I understand the original purpose of copyright laws. Hell, I depend on them myself for a couple of plays I wrote and have filed with the U.S. Copyright Office. And I love the fact that the law considers every word you and I write to be our personal possession, unless and until we contractually reassign it.
I get all of that.
But once in a while, celebrated writers are hoisted on their own petard.
I was in the middle of writing a new Substack essay about my love of autumn, and specifically, September. There have been a lot of songs dedicated to those topics, and in my mind, the most wonderful among them is the simply titled, September Song, music composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson.
You know the song. It’s an American classic, originally sung by Walter Houston in the 1938 Broadway musical Knickerbocker Holiday. In the years that followed, it was covered (re-recorded) by such greats as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Durante, Sarah Vaughn, Willie Nelson, and even James Brown, among others.
Come on, you know this song!
“Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December. But the days grow short when you reach September.”
And, that’s about as far as I can quote without inviting the wrath of a squadron of lawyers at FIVE separate corporations scanning the internet for dirty lyric thieves such as myself, who dare to honor a collection of words with loving praise.
You want to record the song or re-stage the original musical, Knickerbocker Holiday? Pay for licensing the song. It’s only fair. You want to just quote the words in a loving tribute online? Get hosed.
And yet YouTube, bless them—thanks to paying negotiated license fees and giving us ads to cover their expenses—can provide us with the great pleasure of hearing this beautiful song in many varied versions, including the original.
I won’t rant without providing you with a payoff. So, for your pleasure, here’s the great Sinatra version. Seriously, listen and love it.
By the way, the group that owns the copyright to September Song, is the same company that sued various restaurants and individuals for having the audacity to publicly perform another song you might remember:
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”
I’d better stop there. That song has been declared in the public domain but I don’t want to take any chances.
Beautiful song indeed. It’s amazing you can’t include a tribute to that song by including more lyrics when the full song is on YouTube.