Who would have believed that the seemingly age old nursery rhyme ‘I’m A Little Teapot’ is still in copyright? I certainly didn’t until I conctacted the MCPS/PRS societies to argue my licence fee for producing The Nursery Rhyme Collection CD. Our version of the track is a brand new arrangement based on a Rock-a-Billy style and features the talents of Midland Rock-a-Billy outfit The School House Rockers led by Dave Needham on main vocals and Gretsch Nashville guitar. The arrangement was recorded in a day session at Comfy Towers and the basic arrangement idea actually came to me the previous night in bed when thinking of how I was going to approach this particular session.
The next morning the band (all 3) turned up (including Sally Dunnett on drums and Martin Clarke on upright bass) and I kind of shouted the arrangement through a vocal guide channel forcing the band in the direction I wanted. Of course the actual results were a mixture of my arrangement ideas and the bands natural feel and style with additional ideas being thrown around and acted upon if it was felt they had a valuable part to play. So to cut a long story short the arrangement of what I was positive was a ‘Traditional’ nursery rhyme (meaning basically out of copyright; no-one knows or cares who wrote it) was completely original with new bits thrown in here and there.
So I was very supprised that the people at the collecting societies wanted to collect a fee for the use of the track I’m A Little Teapot. I called them, specifically a guy called Gordon Potts who was very knowledgable about Traditional music and what was and wasn’t traditional (or TRAD as they call it) and he explained that the song was written by a tap dancing school for training children to tap dance, namely Sanders/Kelly in 1939. George Harry Sanders and Clarence Kelly wrote and recorded the song to accompany the tap moves that children could master easily and according to Wikipedia the song generated a move called the Teapot Tip which became popular in the USA.
One can be forgiven for thinking this simple song about a teapot came from the same time as real oldies like London Bridge is Falling Down or Hickory Dickory Dock. I was wrong. Well there ya go!
By the way, thanks to Gordon Potts from MCPS for his help in clearing that one up and a massive thatnks to ‘The School House Rockers’ from Newark, UK for creating a new masterpiece version complete with a cracking rock-a-billy style guitar part, slapping upright bass and clattering drums curtosy of Sally who even stands up to play in the style of the period!
