Slim Wilson lived an extraordinary life. He was a tramp, in the traditional sense. He hopped on trains and traveled across the country picking up many scars from bullets, knives, and other injuries. For money, he did odd jobs and threw dice, but Slim proudly proclaimed he wasn’t a gambler — he was a cheat. He was also a pimp and was sentenced to time for murder. In 1964, he was in Missouri State Penitentiary, where he was incarcerated for armed robbery. On top of all that, Slim was, to Jackson’s ears, “one of the best narrators” of poetry and toasts he’d ever heard.
During their time together, Slim shared stories from his life and several toasts — a wildly outlandish, funny, ribald form of narrative Black folk poetry — with Jackson. A decade later, Slim featured heavily in Jackson’s 1974 book about toasts, Get your feet in the water and swim like me On the 1976 corresponding album, you can hear Slim showing off his talents. Slim’s Arkansas accent is heavy and he sounds happy in his monotone. He spits out uncouth lines after lines, his lackadaisical nature giving way to excitement when he approaches a punch line.
One toast “Hobo Ben”The tramp walks into a party, asks hosts questions, and you can hear it below. “‘Ladies of culture and beauty so refined, is there one among you that would grant me wine?/I’m raggedy I know, but I have no stink/and God bless the lady that’ll buy me a drink.’/Heavy-hipted Hattie turned to Nadine with a laugh/and said, ‘What that funky motherfucker really need, child, is a bath.’”(These are as mild as toast gets.
Nearly 60 years ago, Jackson released Slim. “Hobo Ben” appears to have found some new fans in Johnny Depp and Jeff Beck, though you wouldn’t know it as things stand. Their song “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade,”Check out their latest album 18It appears that he pulls many lines from “Hobo Ben,”Include one that ostensibly gives this song its title “[Y]ou better try to keep you ass in this corner of shade/’cause if the Man come you make a sad motherfuckin parade.” Some of the lines quoted above — “I’m raggedy, I know, but I have no stink,” “God bless the lady that’ll buy me a drink,”And “What that funky motherfucker really needs, child, is a bath” — also appear on “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade.”On 18, “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade”Is Beck and Depp are credited for this information– There is no mention of Slim Wilson or Bruce Jackson. Get your sex in the water, and you will be able to swim like me..
“The only two lines I could find in the whole piece that [Depp and Beck] contributed are ‘Big time motherfucker’ and ‘Bust it down to my level,’”Jackson claims. “Everything else is from Slim’s performance in my book. I’ve never encountered anything like this. I’ve been publishing stuff for 50 years, and this is the first time anybody has just ripped something off and put his own name on it.”
(Slim is, it should also be noted, a pseudonym. Jackson gave aliases to all the incarcerated people he spoke to to make sure they didn’t get in trouble with their wardens. Jackson — now a Distinguished Professor at the University of Buffalo — says Slim’s real name was either Willy or Willie Davis; using the information available, Rolling StoneJackson had just turned 50 when Davis met him in 1964. We tried to find more information on Davis but were unsuccessful.
A rep for Depp and Beck’s album did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
Jackson’s son, Michael Lee Jackson, is a lawyer whose practice involves music and intellectual property (Michael also moonlights as a musician and once played with Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan). He says he and his father are looking into possible legal options, but stresses that a lawsuit hasn’t been filed, nor has a letter signifying one been sent. Michael is sure that the credit on his current account is correct. “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade”They are wrong.
“They do not reflect the actual authorship of those lyrics,”He says. “It’s just not plausible, in my opinion, that Johnny Depp or anybody else could have sat down and crafted those lyrics without almost wholly taking them from some version of my father’s recording and/or book where they appeared.”
Kevin J. Greene, a lawyer and law professor known for his extensive and groundbreaking work on Black music and copyright law, agrees that it’s unlikely Depp and Beck “independently”The lyrics were created by “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade.” “The words are so similar, it looks like they really did base their song on [‘Hobo Ben’],”He says.
“I’ve never encountered anything like this. I’ve been publishing stuff for 50 years, and this is the first time anybody has just ripped something off and put his own name on it” – Bruce Jackson
While a side by side comparison of “Hobo Ben”And “Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade”Although it may seem simple, building a legal case can be difficult. Authorship is the biggest issue. “Hobo Ben,”Like much of the oral tradition music and art, the toast does not have a definitive writer. Slim said to Jackson that he learned the toast through his father. Jackson now adds, “The lines in it are similar to other kinds of lines — not the specificity of the words, but the kinds of things that turn up [in other toasts]. It’s simply part of that genre, like a bluesman doing a certain kind of riff.”
The exact origins of toasts are unclear, and Jackson notes they didn’t really start to appear in print until the late Fifties. Because they were so lewd they were rarely published, let alone recorded; folklorists didn’t really start studying them until after pornography and obscenity laws changed in the early Sixties. Toasts survived and prospered, being performed at every occasion, from prisons to parties. And though they began to disappear, in Jackson’s view, with the proliferation of portable audio devices, their legacy is obvious enough: “Amiri Baraka said to me once he thought the rap tradition derived from the toast tradition,”Jackson: “Guys standing around reciting poems… And not reading them by rote, but acting out the voices.”(The producer Madlib used this lineage to make another toast. Get Your Ass in the Wasser, “Pimpin’ Sam,”The end of his 2014 song with Freddie Gibbs “Shitsville.”)
Slim shared the inexplicable ways that toasts were passed and taught in. Get Your Ass in the Wasser: “Songs and conversation. You tell one and then I’ll try to top it and so on down the line… It was not on just one occasion that I’d heard these things. I’d hear it from him, probably I’d get some of it then, and later on I’d visit another party and get some more of it.”
It is a distinct art form.Craft, copyright law for toasts is applicable to all works of oral tradition. “very problematic,” Greene says. For an older work, such as Greene’s, this is twice the amount. “Hobo Ben”This would be subject to the Copyright Act of 1909 (current law passed in 1976, and was in effect in 1978). Under the 1909 Act, there are specific things an artist would need to do to secure a copyright, many of which obviously weren’t happening for those working in an oral tradition.
For instance, Greene says, there’s the “fixation doctrine,”This law is still in force today. It states that any work must be written down or recorded in some manner. “That left the door open for others to basically fix the work and claim copyrights,” Greene says, “and this happened quite a bit to Black artists.”Additionally, the work must be original. “if it did come down from a long tradition, it might fail on that test of being independently created.”
“It’s a perfect storm, basically, for these people who create in this particular manner, and the law is pretty hostile to that form of creation,” Greene says.
Jackson may be the only person with standing. Jackson does not claim authorship. “Hobo Ben,”He also recorded any toasts Get Your Ass in the WasserHowever, he does have a copyright to his own work Transcriptionsof these toasts as they were recorded in his album and book. Greene also notes that this makes him more or less the author in law. “He can do that as a courtesy and say, ‘I know this came from this tradition, so I’m just claiming copyright in my particular work,’” Greene says. “But he basically has rights against all comers as to that registration that he would get on that work.”
Even so, this standing may not be sufficient to support a copyright violation claim due to all the issues mentioned with authorship and fixation.
Ultimately, the issue here may be more ethical than legal, especially since U.S. copyright law doesn’t really make room for ethical considerations. Greene says Europe is a great place to be. “moral rights,”This mandates that proper credit is given where due. Greene believes that U.S. copyright law should be amended to include this reform. This could help to address long-standing and persistent problems (e.g. young Black people who aren’t credited for the viral TikTok dancesThey create, but they are successfully monetized and marketed by other creators, often white.
“The attribution is important to artists, even if they can’t claim copyrights — it’s important that they get credit for their work” – Kevin J. Greene
The court of public opinion can also be very powerful when it comes to ethical questions related to alleged appropriation. Greene gives two examples. In 2006 — after a pressure campaign that included a Rolling Stone Article and a PBS documentary — Disney finally settled a royalty dispute with the estate of Solomon Linda, the South African musician whose 1939 song “Mbube”He was prominently featured, but without credit. The Lion King Assisting in stage and film musicals “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”Recently, Lizzo gave creditThe tweet that inspired the first line in her breakout hit was sent by the author. “Truth Hurts.”
Of “Hobo Ben”/“Sad Motherfuckin’ Parade,” Greene says it’s conceivable Depp and Beck could be “shamed”Consider offering some compensation and attribution. “particularly in this post-George Floyd era.”He continues: “I think there’s increasing awareness that these sorts of things, which are really commonplace throughout the history of the music business, aren’t okay anymore… The attribution is important to artists, even if they can’t claim copyrights — it’s important that they get credit for their work.”
Folk research, especially field recordings, can be a lengthy, difficult process. Problematic historyof theft, appropriation and improper crediting. For his part, Jackson has always tried to do right by the people he’s worked with. Whatever money his books and albums did earn — even if “you couldn’t go out and get a good dinner for it,” he jokes — he would send to those who helped him. If he couldn’t locate them, as was often the case for his album of work songs recorded at a Texas prison, he sent the money to an inmate trust fund instead.
Michael says that his father is also a member of the family. “always been extremely liberal” with granting people permission to use his work, requesting commensurate royalties if there’s a budget, and letting it slide if there’s not but it seems like a worthwhile project. If that money can get to the right person’s estate, that’s where it goes; if not, it’s given to an appropriate non-profit. One example of such a project was The B-Side, a production staged by the celebrated experimental theater company, the Wooster Group, based on Jackson’s albums of Texas prison work songs; a Follow-up, based upon Get Your Ass in the Wasser(Currently in development)
But what clearly irks Jackson is not just someone using his work without credit, but passing off another person’s words as their own.
“I don’t know if this record is selling,” Jackson says of Depp and Beck’s 18. “I’ve seen some reviews that I’d be very embarrassed to have gotten had they been my album. But if it is selling, Johnny Depp is making a lot of money on it. Should it go to him, or should it go to some place that helps the people who produced this culture?”