C (9:23)
Rounds are simple tunes where the singers follow the same melody but start at different times. Row, row, row your boat, Freire Jacques and Three Blind Mice are prime examples. They're a fun and near foolproof way for amateur singers to achieve a pleasing harmony. You no doubt sung them at school. Kookaburra almost instantly became a classic of the genre. And when the international visitors to the jamboree returned home, they took with them this slice of Australiana, singing it lustily from London to Lahore. Marion Sinclair didn't cash in on this success, though, heaven forbid, Marian wasn't interested in collecting royalties from Scouts or Guides or anyone else enjoying her song and encouraging others to sing. Wasn't until 1975 that Marian was finally persuaded to register the composition as belonging to her. And she was far too busy studying, teaching, aiding refugees, working with old people and running a hostel for girls to chase people for copyright infringement and demand her dues. It's conceivable that in old age she heard down under in Australia. It was played everywhere. But she either didn't recognise any similarities to her own composition or simply didn't care. Marian dismissed. Kookaburra sits in the old gum Tree as a trifle and no match for her other songs. And anyway, it came to me from above, she'd say, I don't own it. After a life of Christian service, Marion Sinclair died in 1988, having signed over her rights to the library's board of South Australia. Larrikin Music Publishing then swooped in to buy the ownership of Kookaburra with an interesting business model in mind. For years, people had assumed Marion's song was free to use, so they'd included it in books teaching youngsters to play musical instruments and recorded it on albums of children's songs. Norm Louis at Larrakin now busily himself delivering the bad news. Kookaburra was under new ownership, and it wasn't free. Norm had spent only a few thousand dollars acquiring the rights, a sum he'd swiftly recouped. But thanks to spics and specs, Larrakin was now looking at a very different proposition. Down under had helped Men at Work win a Grammy. Its initial success as a single had been huge, but it had been steadily earning on albums and greatest hits compilations for nearly 30 years. Norm Lurie now wanted a cut, so sued Men at work for 60% of the profits. It was a huge and if he won, it was a figure that would cause the members of Men at Work immense suffering. Men at Work's flute maestro, Greg Hamm, took the news of the court case hard. I'm terribly disappointed that that's the way I'm going to be remembered for copying something. Greg's flute riff, improvised at a jam session and overlaid on a song written before he'd even joined the band, was threatening to sink Men at Work. If the judge found for Larrikin Music Publishing, how would they unpick 30 years of earnings? They'd spend that money on houses, businesses, invested it for their old age. To Suddenly hand over 60% now would mean liquidating their assets, auctioning off possessions and putting their homes up for sale. Faced with this, and backed by his record company, lead singer Colin Hay decided to fight. He was going to argue that Kookaburra hadn't been, to use the legal term, substantially reproduced in their hit song. When I co Wrote down under back in 1978, the singer said angrily, I appropriated nothing from anyone else's song. There was no Men at Work. There was no flute. Yet the song existed. To the judge's delight, Collins serenaded the court with a version of the song to show that the flute riff wasn't integral to the greater work. But Larrakin's counterclaim was that Greg Hamm had blatantly copied the first two bars of Kookaburra. Colin replied that if his friend had lifted Marion Sinclair's melody, it was inadvertent, naive, unconscious, and by the time men at work had recorded the song, it had become unrecognisable. Colin's elderly father agreed. He'd been a singer himself and later owned a music shop, so he knew a thing or two about songwriting. He was incensed, said Colin. He was getting older and he was getting stressed. Smoke would come out of his ears. The court case dragged on. Hearings, appeals, expert witness after expert witness, and the ever mounting legal bills. And all the time the scales seemed to be tipping in favour of Larrikin. Stressed and exasperated, it was all too much for Colin's father. He died in 2010. I do feel instinctively it contributed to knocking him off his perch, lamented his grieving son. Copyright laws exist to protect composers. It's very hard to write an ode to Joy, a Marriage of Figaro or A Baby Shark, but very easy to copy them. Copyright gives creators some ability to stop copycats and thus an incentive to do the creative work in the first place. Historically, musicians have had a very hard time getting paid for the tunes they've created. Back when there was a music hall every few hundred yards on the streets of Britain, the songs of Joseph Tebrah were almost certain to be wafting out. He was credited with over 7,000 compositions, though claimed he'd written many more. Ting, ting, that's how the Bell Goes. He's Sailing on the Briny Ocean and oh, you, Little Darling were among his hits. But all were dwarfed by the runaway success of 1892's Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me.
