Melvin Van Peebles explored his distrust of “the man” when he was making the films “Don’t Play Us Cheap,” “The Story of a Three Day Pass” and “Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song." A writer, director, actor and composer, he has now determined that ASCAP, which is responsible for the collection of royalties, failed to list close to 100 of his songs in their databank and therefore owes him $20 million.
Van Peebles claims ASCAP failed to maintain his catalog and make it available to potential licensees. (Seems to me that’s what a music publisher does, not ASCAP, BMI or SESAC). His beef is that between 1968 and now, he registered 157 compositions but some time between 1992 and 2005, ASCAP deleted or lost most of his repertoire. The mishap, Van Peebles appears to believe, occurred when ASCAP instituted its ACE system, which made the databank electronically based rather than paper based.
In January 2005, Van Peebles noticed that ASCAP only listed 24 of compositions in its database thereby limiting the number of songs available to license. The lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court of New York state, alleges that ASCAP was not able to find the original registrations and that he would have to re-register his work.
He does go overboard a bit as part of the lawsuit looks like it was written by Jackie Chiles. Van Peebles actually complains that ASCAP president and chairman Marilyn Bergman is not “nurturing music makers throughout their careers,” a statement on the organization’s website.
Van Peebles’ attorney, Blair C. Fensterstock, said “This failure by ASCAP to Mr. Van Peebles appears to be only the tip of the iceberg relative to ASCAP’s sloppy and reckless handling of its fiduciary duty.”
Clearly, it’s lewd, lascivious, salacious and outrageous.
For the record, allmusic.com lists only one of his tunes being covered by an artist not associated with one of films, Grace Jones, who recorded “The Apple Stretcher.”