From rabbit holes to dance bands

Topics/tags: Miscellaneous, rambly

Today was one of those days that I fell through the rabbit hole deep into the rabbit warren that is the Interweb. It seems easier to do that while on sabbatical; I appreciate the learning and I don’t have deadlines hanging over my head. I’m not going to recount all of the places I went, all of the sounds I heard, or all of the text I read. But it seemed appropriate to touch on two encounters that seemed somewhat related.

Early in the day, I ended up reading some discussions of whether David Allan Coe’s Would You Lay With Me In A Field Of Stone? stole its melody from Townes Van Zandt’s If I Needed You. Since I looked at the videos on YouTube, I ended up in some side warrens that YouTube and my brain led me to [1]. But I kept coming back to various song cover or plagiarism issues [2]. Did Led Zeppelin really steal Dazed and Confused [3]? Is Cyndi Lauper’s Girl’s Just Wanna Have Fun a cover version if the original was never released [4]? And would you count Stevie Wonder’s Superstition as a cover, even though he wrote it, given that Jeff Beck released the first version [5]? And what about that George Harrison lawsuit?

Later in the day, while I was waiting for some time-consuming task on my computer, I started to read Harlan Ellison®’s [6] article on titles in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror [7,8,10] In the middle, Ellison® writes,

But when—way back in 1978—Jack [Chalker] saw publication of a short story with the absolute killer title, Dance Band on the Titanic, everybody wanted to assassinate him. First, because the title was utterly dynamite; and second, because the stupid story was about the dance band on the Titanic”. (p. 188)

What a minute, I said to myself, Isn’t ’Dance Band on the Titanic a Harry Chapin song? In fact, it’s not only a song, it’s also a record album. The Chapin album came out in 1977. The Chalker piece and book of the same name came out in 1978. But artists often work on pieces for some time before they release them [14]. So, did Harry Chapin borrow from Jack Chalker, did Jack Chalker borrow from Harry Chapin, or was there just something in the air at the time that inspired both to come up with the same title?

Harry Chapin is dead. Jack Chalker is dead. Harlan Ellison is dead. I guess we’ll never know. At least their work lives on.

Postscript: I wonder whether the title of this musing would meet Ellison®’s criteria? I suppose I could have called it A Journey.

Postscript: Wait a minute! Ellison® wrote First, There Was The Title in 1977. The article references Jack Chalker’s Dance Band on the Titanic which wasn’t released until 1978. How does that work? I guess Ellison® was an even better futurist than I thought [15].

Postscript: If you want to explore some more about cover songs, or at least see where some of my examples came from, you might peruse this video from WatchMojo.

[1] Tanya Tucker had a hit with Would You Lay With Me in a Field of Stone?. She also had a hit with Delta Dawn. I always thought of the latter as a Helen Reddy song. I’m probably the only one. Oh, look! There’s a clip of Dolly Parton on the Carole Burnett show. I’d forgotten how much I love Carole Burnett; her facial expressions are priceless.

[2] Clearly, these issues are closely related to my scholarship and teaching. Or at least they are related to the Tutorial on intellectual property that I’ve taught from time to time.

[3] Led Zeppelin stole a lot of music. So it would not be surprising if they stole this, too.

[4] I only consider something a cover if there was a prior released version.

[5] Certainly not.

[6] Harlan Ellison is a registered trademark of the Kilimanjaro Corporation.

[7] It’s a book I bought only because I saw it had a section by Harlan Ellison®. I enjoy his nonfiction.

[8] Ellison, Harlan [9]. 1977. First There was the Title. Reprinted in Lamson, Laurie (Ed). 2014. Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. Speculative Genre Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers. New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin. Originally published in Unearth magazine, summer 1977.

[9] No registered trademark symbol necessary, since he didn’t have one in 1977.

[10] It’s not relevant to this musing [11], but you can read a nice [12] little piece by Laurie Lamson on meeting with Ellison®.

[11] Is relevance an important factor in rabbit-hole musings?

[12] Albeit poorly formatted.

[14] I was going to say That doesn’t hold for me, given that I plan on posting this musing immediately after I’m finished writing it and doing a quick edit. But then I realized that many of my musings stay in the sketchbook for long periods, and some of those musings are almost fully realized.

[15] More likely, he updated the piece for the reissue.

Version 1.0 of 2019-12-20.