Singin’ the Blues

Sutro refers to Dorothy Donegan as “the only living artist with a recording on Rosetta.” I would like to inform him that I and most of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm are also alive and, in some instances, still blowing our horns.

Rosetta Reitz produced a beautifully packaged album of our air checks from the 1940s, but it should be noted that this project could not have been completed without the cooperation and input of the Sweethearts. All the information for her liner notes came as a result of lengthy interviews with several of us, plus we contributed the pictures for the album. No compensation of any kind was ever received by the Sweethearts for our involvement and contributions to this album.

We are all thrilled that Joel Castleberg and Rob Newman are going to make the movie about this extraordinary group of racially integrated women musicians who lived, traveled and made musical history together. But we do find it ironic that Reitz is to be the “consultant” on our lives and adventures, when everything she knows about us she received directly from us.

ROSALIND CRON

Los Angeles

Editor’s note:

The legal issues surrounding rights to sound recordings made before the 1978 revision of the federal Copyright Act are complex. They are made all the more confusing by the passage of time and changes in corporate ownership of record labels.

Eichler states, for example, that Columbia Records (formerly a division of CBS and now part of Sony Corp.) owns Nellie Lutcher’s 1953 recording of “St. Louis Blues.” But a spokesman for Columbia was unable to confirm whether the company still owns the recording, and the singer herself cannot recall receiving any royalties from the label in more than 30 years.

Reitz herself acknowledges that she may not have the rights to every recording, many of which are by nature obscure and long forgotten, but she claims to devote “enormous” amounts of time and energy to trying to track down the rights and to pay artists when she can. She says she has formally licensed recordings by Lil Green and Ethel Waters from RCA and Ida Cox from Fantasy and some of Dinah Washington’s material from Belmark Records. Reitz also said she has paid royalties to Donegan, even though her work was in the public domain.

“My main function is retrieval of lost material, and much of that lost material has been in the public domain,” Reitz said in a subsequent interview. “I have searched for copyrights and in many cases not found them. Since my address is clearly stated on my work, I am available to anyone who might come forth and want to make a claim if they feel they have one. Some people have, and I have settled with them.”