Who wrote "If You Be My Baby"?

[obsess5]

Zillions of lyric sites list Fleetwood Mac as the performers and the writers as Elmore James and "Josea" (?). If I Google ["elmore james" "if you be my baby"], I get all the lyric sites, but no Elmore James-specific information.

The Wikipedia page for the Mr. Wonderful album say the song is by "Adams/Green". Who's right?

Thanks!

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Guitar transcription of Peter's introduction and solo, courtesy of Mario Abbagliati.

Covers by others of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac songs.

[doodyhead]

Peter and the rest of early fleetwood mac made clifford their publicist for some quirky reason
maybe peter did not want to go through the paperwork. This however was one of those things that backfired in several ways.
Clifford had the rights to several FM songs and could record them himself if he so chose. which he did, sort of.
or like what happened to Creedence Clearwater Revival, he could put out a band and play that stuff without paying royalties.

Cliff is also the person who called the police and told them Peter was going to shoot the bookkeeper if he came by his house... That peter did not have a gun there is besides the point.

The King/ Josea stuff comes from a more disreputable practice by the Bihari brothers who put out records for some american Blues players. BB King had no idea that he signed royalty money away to his handlers.
Another famous one is John and Alan Lomax. Their contention was that if they did not record that stuff no one would have heard it and people like Leadbelly would be unknown.

Elizabeth Cotten only obtained her copyright for "Freight Train" from another such person after she died.

The music business is rife with a certain criminal element. At least Clifford paid peter something and i think peter gets all the money now.

Oh Well

[wetcamelfood]

It's a Peter Green original though due to legal reasons Clifford Adams (Davis) gets co-writing credts.

Edit - yeah, what doody said.

John

[SteveMacD]

IIRC, the reason they put Cliff as a co-writer was for tax purposes. Also, I recall that Cliff lost the Fleetwood Mac-related royalties in the divorce from Mich Reynolds (Nigel Watson's sister).

[obsess5]

Thanks, everyone, for your answers. I Google'd the Bihari brothers and found a previous thread on The Ledge, Composer credits - "Mr. Wonderful" from 2008 that has more information about the whole album, including responses by doodyhead and wetcamelfood. I should have done my homework (no pun intended) a little more carefully before posting my question!