson -- also Anderson's half-sister and Harris' grandmother -- as he searched for leads in Mississippi in 1973. When he reached Thompson by phone at her home in Churchton, Md., he asked whether she had any photos.
What LaVere did next has made him a controversial figure in the blues world. He persuaded the elderly woman to assign him the rights to the photos and other memorabilia. Assuming her to be Johnson's only living heir, he also persuaded her to transfer her rights to Johnson's songs and recordings, which until then had been treated as in the public domain. In exchange, he promised her 50 percent of any royalties the material produced. He told her he would commercially promote Johnson's music.
LeVare acted quickly, striking a deal with CBS Records to release a definitive Robert Johnson collection.
Wary of legal problems, CBS put the record on ice for 15 years. Finally, in 1990, CBS Records released a boxed set of Johnson's recordings, with the Hooks Brothers portrait on the cover. It sold more than a million copies.
As the royalties rolled in, the trouble began. By then, Thompson had died, leaving her estate to her half-sister, Anderson, a retired schoolteacher who is now 78, and Harris. Anderson opened court proceedings to establish her claim on Johnson's estate.
UNRESOLVED ISSUES
That is when gravel-truck driver Claud Johnson, now 73, materialized with a birth certificate listing his father as ''R.L. Johnson, laborer.'' A 1998 ruling based largely on an eyewitness statement named Claud Johnson sole heir, entitling him to $1.3 million in royalties that had accumulated in the estate, plus future royalties. Anderson got nothing, and her appeal was unsuccessful.
The ruling, which entitled Claud Johnson to split proceeds from his father's music with LaVere, threw ownership of the photos and their copyrights into limbo. Under his deal with CBS, those copyrights were yielding royalties of their own, although it remains unclear what portion of several million dollars of royalties is attributable to the photos.
''We can only guess what has been earned,'' said Nevas, the lawyer for Anderson. ''It is certainly in the six figures and probably in the seven,'' a range LaVere says he wouldn't dispute. Anderson and Harris, their lawyer claims, haven't seen a penny.
Anderson and Harris filed suit in 2000 against LaVere, Claud Johnson and Sony Corp.'s music division, which had purchased CBS Records. The photographs were family mementos, they argued, not the property of the estate. Moreover, they claimed, in 1980 Anderson's half-sister Carrie Thompson had rescinded the agreement under which LaVere had obtained the rights. LaVere refused to relinquish the rights, the lawsuit said. After several years of maneuvering, the Mississippi Supreme Court last December ordered the dispute to trial.
*Mitchell Pacelle writes for the Wall Street Journal, and Ben Goldberger is a Sun-Times staff reporter.
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| March 30th, 2005 12:41 AM |
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| Water Dragon |
Thanks for posting this article, "Hellhound on My Trail," indeed! |
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CHAT
ROOM aka THE FUN HOUSE] [
RESTROOMS]