Trax Records faces lawsuit over alleged unpaid royalties and lack of payment
More than a dozen artists are suing the pioneering Chicago house label Trax Records, the estate of co-founder Larry Sherman, and current owners Screamin’ Rachael Cain and Sandyee Barns, Rolling Stone reports.
The plaintiffs, among them Trax cofounder Vince Lawrence and musicians Marshall Jefferson, Adonis and Maurice Joshua – allege that the label owes them unpaid royalties and in some cases that the label never paid them anything at all, according to a copy of the lawsuit seen by the Guardian.
Jefferson claims that Trax released his 1986 single Move Your Body, a cornerstone of house music, without his consent and never paid him for his work.
“We didn’t have record companies in Chicago,” Jefferson told Rolling Stone. “It was totally uncharted territory. We didn’t know how to do record deals or anything like that, so we were basically lambs to the slaughter. [Sherman] wouldn’t tell us anything. We got no statements. We just wanted to get our music out.”
DJ Pierre said that Sherman kept the international popularity of Trax releases hidden from the artists who produced them. “I had no idea that our music was migrating to London,” he said, something he discovered thanks to a British journalist. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute. This guy here has been ripping us off.’”
The lawsuit states that the plaintiffs are entitled to the “maximum statutory damages available for wilful infringement … in the amount of $150,000 with respect to each timely registered work that was infringed”.
Lawyer Sean Mulroney said that there was a clear pattern of financial wrongdoing by the label. “Sherman said he was going to pay them and never did,” says Mulroney. “Are you going to spend 50, 60 grand to chase it down, knowing there’s no moving forward? What are they worth? You have to go, ‘Is it worth it? I’ll just keep writing.’ And for some of these guys, it was, ‘I’ll never write another song again.’”
The suit follows Larry Heard and Robert Owens winning a legal battle against Trax in August in which they regained the rights over their music, albeit without any financial settlement due to what their lawyer Robert S Meloni characterised as Trax’s impecunity, as reported by the Guardian.
Sherman, who died in 2020, started Trax in 1984 alongside Lawrence and Jesse Saunders. In 1997, he told the Chicago Tribune: “The kids making these records didn’t know what they should get, and they often didn’t know what their material was worth. And being a good businessman, you don’t say, ‘I think you’re underestimating the worth of your material. Here’s a few thousand dollars more.’”
Sherman was forced to sell Trax to his wife, Cain, as part of a divorce settlement in 2006. In the new lawsuit, several artists accuse her of threatening them with defamation suits to prevent discussion of the label’s alleged misdemeanours. The suit also accuses Cain of committing trademark fraud, registering the Trax logo, designed by Vince Lawrence in 1984, in her name and attempting to register the names Dance Mania and DJ International, two more influential 80s Chicago labels.
Cain did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment. The Guardian has also contacted Cain.