Polydor and Warner aren't related; this album's initial US release was on Tetragrammaton, which was licensed to Polydor in Canada. Warners subsequently got Purple's contract for the US, Canada and Japan when Tetragrammaton went bankrupt.
Billy [William Moses] Roberts [Jr.] (b. 1936, Greenville, SC) is an American songwriter and musician credited with composing the 1960's rock standard Hey Joe, the best known version of which is by The Jimi Hendrix Experience).
Roberts was a relatively obscure California based folk singer, guitarist and harmonica player who performed on the West Coast coffee-house circuit in the late 1950's and early 1960's. He registered Hey Joe for copyright in the U.S. in 1962. Roberts later recorded the country rock album Thoughts of California with the band Grits in San Francisco in 1975, produced by Hillel Resner.
Billy Roberts is believed by many to be a plagiarist when it comes to his "authorship" of "Hey Joe."
In the 1950's Roberts arrived in NYC with no place to live. Established West Village folk singer Niela Miller took him in and they became a couple. She taught him all of her original songs, including her coffeehouse favorite, "Baby, Don't Go To Town." When the two split up Roberts took her aforementioned song, changed the lyrics, (keeping the q & a form), called it "Hey Joe" & copyrighted it solely under his own name.
Niela Miller was well known in the folk community for her song, "Baby, Don't Go To Town," so when Roberts' version, "Hey Joe" started showing up on recordings in the 60's with his name as sole composer on it, folk music royalty, Pete Seeger offered to testify on behalf of Niely in a copyright suit against Roberts for plagiarism. Sadly, the expense of a lawsuit of this kind was far too much for Niela, so she ended up just watching her ex get rich off this song of hers that he remodeled and called his own.
Several things about this “Hey Joe” have led people to question whether Roberts really wrote it. Because it draws on so many well-established song conventions, the song seems considerably older than the date of the copyright. And some observers claim that Roberts has not been consistent in explaining how he wrote the song.