Pseudonymous songwriters

Flatt & Scruggs (possibly with other members of their band) published a number of songs under the pseudonyms “Louise Certain” and “Gladys Stacy”. These were in fact the maiden names of their wives, and Louise Scruggs has an artist entry in her own right under her married name. However, it’s generally agreed that the real Louise and Gladys did not in fact write the songs attributed to Certain and Stacey.

There’s a somewhat similar case with Ruby Rakes; there was an actual Ruby Rakes, Carter Stanley’s half-sister, whose name Carter used to publish under. The MB entry for Ruby Rakes lists birth & death dates for the real Ruby, which seems a little misleading. In this case, I think Ruby Rakes would be better handled as an alias for Carter Stanley.

For Certain and Stacey, I could enter them as aliases for Scruggs and Flatt respectively, although I’m not sure they exactly map. The BMI website seems to treat them as such, though - a search for either Louise Certain or Earl Scruggs returns the exact same list of songs.

Another option might be to enter “Louise Certain and Gladys Stacey” as a group. As far as I know, any works credited to them were published under both names. There is something of a precedent for this in the Nanker Phelge entry.

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The leading exponent of misattribution as far as I know is Alfred Scholz
Read Budget recordings of Alfred Scholz for background information.
For the list of effected Labels and Artists see Budget recordings of Alfred Scholz/Lists

The background information article contains the following which I suggest would be best to parallel for all cases of artist misattribution:
How to enter Scholz releases
Artists
Scholz pseudonyms have Musicbrainz Artist entities to represent them just as “real” artists do. Don’t merge away these artists. Only if two Scholz artists have very similar names, that can be considered spelling variations, and perform the same role is it worth merging them.

If a Scholz artist has the same (or very similar) name as a real artist, they should be distinct Musicbrainz entities with disambiguation comments. Many artists have comment (an Alfred Scholz pseudonym) or similar.