Eric Clapton sued for £4million for crediting song to wrong singer
The estate of late Mississippi blues musician Bo Carter has launched legal proceedings against Eric Clapton accusing him of giving a songwriting credit to the wrong artist.
A lawsuit filed this month at the U.S. District Court in Nashville claims Slow Hand, his label and others attributed the song ‘Alberta’ on the 1992 MTV ‘Unplugged’ album and 2013 re-release to Lead Belly - real name Huddie Ledbetter.
According to The Tennessean, the papers state that the credit should have gone to Armenter ‘Bo Carter’ Chatmon.
Carter’s step-grandson Mile Floyd said that Clapton actually covered Carter’s ‘Corrine, Corrina’, which was copyrighted in 1929 in the names of Chatmon and his producer J. Mayo William.
When Carter performed the song with his brothers as Mississippi Shieks he often substituted the lyrics from “Corrine, Corrina” to “Alberta, Alberta” – just like Clapton did in his cover.
Lead Belly’s separate song ‘Alberta’ was recorded in 1940 and Carter’s estate say that this track doesn’t bear any musical similarities to ‘Corrine, Corrina’.
"This is a situation where you have the estate, the rightful owners of Bo's intellectual property, just trying to get what's rightfully theirs and get credit where credit is due," said Barry Shrum, Floyd's lawyer in Nashville.
"Bo created this song and started, in essence, a genre in music and influenced many performers in the future, and he deserves that credit."
As a result of the alleged mistaken identity, Carter’s estate haven’t received any royalties while it’s claimed that Folkways Music, the publisher of Lead Belly's ‘Alberta’, have benefitted from it.
On top of suing Clapton, the estate also named several co-defendants including MTV and its parent company Viacom, Warner Music Group (Reprise) and Rhino, Fokways Music and music publisher Hal Leonard for a sheet music version of ‘Unplugged’.
"Each of the Defendants has failed to account to Plaintiff for their unauthorized use of the Original Song, including without limitation sales of phonograph recordings/DVDs of the Original Song as part of the Deluxe Clapton Unplugged video/recording and the Songbooks, and Defendants have failed to pay any royalties to Plaintiff for such unauthorized sales or other uses of the Original Song," the lawsuit says.
In total, Carter’s estate is seeking $5million (£4.1million) in damages from the defendants.