Hi,

It's interesting Q about Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes. The song was collected in 1928. It was removed from Randolph "Ozark Folk-Songs," Revised Edition, because of a copyright that was put on it in the 1930s. That's just plain wrong IMHO.

The problem was it was a big hit in the early 1950s, since a bunch of mnoey was involved and high record sales, the record company with a bogus copyright began enforcing it.

Anton Delmore claims he wrote the song. I'd bet anything he learned it from Arthur Smith who learned it from someone else. The fact that it was collected years before they recorded the song should matter.

An interesting story about the song is told in Alton's autobiography "Truth Is Stranger Than Publicity." I'll tell it from memory:

The family was sitting down eating Thanksgiving dinner at Alton's house in the early 1950s. In the background he heard the song Beautiful Beautiful Brown Eyes.

"I wrote the number one song in the country," he said. "And we barely have enough money to buy a Turkey."

The way he looked at it and the way it was back in the early days: The first person to record a song- well... it was their song.

So that was his song and maybe Arthur Smith's. Somehow he didn't get royalties, probably because he signed them away or the record company took them.

Richie