Tunes published in 1928 will be entering public domain in 2024

 As of January 1, 2024, U.S. copyright will expire for works published in 1928, including the following songs:

Back in Your Own Backyard (Jolson, Rose, Dreyer)

Basin Street Blues (Williams)
The Big Rock Candy Mountain (trad., copyright 1928 by McClintock)
Crazy Rhythm (Caesar, Meyer, Kahn)

Hooray for Captain Spaulding (Kalmar) (Groucho Marx theme song)

How Long, How Long Blues (Carr)

I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby (Fields, McHugh)

I Must Have that Man (Fields, McHugh) 

I Wanna Be Loved By You (Stothart, Ruby, Kalmar) 

I'll Get By (As Long as I Have You) (Ahlert, Turk)

If I Had You (Campbell, Connelly, Shapiro)

It's Tight Like That (Whittaker, Dorsey)

Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love (Porter)

Love Me or Leave Me (Kahn, Donaldson)

Lover, Come Back to Me (Romberg, Hammerstein)

Mack the Knife (Weill, Brecht) (music and original German lyrics are PD in 2024, English translations are still under copyright)

Makin' Whoopee (Kahn, Donaldson)

The Mooche (Ellington, Mills)

Pirate Jenny (Weill, Brecht)

Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (Romberg, Hammerstein)

Sweet Lorraine (Burwell, Parish)

Sweet Sue, Just You (Young, Harris)

West End Blues (Oliver, Williams)

What Keeps Mankind Alive? (Weill, Brecht)

When You're Smiling (Shay, Fisher, Goodwin)

You Took Advantage of Me (Rodgers, Hart)

This list includes mostly jazz-oriented and jazz-adjacent songs, and was selected from lists found on Wikipedia and on Jazzstandards.com. Some dates were uncertain; in those cases I went by the copyright dates on images of the original sheet music. Please let me know of any errors.

Further detail on most of these songs is available on Wikipedia.

Note that for the Kurt Weill songs from “Threepenny Opera,” English translations were made after 1928, and those lyrics are still under copyright. The music and original German lyrics are PD in 2024.

In classical music, notable pieces entering public domain are Bartok's String Quartet #4, Gershwin's An American in Paris, Ravel's Bolero, and Villa Lobos' Chôros No. 11, Chôros #12, and Quinteto (em forma de chôros).

For more popular, jazz, and classical pieces entering the public domain, see the Wikipedia article 1928 in Music.

United States copyright law is quite restrictive as compared to many other countries. According to the provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (aka "Mickey Mouse Protection Act"), works published or registered before 1978 remain under copyright for 95 years.

With the passage of the 1998 law, the cutoff date for works entering the public domain became 1922, with any works published in 1923 or later remaining under copyright. Beginning in 2019, however, the clock began running again, with each new year bringing one more year of songs and other works into the public domain. Over the next 20 years or so, most "Golden Age" jazz standards will lose copyright protection.

Many other countries have shorter terms of copyright; one common formula is the life of the author plus fifty years (see this table). For example, in Canada you can record pieces written by Wes Montgomery (d. 1968) John Coltrane (d. 1967), Igor Stravinsky (d. 1971), Louis Armstrong (d. 1971). Lee Morgan (d. 1972), or Kenny Dorham (d. 1972).

1n 1924, Mickey Mouse will be entering the public domain. Below is an excerpt from last year's post on copyright expiration, regarding the Mickey question:

However, if you are thinking of utilizing Mickey's image in 2024, you should consider that copyright will only expire on images from cartoons released in 1928, such as Steamboat Willie. In those early images, Micky had a somewhat different visage, with a longer, rat-like nose. He did not not yet have his white gloves or red shorts; they came later. If you want to use the white gloves or red shorts, you will have to wait a few more years.

Here's an interesting article on the subject, with an image of Mickey as submitted for copyright in 1929. It looks to me as though Mickey's nose had been altered a little by then, closer to its current look. He has his white gloves, too. The image is in black and white, so I don’t know about the red shorts. 

By the way, Minnie Mouse also appears in the 1928 cartoons, though I don't think she is credited by name.

In addition to copyrighting Mickey, The Walt Disney Company has also registered him as a trademark. US trademarks can be renewed every 10 years, potentially going on forever. Disney has a strong case for Mickey as a trademark, but less so for many of their other characters, who will be falling out of copyright in the next few years. Here is an article from the Western New England Law Review that covers in depth the legal standing of Mickey and other Disney characters.

More links:

2022 NYT article on Mickey copyright

Copyright Law of the United States (Wikipedia)

A Complete History of Rico Reeds - dissertation by Neal Postma

 Every now and then I run across some really interesting information on the "Sax on the Web” forum. A recent thread led me to to a dissertation by Neal Postma, A Complete History of Rico Reeds.

The paper certainly lives up to its title. The story begins in 1928, and the dissertation follows the development of the company up to its purchase by J. D'Addario & Co. in 2004. Chapters cover the inception of the company, leadership and reed designers, reeds, accessories (including Gregory and Gale mouthpieces), cane cultivation, marketing strategies, and the acquisition by D'Addario. 

It's a great read (pun intended). Here are a few nuggets of information that came up:

1) Rico "Orange Box" reeds (formerly brown box, and before that branded as Roy J. Maier) are exactly the same reed as La Voz. There is no quality difference, and no difference in the cut. It's been this way since La Voz was introduced in 1948, and it's still that way:

The La Voz Corporation was set up as a means to appear not to have a complete monopoly on the reed market. They also tried to lure customers that were not happy with Rico reeds. The company produced a reed with the name La Voz, but it was the same exact reed as a Rico Orange Box. Rico color sorted the cane for La Voz reeds, but they did not playtest it. The only other difference between these two reeds was the strength grading. Roy J. Maier (and Rico Orange box) used strengths 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, and 5, a total of nine strengths. La Voz strengths are soft, medium-soft, medium, medium-hard, and hard, a total of five. The reed’s design is the same…The company first introduced this reed in 1948 after only ten years of production of reeds under the Roy J. Maier branding. It was not widely known at the time that Rico even made La Voz reeds, much less that they were the same exact reeds as the Roy J. Maier cuts. In addition to wanting a different reed on the market, Rico introduced this reed under a different company name that went as far as to have a separate PO Box so as to avoid the appearance of having a monopoly on the American reed market. Marketing practices led the public to believe that the La Voz Corporation was an entirely different manufacturer. 

Neal Postma got this information from from Jess Gonzales, Materials Manager at D'Addario, in 2017. Although D'Addario may have replaced and upgraded their reedmaking machinery since then, the same information about Rico vs. La Voz reeds was cited in a 2022 podcast by Wally Wallace, quoting Andrea Harrell, the present D'Addario Woodwinds Product Manager, in a recent conversation (Wallace's reed discussion starts at about 15:05).

The Rico Co. presented La Voz as a superior reed to Rico, but that was strictly a marketing ploy - and apparently still is.

2) Rico Royal (now just called "Royal") is just a regular Rico reed that has had the bark partially filed off, in a "French cut." 

3) In past years, the same basic Rico reed has been branded as "Roy J. Maier," "Conn Diamond Cut," and a number of other names. "Plasticover" is the same reed with a partial plastic coating.

However, Mitchell Lurie reeds (another Rico product) are a different design. "Select Jazz" reeds are a different design also, and they are made with better cane. 

4) Although this info did not come from the dissertation, Wally Wallace also quotes Andrea Harrell saying that D'Addario sources its cane in both France and Argentina, but intermingles the stock. Thus, a purchaser would not know which was the source of the cane. Perhaps for most purchasers, it doesn't matter.

5) Strength is measured with a machine that tests for flex ("resistance"). I recalled reading somewhere that some manufacturer supposedly used a machine that assigned strength by putting a light behind the reed to check the density. Apparently this was incorrect. 

Googling this question, I came across this post on the Clarinet BBoard:

About 15 years ago, one of the Van Dorens was in Montreal and gave a reed presentation. He explained that there is no difference in *thickness* between a 2 1/2 strength reed and a 5 strength reed (a fact one can confirm by measuring the reed on a micrometer like a Perfectareed). He explained that the phenomenon that determines a reed's strength is the cane's density. He described the density gauge Vandoren uses. If you look at the butt of a Vandoren or Rico reed you will see a horizontal band of "teeth marks". These are marks left by a spring gauge that presses into the butt of the reed, measuring the cane's density. The resulting density measurement determines the number strength the reed is assigned.

The point about all reeds of a given design having the same thickness is correct, but the last part of this post seems to be incorrect, or at least unclear. The spring gauge may hold the butt end of the reed, leaving a mark, but the reed is checked for flex the same way as Rico/D'Addario has for many decades, as shown in this video from Vandoren (animation shows a flex test at 2:14). “Density” may not be exactly the right word to use here, although density does relate to flex.

This is probably a good place to quote the (maybe apocryphal) story about the time that clarinetist Stanley Drucker visited the Vandoren factory, and asked Bernard Vandoren if he could be introduced to "the guy who puts the one good reed in every box."

6) Beginning on p.80 of the dissertation, Postma describes recent scientific studies of cane playability. One 1998 study in Australia seems to have influenced management at D'Addario:

All of the characteristics correlated to strong performance had something in common: they were all related to the vascular bundles in the inner cortex. In short, the performance of a reed is determined by a high percentage of fiber and a low percentage xylem and phloem. Xylem is a tissue found in plants that water and dissolved minerals will travel through to disperse it throughout the plant. Phloem is a similar tissue found in plants that food and nutrients travel through as they are dispersed throughout the plant.

While Rico did not commission this study, it was reviewed by Bill Carpenter and those who were running the plantations at the time. This is a relatively new study, and cane cultivation practices are still being developed. Rico/D’Addario holds propriety over techniques used on their plantations to increase the fiber percentage and lower xylem and phloem percentages in their reeds, and they do not wish to disclose any trade secrets.

The clear implication here is that D'Addario may be able to improve cane quality as time goes on. 

For a clearer look at reed anatomy, including vascular bundles, xylem, and phloem, check out this previous post.

Here's a discussion on SOTW discussing the Rico Orange Box vs. La Voz question. There's certainly a lot of disbelief and denial!

Here's a video from Rico/D'Addario on how reeds are made, including a shot of the strength grading device.

One more - a video from Marca Reeds showing their manufacturing process. No English subtitles, but you can see that it's a smaller operation, and less automated.