Plagiarism in the USSR: What famous songs turned out to be a cover, and what compositions of Soviet composers were stolen by Western singers

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

During the Soviet era, the copyright of foreign music composers was often neglected. Some of the songs that citizens love, in fact, turn out to be either outright plagiarism, or very close borrowing. It will be all the more surprising to learn that not only the Soviet stage sinned with this. Western performers also found what to steal from us, and were not at all shy about it. Each "borrower" believed that no one would guess.

It all started from "Samovar" sung by Leonid Utesov

Anyone can sing a song about Masha with a samovar. Utesov knew what he was doing when he recorded a lively foxtrot song on a disc in 1934. On the label, only the name of the author of the processing, Semyon Kogan, was indicated. In later reprints, a recording appeared: an adaptation by L. Diederichs. "Words of the people" were replaced by the authorship of V. Lebedev-Kumach. It is not known whether royalties were paid to the heirs of these "authors".

And a cheerful melody was born in 1929 at a musical evening in Warsaw: sixteen-year-old Fanny Gordon-Kwiatkowska (real name - Feiga Joffe) played a melody of her own composition. The director of the popular Warsaw cabaret Andrzej Vlast instantly composed a simple text - it turned out to be a popular foxtrot, which was sung not only in the capital a couple of weeks later. And two years later, the recording company Polydor Records offered Fanny to record a song, but certainly with Russian text, for numerous emigrants. Then the lines appeared: "At the samovar, me and my Masha, and it is already completely dark in the yard …". The disc was released in 1933, and a little later the song was recorded by Petr Leshchenko. And whoever did not perform it: Malinin, popular groups, famous Polish and Lithuanian singers.

And Fanny's rights were restored in the 70s: they apologized to the author in a letter, and the Melodiya company even paid her 9 rubles of a fee.

"Blue Song" is not included in the "Guess the Melody" contest - everyone will recognize it from the first bars

But in fact, this is the famous One Way Ticket To The Blues, written by Americans Hunk Hunter and Jack Keller. The hit was first performed in 1959 by singer and pianist Neil Sedaka. For many years the song was successfully included in concerts by a variety of vocalists and groups in the West, the song sounded even in Japan. The most popular was the 1978 version of Preches Wilson with the band Eruption, but many like Neil Sedaki's very first recording the most.

In the USSR, the song was presented by VIA "Singing Guitars" with a new text by Albert Azizov, quite successful and memorable. On the early minion records, the author of the music was N. Sedaka, who later turned into "N. Fidaka", or A. Vasiliev's adaptation. This did not matter much, since no one was going to transfer the fee to the author of the music. Well, there was no habit to stand on ceremony with foreign musicians.

And "Blue Song" took root on the Soviet stage and successfully switched to the Russian one performed by the groups "Hello Song", "Prime Minister", "Russian Size", Valeria and even Estonian Anna Veski. A lot of records were also stamped.

"City of Childhood" performed by Edita Piekha. In the original, the text was about a bygone love, but the music was no different

The song Green Fields was first performed in the 50s by the American group Easy Riders, whose members - Richard Der, Terry Gilkison and Frank Miller wrote it for themselves. In 1959, the group broke up, and the song was recorded by new artists - the group The Brothers Four. With their submission, the composition became a hit for many decades. The text was translated into Spanish, Swedish, Polish and other languages. Musicians in various countries have successfully promoted the brooding melody. The polka Wieslava Drojecka was well known in the USSR, surely someone heard in her performance the composition Pola zielone, which she mentally performed in 1964. In the Creole dialect, the song was heard by fans of Cesaria Evora on the Voz D'Amor album already in the 21st century.

And for Edita Piekha, the words were written by Robert Rozhdestvensky. The author was indicated intricately: on the 1968 disc the composer of the music was unknown, in 1986 the song became a Scottish folk song. In 2001, a certain F. Miller appeared, and in 2007 everyone found out about the authors - T. Gilkyson, R. Dehr, F. Miller. Nobody wants to bring the case to court in the age of the Internet. And the musical audience already guessed everything.

Passage with "Vernissage", or as maestro Pauls … Iglesias beguiled

In 1975 Julio Iglesias, whom no one had invited in the USSR at that time, included his own composition in the collection of the best songs "A Veces Tu, A Veces Yo". And in 1986 Laima Vaikule and Valery Leontyev presented the enthusiastic Soviet public with "Vernissage", which had sunk into the souls of the public for a long time. The chorus is one-to-one, and the rest is reminiscent of the original song.

Interestingly, the author of "Vernissage" did not recognize the original source for many years? No comments and explanations followed.

But they also found something to steal from us

In 1962, Arkady Ostrovsky wrote music to the poems of Lev Oshanin "Solar Circle". Tamara Miansarova remarkably sang a life-affirming song at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki in the same year, and in 1963 the singer and song won the festival in Sopot.

The youth hit also made an impression on Bjorn Ulveus, the future author and musician of ABBA, who recorded with The Hootenanny Singers a peppy composition Gabrielle, strikingly similar to "The Circle of the Sun". Only the performance was different - marching, in no way resembling Miansarov. But maybe Arkady Ostrovsky was quietly pointed out as the author of the music?

Of course, plagiarism has always been widespread at all times. V painting especially.