Music catalogue of Sixto 'Sugar Man' Rodriguez subject of lawsuit between music labels

A feel-good story has taken a sour turn after some legal shenanigans crept into the picture. A lawsuit was filed on Friday (May 2) with regards to the proper ownership of the music catalogue for Sixto Rodriguez, the Michigan rock musician Sixto Rodriguez, who was immortalized in the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man.

The basis for the film-which leads into the current lawsuits-is that Rodriguez released three albums, and none of them found a large audience in the United States. However the songs caught on in South Africa, as the black population read anti-apartheid messages within his lyrics. Rodriguez was unaware of his popularity in the African nation until he visited during 1997.

The documentary brought Rodriguez to the attention of many, and that includes that of Harry Balk and his company, Gomba Music. Gomba had originally signed Rodriguez back in the '70s, but other executives had other ideas. Clarence Avant, then working for Venture Records, reportedly did some shady dealings with Rodriguez resulting in a contract that gave Venture rights to all music written by Jesus Rodriguez, Sixto's brother. All of the music was actually written by Sixto, however.

"Under this fraudulent scheme, compositions written by Rodriguez would falsely, fraudulently, and wrongly be credited and attributed to other individuals with whom Gomba had no agreements," the lawsuit reads.

Rodriguez's album Cold Fact sold more than 500,000 copies in South Africa, and the performer realized that he should be seeing some royalties from that. There were rumors that he was looking to sue Avant, but Gomba is acting a little bit quicker, alleging that it should own the rights to the performer's work as Avant used deceptive practices to get them. Stay tuned.