Homefires IX

This North Carolina guitarist, composer, and bandleader got a call from a friend at a radio station: "I'm sitting here listening to your song, but it ain't got your name on it." This version of an almost identical instrumental he had written and recorded decades before under an almost identical name went on to reach #2 on the pop charts, sell millions of copies, and take a BMI Song of the Year award.

He filed suit for copyright infringement -- the record company offered him $20,000 to settle. He declined their offer and won the suit, earning himself an estimated $200,000 and his name on the song.

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Trambo got it. It's Arthur Smith.
What Smith's friend at the radio station actually said was, "I'm listening to 'Feuding Banjos,' but they don't call it that, and it ain't got your name on it."
His song is better known to us as "Dueling Banjos," from the movie Deliverance.

From the $20,000 offer that they made him for infringing the copyright of his 1955 recording, I can only guess the suits at Warner Brothers thought they were dealing with a dumb hick. Unfortunately for them, Smith was a very good businessman and didn't have a dumb bone in his body. He demanded 50% of what the song had earned them so far, a high royalty rate thereafter, and the credit for what was BMI's Country Song of the Year for 1973. And he got it.

Smith's 1948 hit "Guitar Boogie" is often cited as being the first Rock and Roll recording.

Arthur Smith with his son Reggie, 1958.

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