You keep your New Year’s celebration. For me, today is all about celebrating Public Domain Day!
Every year for the last few years, music from 95 years previous has entered the public domain. 2022 is no exception, welcoming all music published in 1926.
We are well into the early years of the Great American Songbook – Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart, and more were all presenting new shows and publishing new songs exactly 95 years ago. Here’s a sampler of the songs that are now freely available for “derivative” use.
Blue Room (Rodgers & Hart)
Blue Skies (Irving Berlin)
Bye Bye, Blackbird (Dixon & Henderson)
Heebie Jeebies (Boyd Atkins)
Mountain Greenery (Rodgers & Hart)
Someone To Watch Over Me (Gershwin & Gershwin)
Tonight You Belong To Me (Rose & David)
These are all songs with iconic, indelible versions by the great jazz and pop singers of the 20th Century. Fitzgerald. Sinatra. Tormé. Holiday.
There are a lot more songs on this list (and follow the links to full scores from shows).
The newly free material is a gift to arrangers seeking to explore the Great American Songbook without fear of copyright infringement. I arranged two songs from the 1925 list last year, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few of these songs in new arrangements by me in the near future.