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Category: Copyright Deposits

Early Hip-Hop at the Library of Congress

Posted by: Heather Darnell

August 2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Hip-Hop, said to have begun in 1973 at a little South-Bronx party hosted by DJ Kool Herc. But years before Herc introduced New York to the breakbeat, African-American music and spoken-word traditions had been brewing in the great social unrest of the 60s and 70s  to create a …

Sheet music cover for "I'll Be Home for Christmas," registered for copyright on September 28, 1943.

“I’ll Be Home for Christmas”

Posted by: Cait Miller

While Walter Kent and Kim Gannon are the only names credited on the original copyright deposit for the Christmas classic, "I'll be home for Christmas," the label on Crosby's recording credits the song to three names: Kent, Gannon, and Buck Ram. Read about the history of the song and its copyright backstory, illustrated in records from the US Copyright Office. Download the original printed sheet music, registered as an unpublished copyright deposit on September 28, 1943.

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Music in Time of Pestilence, Part Two

Posted by: Paul Sommerfeld

The concluding part of this two-part survey of music and disease looks at examples that arose from pandemics in the 19th and 20th centuries, including: works by Stephen Foster and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel written in the wake of a series of cholera outbreaks, and the sometimes curiously lighthearted musical response to the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Handwritten manuscript lead sheet for Clifford Hayes's "Bye Bye Blues," submitted for copyright registration in 1928.

Clifford Hayes, Ben Hunter, Earl McDonald, and the Louisville Jug Bands

Posted by: Melissa Wertheimer

The following is a guest post by Reader Services Technician Mary Joy Lamb. While working as a technician in the Library of Congress Music Division I came across Clifford Hayes’s copyright lead sheet for “Bye Bye Blues” from 1928. The yellowed paper, the rushed corrections, and the date caught my eye. I snapped an image …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

“The Original Radio Girl” and her De Luxe Revue

Posted by: Paul Sommerfeld

Taylor McClaskie is one of the Music Division’s summer 2019 interns. She is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Case Western Reserve University and is currently writing a dissertation on music and environmental activism in 1980s America. During my time in the Music Division I have been helping to process and catalogue unpublished popular music …