Singer/songwriters

[Wintereis]

Thanks, but you don't need to worry about me being confused The musical similarities between Leadbelly's song and "The Man Comes Around" are too close to be coincidental, even if done unintentionally. Johnny Cash clearly used the rhythm and the lyrical idea, although he avoided using the melody by intoning the first line, as starting points for his song. The fact that he has gone on to make a much more complete working of the song by extending the verses and adding a balancing chorus to compose a substantially different finished product is down to his considerable skill as a songwriter and performer. Interestingly, this Wiki entry also refers to Leadbelly, but only goes as far as suggesting it is a "song of that name".

Had these two songs been recorded and released more recently (and had Leadbelly's financial circumstances been different) I would imagine the lawyers would have had to come to some kind of arrangement regarding acknowledgement of sources.

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859







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