The songs are everywhere: in movie trailers, in car commercials, in the sets of famous bands who cite the Delta as their foundation. The money, too often, is somewhere else. For decades, Mississippi musicians signed away rights they did not understand to labels and publishers who understood them perfectly, and the consequences are still being litigated.

A small network of attorneys and advocates now works, largely without fanfare, to trace ownership of old recordings and recover royalties for the musicians who made them or the families who survive them. The work is painstaking, involving contracts written in the middle of the last century and paper trails that often lead nowhere.

The sums are sometimes modest and sometimes startling, but the advocates argue the principle matters regardless of the amount. "These people built an American art form," one said. "The least the industry owes them is an honest accounting."

Progress is slow and victories are partial. Yet each recovered credit and each corrected registration chips away at an old injustice, and for the elders still living, it offers something rarer than money: acknowledgment.