UNSCRAMBLE THAT WORD!

AA, BESHEEN RO NTHFONS PUSSTY

1. Song and composer.
2. Yet another creation--this one a folk song by now--for which the creator was paid very little.
3. Not only was he paid a flat fee for his (now) well-known song, but he died a pauper, with 38 cents in his pocket.


Arghh! The injustice of it all!

AA, BESHEEN RO NTHFONS PUSSTY

1. Song and composer.
2. Yet another creation--this one a folk song by now--for which the creator was paid very little.
3. Not only was he paid a flat fee for his (now) well-known song, but he died a pauper, with 38 cents in his pocket.
4. This is a real oldie, and although I've selected this song for the puzzle (because I know what he got paid for it), this composer actually wrote many songs that we are all familiar with.


Arghh! The injustice of it all!

AA, BESHEEN RO NTHFONS PUSSTY

1. Song and composer.
2. Yet another creation--this one a folk song by now--for which the creator was paid very little.
3. Not only was he paid a flat fee for his (now) well-known song, but he died a pauper, with 38 cents in his pocket.
4. This is a real oldie, and although I've selected this song for the puzzle (because I know what he got paid for it), this composer actually wrote many songs that we are all familiar with.
5. The song was so popular it became an anthem for the 49ers. (I'm not talking football!)


Arghh! The injustice of it all!

Joe!

Thanks for the link. Love it. It looks like real animation from the Max Fleischer studio, early 1930s. I can't believe anyone could imitate that old artwork --which I happen to like--so well.

WALZING MATILDA BY BANJO PATERSON, Australia's unofficial national anthem.



Wikipedia tells me that around 1907 Paterson sold the rights to "Waltzing Matilda" and "some other pieces" to Angus & Robertson Publishers for five pounds. Years later (1941), the song was copyrighted by an American publisher, Carl Fischer Music, as an original composition. How the f*** did they manage to pull that off?

AS WRYLY HOGS OR EMERGE DEBINTOR

1. Song and composer
2. This is another one where authorship is in question. A plagiarism suit resulted, and it was found that the songwriter (in the scramble) had unconsciously copied someone else's work.

AS WRYLY HOGS OR EMERGE DEBINTOR

1. Song and composer
2. This is another one where authorship is in question. A plagiarism suit resulted, and it was found that the songwriter (in the scramble) had unconsciously copied someone else's work.
3. The songwriter was a former member of a well-known foursome.

1. Song and composer
2. This is another one where authorship is in question. A plagiarism suit resulted, and it was found that the songwriter (in the scramble) had unconsciously copied someone else's work.
3. The songwriter was a former member of a well-known foursome.
4. He wrote the song after a trip to India.

1. Song and composer
2. This is another one where authorship is in question. A plagiarism suit resulted, and it was found that the songwriter (in the scramble) had unconsciously copied someone else's work.
3. The songwriter was a former member of a well-known foursome.
4. He wrote the song after a trip to India.
5. The song was released as a single in 1970 (US) and in 1971 (UK) and quickly shot to #1 on both sides of the Atlantic.

You're on the right track, Poet. I did some digging and found that, although "He's So Fine" certainly has a Motown sound, it was actually released by a company called Laurie Records. The performers were an all-girl group from the Bronx called the Chiffons. It was released in 1963, was their first single, and went straight to #1.

As for George, I'm a big Harrison fan. Behind-the-scenes gossip tells us that he was continually frustrated when his compositions were shoved aside by the Beatles' reigning duo. But he was a damn good songwriter. "Something" is one of the best songs of the past 50 years.

As for his alleged plagiarism, it had to be unconscious. There's no way a musician of his caliber would have deliberately stolen anything.

LOBACHEVSKY is a satirical song BY the mathematician, songwriter and performer TOM LEHRER about a Russian mathematician named Никола́й Ива́нович Лобаче́вский (Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, in case you don't understand the Cyrillic alphabet), who supposedly plagiarized ideas about non-Euclidean geometry from a German mathematician named Carl Friedrich Gauss. Nowadays, however, historians doubt the plagiarism charge and believe that Lobachevsky's work was original.

But that has nothing to do with the song, which assumes Lobachevsky was a plagiarist and includes the lines:

Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize...
Only be sure always to call it please, "research."

All of which is a much longer answer than this game requires.

OP B TOLLA ON BEER WRYCEC

1. Song and composer.
2. Continuing the plagiarism theme.
3. This song is the original, which others stole in writing their song.
4. No lawsuits were ever brought, for reasons that probably stem from the importance of the people involved, but to anyone with an ear the plagiarism is obvious.
5. Both songs--the original and the rip-off--were featured in movies.

OP B TOLLA ON BEER WRYCEC

1. Song and composer.
2. Continuing the plagiarism theme.
3. This song is the original, which others stole in writing their song.
4. No lawsuits were ever brought, probably because of the prominence of the people involved, but to anyone with an ear the plagiarism is obvious. (I guess I should call it alleged plagiarism, because no legal action ensued, but the theft has been the subject of amused speculation for years.)
5. Both songs--the original and the rip-off--were featured in movies.
6. The same actor was in both movies.

OP B TOLLA ON BEER WRYCEC

1. Song and composer.
2. Continuing the plagiarism theme.
3. This song is the original, which others stole in writing their song.
4. No lawsuits were ever brought, probably because of the prominence of the people involved, but to anyone with an ear the plagiarism is obvious. (I guess I should call it alleged plagiarism, because no legal action ensued, but the theft has been the subject of amused speculation for years.)
5. Both songs--the original and the rip-off--were featured in movies.
6. The same actor was in both movies.
7. He sang the original song in a movie in 1948. Four years later, he was in another movie (often called the greatest movie musical of all time), but a different actor sang the "plagiarized" song.

Nice unscrambling, Poet!

For years, until I heard the real story, I thought there was just one song, with different lyrics in the two films. But no. It happened like this: All the songs in Singin' in the Rain are by the songwriting team of Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. Most of their songs were oldies at that time, from the 1920s and '30s. But they needed a couple of new numbers. One was the amusing "Moses Supposes." For the other new song, they needed something fast and funny for Donald O'Connor (it was he, not Ray Bolger, in that movie). So the two songwriters sat down and quickly wrote "Make 'em Laugh." Reportedly, the first people who heard it nearly hit the roof since--give or take a few melodic differences--it sounded almost exactly like Cole Porter's "Be a Clown" from a movie of four years earlier, The Pirate.

Anyway, both those movies were at MGM. Both starred Gene Kelly. Porter, Brown and Freed all had contracts with the studio. Apparently Porter decided that it would be better to suck it up than to get involved in legal wrangling with his own crowd.

I seem to be into long explanations these days. Must have something to do with the holidays.