The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 30 August 1996
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HERE
ARIA NOMINEE SINGS DIFFERENT TUNE ON WHO WROTE HER SONG WHEN singer Brenda Webb was nominated for an Aria Award for her debut single Little Black Girl she claimed she had written the song "with friends for fun". But now the 26-year-old aboriginal singer admits it was her friends who did the bulk of the work. In a legal notice published yesterday, Webb �acknowledges that the composition of the song was the product primarily of collaboration between Wendy May Dempster and Christopher Lloyd Bowen". Little Black Girl became Webb's signature tune after it was released in 1994. The track was credited to B Webb/W Dempster. Although it was not a major hit, reaching only 167 on the charts, it received good radio airplay, especially on Triple J. But when Dempster and Bowen heard the song on the radio, they started legal proceedings claiming she had stolen their song. Demspter wrote the original lyrics back in 1981 after meeting a homeless Aboriginal heroin addict. Webb took them and changed some of the more negative tones, for instance the line "Your life is going nowhere" became "Your life is going somewhere". Webb made a personal agreement with Dempster that if her version of the song became a hit, the two would share the royalties, with 80 per cent going to the singer. But apart from her announcement in the legal notices yesterday, Webb's ownership of the song has been reduced to 20 per cent, with Dempster and Bowen sharing 40 per cent each. The only statement Webb had to offer yesterday was that "things have been sorted out and it's history". The record label that released the song, Republic Records, no longer exists.
