Universal Music Group Challenges D-Town Records and Keristene Music for rights to their 50 year old Song

APACHE JUNCTION AZ (IFS) -- When does a public domain song from the 1800s is claimed by UMG as their ownership and restricts the original record producer and publishing company who released it and their arrangement of the song that was a Smash hit recording in 1960 and beyond, except when they want to push over the original record company and take their creations..

With the great success of the Staple Singers, with "Let's Do It Again", still the biggest selling record in Warner Bros history, everything that the Staple Singers recorded started jumping off the charts.  With the internet, Staple Singers songs have been downloaded and shared more than 12.5 Million times.  

D-Town Records then president and producer Kenneth Howard Smith, remixed and digitally remastered the single in 1983, with subsequence releases to the internet over the years.  This arrangement of "Tell Him What You Want" is published by Keristene Music, Ltd. (BMI).

SDC OmniMedia Group still has a five (5%) percent stake in the D-Town Records properties which is under the control of Uarda Hanks-Njie who is currently its new and old owners, as D-Town was created by Mike Hanks and Carmen C. Murphy of the House of Beauty (HOB Records) when she had the only AFTRA license in the whole city of Detroit.  If you wanted to get your record pressed in the old days, Ms. Murphy has the only license at that time and all of them came to her for press rights.

To obtain an AFTRA Licenses in the early 1950s cost approximately, $10,000.  In today's money, that's more than $120,000.  Nobody had that kind of money, except Ms. Murphy who made her fortune in the African American Cosmetics industry with her invention of the natural hair relaxer.

This story is in Kenneth Howard Smith's book, "Vinyl Knights" and the movie script of "Tell Me Something Good" by Smith in the early 1980s.

Smith the former head of D-Town Records for over 35 years, and now its' administrative historian with a stake in the Detriot label, foresees a major court battle with Universal Music Group, as they attempt to erase the history of D-Town and lay claim to their works.