Comment by xiphophilos:
No, Ray Lopez & Alcide Nunez were not the composers of "Livery Stable Blues". There are also no scare quotes around Nuñez's first name on the Roger Graham sheet music cover because Alcide was Nuñez's legal Christian name. His nickname was "Yellow."
The story of the competing copyright claims to "Livery Stable Blues" is ably discussed by E. Douglas Bomberger, "Making Music American: 1917 and the Transformation of Culture", Oxford UP 2018, pages 81-82, 98-99, 132-34, 145-48.
"Livery Stable Blues" was originally supposed to be called "Barnyard Blues," which makes sense, given that La Rocca's cornet imitates a neighing horse, Shields' clarinet a crowing rooster, and Edwards' trombone a braying jackass and a mooing cow. "Barnyard Blues" was also the title under which the ODJB's agent, Max Hart, had copyrighted the song on April 9, 1917. But when Victor record 18255 appeared on April 15, 1917, the track was listed as "Livery Stable Blues."
Chicago music publisher Roger Graham exploited this discrepancy by registering copyright for the title "Livery Stable Blues" on May 12 and May 24. On June 18, 1917, he also received the copyright for the published sheet music of "Livery Stable Blues" as written by Ray Lopez and Alcide Nuñez. He even had the cheek to explicitly remind the buyer of "Victor Record No. 18255" in the lower left corner of the sheet music cover.
Clarinetist Alcide "Yellow" Nuñez held a grudge against Nick La Rocca and the rest of the band because they had kicked him out and replaced him with Larry Shields just before they went to New York and became famous. Apparently, Nick La Rocca was fed up with Nuñez' unreliability; he also wanted a clarinet that played counterpoint to his cornet instead of following the cornet part note for note, the way Nuñez did. In revenge, Nuñez lent his name to the scam, as did cornetist and songwriter ("Stack O' Lee Blues") Ray Lopez, who had no connection to the ODJB at all but at that time played with Bert Kelley’s band.
In October 1917, the matter came to trial in Chicago, in front of a judge who knew so little about jazz that he asked repeatedly what a blues is. Not surprisingly, he believed the claims of the Graham side that all blues melodies were basically the same, and that this particular song used the same melody that Ray Lopez had previously published as "More Power Blues," but jazzed it up with animal imitations that both Nuñez and La Rocca had come up with. The judge decided that neither party had an exclusive claim to the authorship of the song, and that both Graham's sheet music and the sheet music of "Barnyard Blues", published by Leo Feist in New York, could continue to be sold.(excerpts from the trial
here).
Given this outcome, I find it surprising that RCA Victor later, in 1938, credited Bunny Berigan's recording of the song, on Victor 26068, to Alcide Nuñez, Marvin Lee, and Ray Lopez. Similarly, in December 1939, they credited Muggsy Spanier's recording of "Livery Stable Blues (Barnyard Blues)" on
Bluebird B-10518 to both Alcide Nuñez and Ray Lopez. The label's lawyers probably told them it would be better to avoid any trouble that way. But it looks as if the former ODJB members didn't then get any royalties from these recordings.
"The Syncopated Times" claim that LaRocca later admitted that he based "Barnyard Blues" on Lopez' "More Power Blues." If that's true, it does not appear in the transcript of LaRocca's statement at the trial that Bomberger quotes on page 145.
