Robert Johnson’s Family Fights in Court Over Photo Rights

Greg Jenson/The Clarion-Ledger, via Associated Press Claud Johnson, the son of the blues guitarist Robert Johnson, with his son Michael Johnson and one of the two known images of his father.

There are only two known photographs of the great Delta bluesman Robert Johnson, whose songs like “Cross Road Blues” and “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” are classics. One is a studio shot of him in a wide-lapeled suit and a slick fedora, hands resting on the strings of a flat-top guitar; the other shows Mr. Johnson in a photo booth, a cigarette hanging from his lips as he fingers a chord.

The fate of those photos, which have become extremely valuable as Mr. Johnson’s posthumous fame has grown, now rests with the Mississippi Supreme Court. Three justices heard arguments on Monday in a complicated dispute involving the guitarist’s descendants, Sony Music Entertainment and a promoter, The Associated Press reported. Presiding Justice Jess H. Dickinson did not say when he and his colleagues will rule on the case.

Mr. Johnson died destitute in Mississippi in 1938 at the age of 27, leaving behind a trail of recordings. But his music has influenced several generations of guitarists, among them Eric Clapton, who in 2004 put out the acclaimed tribute album “Me and Mr. Johnson.” And his estate became more valuable after a 1990 collection of his recordings won a Grammy Award.

The dispute pits the descendants of Mr. Johnson’s half-sister, Carrie Harris Thompson, against his son, Claud Johnson, Sony Music Enterntainment, and a promoter named Stephen C. LaVere.

The Thompson family has argued the photos had always belonged to Ms. Thompson and her estate, and that the label profited from them. But Sony Music has countered that ownership of the photos was transferred to Mr. LaVere in November 1974 when Ms. Thompson signed a contract with him.

That contract, Sony’s lawyer argued in court, assigned the rights to Mr. Johnson’s work, photographs and other materials to Mr. LaVere in return for half of the royalties he might collect off record releases.

Later Mr. LaVere, who headed Delta Haze Corp., signed a deal with CBS Records to release a collection of Robert Johnson’s 29 recorded songs. CBS, which was later acquired by Sony, released a boxed set of Mr. Johnson’s recordings that sold more than a million copies and won the 1990 Grammy for Best Historical Album.

Ms. Thompson died in 1983 and her heirs have long argued they are entitled to royalties. But Claud Johnson, whose parents never married, filed suit in 2000 and was declared by a court to be the musician’s sole heir. The following year a circuit judge in Leflore County, Ashley Hines, ruled the royalties spelled out in the 1974 contract should go to Mr. Johnson.

The question of the photographs was not settled, however, and, after more legal maneuvering, Judge Hines finally ruled in 2012 that Ms. Thompson’s heirs had no grounds to assert a claim and the case should not go to trial. Now, the Thompson family has asked the Supreme Court to reverse that decision.