So, if there were a car ad on tv that used the Clash's version of "Pressure Drop".....

yes.

Theoretically, maybe - it depends on who owns the publishing. The publishing info on "Pressure Drop" currently reads "Copyright Universal Music Publishing Group." This probably means that at some point Universal bought the rights from somebody, or acquired them when they gobbled up a bunch of other labels (does Universal own Island now?). Now, at some point along the line, Toots may have sold his publishing, or Universal may do the publishing for him, which would mean they give him a cash advance, at which point they are given the right to collect and keep any funds received from licensing of the track until the advance has been recouped, at which point there's usually a profit-sharing clause that kicks in.

However as with early r&b/rock/country/blues artists, the likelihood is that there was a "we own the publishing on anything you make while you're making records for us" clause built into his original contract, which would mean that the rights transferred every time the catalogue sold and he never saw any money after whatever he originally got for his first contract. "Pressure Drop" was first released on Island, which was Chris Blackwell's label - Peter Tosh blamed Blackwell for the dissolution of the Wailers (sometimes; Tosh was known to throw the blame around a lot for stuff), but I don't know if there's controversy about Blackwell's publishing arrangements.

J0hn D's message is a bit off; it implies a bit strongly that there's a good likelihood of a sort of worst case scenario, which, in the case of Toots, is happily not the case. Advances for publishing back in the day were pretty paltry, which means the artist collected royalties pretty quickly if a record sold - as long as they didn't sell *all* rights to the publishing or just plain get ripped off. The deal Toots has isn't profit sharing (which is pretty rare in publishing, actually) but one in which the publishing company "owns" a certain percentage and collects this percentage in exchange for handling accounting details and whatnot - this is pretty standard. Blackwell was more than fair (for the time) in terms of what his deals were, and Toots receives a pretty reasonable amount of money each year from "Pressure Drop" and "54-46 That's My Number" and other numbers, which are still covered with some frequency and licensed often for compilations.

Music publishing in Jamaica was chaotic for decades, with a lot of non-payment and confusion, producers often claiming publishing rights (even authorship) and so on. When it all got straightened out, most "successful" songwriters ended up in okay shape (from that point on) for the simple reason that they'd been cheated for so long that the dubious claims to publishing rights were often stripped from wrongdoers in toto. Toots, being one of the first international successes in reggae, did deals with non-Jamaican companies almost from the start and was thus in pretty good shape early on, royalty-wise. This I knew from empirical evidence and insider knowledge. I asked Toots about the Clash's cover once, and he told me that he loved them because "they bought me some car 'n tings!" and added that he liked Robert Palmer just as much! He was, of course, talking about the royalties their covers of "Pressure Drop" brought him.

So yeah, Toots gets money.

'ey, and we get the info! Good old ILX!

On an ad-related but far less interesting note (sorry!), something I've wondered about before: do the Egg get $$$ for the Tocadisco remix of their "Walking Away" being on that car ad? How much compared to Tocadisco's slice given that a) the chunk on the car ad has not a lot to do with the original mix and b) I can't see any sensible way for that to be taken into account?

(Good to hear Toots gets money.)

man deedeedee your post makes my day! there are so many musicians who end up selling their publishing and regretting it (I think Burning Spear has a lot of complaints about rights), very glad to hear Toots is getting paid. Somebody needs to license "Monkey Man" now, that's the jam.

how great is that clash cover of pressure drop btw?

I love their version! Toots' version is one of my favorite recordings ever.