Who,exactly,wrote:'HEY JOE'?

Utter confusion!!!!.
Please does anyone know?.
Even more confusing is who exactly recorded it/performed it first?.Was it first recorded in 1965 by 'The Safaris'.Surely earlier recordings exist?.



For an attempt at clarity please visit:

http://www.heyjoe.org/index.html

 

someone did it before them, I don't rember extaley who but I think his name was tim soemthing.

 

This is what Wikipedia had to say:

Often erroneously attributed to the pen of American musician Dino Valente (who also went by the names Chester Powers and Jesse Farrow), or as a "traditional" work, Hey Joe was registered for copyright in the USA in 1962 by Billy Roberts (William Moses Roberts Jr.). Roberts is the apparent author, and the song may have been written by him earlier. One source (singer Pat Craig), cited at heyjoe.org, claims that Roberts assigned the rights to the song to his friend Valente, while Valente was in jail, in order to give him some income upon release.

Apparently, tapes exist of Roberts performing Hey Joe (one as early as 1961), but these have never been released. Roberts was a relatively obscure California-based folksinger, guitarist and harmonica player who performed on the West Coast coffee-house circuit. He later recorded the country rock album Thoughts of California with the band Grits in San Francisco in 1975, produced by Hillel Resner.

Roberts possibly drew inspiration for Hey Joe from three earlier works: his girlfriend Niela Miller’s 1955 song Baby, Please Don’t Go To Town, which had a similar chord progression; Carl Smith’s 1953 US country hit Hey Joe, which shared the title and the 'question and answer' format; and the early 20th century traditional ballad Little Sadie, which tells of a man on the run after he has shot his wife.

Note: under various titles (including Bad Lee Brown, Penitentiary Blues, Cocaine Blues, Whiskey Blues) variations of Little Sadie have been recorded by many artists, including Clarence Ashley (1930), Johnny Cash (1960 & 1968), Slim Dusty (1961), and Bob Dylan (1970).

Claimants that Hey Joe is a wholly traditional work have yet to provide any documentary evidence of its existence prior to Roberts' 1962 copyright registration, despite extensive archives of US folk and blues music in the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute and other bodies.

 

Thankyou for that Wiki- explaination!.
So it seems the hot money's on Billy Roberts.

 

I wrote it.

 

I thought everyone knew it was Roberts, because thats how its credited on the Hendrix labels... and we all know those who dole out royalties make sure of that kinda thing. There is a long line of artists who have covered this tune, and ascap or bmg would have an easy answer for the credit after so many recordings being released.

 

The song 'Hey Joe' was originally written by a bloke called Billy Roberts, but I don't think that it was famous before Hendrix covered it.

 

I associated with Billy Roberts for a substantial part of the year 1965. We were playing in the same coffeehouses in Seattle, going to many of the same parties; I remember that he and I went from Seattle to Puyallup, WA as two of four acts that went as a group to play at the state fair, having all been booked by the same agent. I'm sure it's true that Billy held the copyright to "Hey Joe" then, he credibly claimed to have written it, and he performed it often, and performed it convincingly. He had one of the most awesome twelve-string guitars I've ever seen, with a really big box and he played it very well. His manners and speech were evidently consistent with his early upbringing in North Carolina, and he had a good reputation among his fellow musicians, so I firmly believe he did actually write "Hey Joe." He sang it like it was his baby, and I am SO sorry he got all messed up in that awful car crash!

There. Does that help?

 

i met that billy roberts fella once, back in the mid-70s

he played my high school and did coke with my electronics teacher

12-string, hmm, a lotta fucking harmonicas in bandoliers is what i remember

nice guy, very talkative [the coke?]

did 'hey joe' for all us stupid kids too...

 

The earliest known commercial recording, and the first hit version, is the late 1965 recording by the Los Angeles garage band, The Leaves.

 

Thank you. I went and found the page

Hey Joe Versions

I cant believe so many people wrote this.. The first time I ever heard it was by Jimi Hendrix and I think thats the BEST one out there!!