Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Willie Dixon was my all time favorite bluesman.

Check out the number of songs that he wrote that other bands made famous.

Here's just a few:

http://www.mp3.com/albums/66826/summary.html

Willie was amazing, just incredible work. Great bassist apparently, too.

Glenn Wall wrote: The best ever is Page and Plant putting their names on Whole Lotta Love, which is 100% of the music and 90% of the lyrics by Willie Dixon (You Need Love.) Talk about robbery. I think this is where the idea of reparations came from.
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Glenn, surely not. Their most notable theft has to be Dazed and Confused, a song written, recorded and released by Jake Holmes.

http://www.furious.com/perfect/jimmypage.html

Don't forget that the bluesmen all stole from each other too. Maybe they shoud've credited some poor share cropper too.......

David, that looks like a great article. I'll read it. I do not know the Dazed and Confused details. I suspect what you're saying is, like You Need Love, they copped most of it and Jake Holmes' name is nowhere on the label.

And yes, John, bluesmen weren't above copping each others ideas or falling back on the old 12 bars. However, there is a difference between stealing a few ideas and most of a lyric, melody, or both.

And it's safe to say when we think of bluesmen we think of poor, uneducated men who other than making a few bucks at the local juke joint never get any closer to the music business or something as arcane to them as music publishing. Most of the best of them take in not more than poets do.

What's more, at this point, with all the exhaustive research by bluesologists, it's more than clear that people like Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon were innovators, creators, and brilliant, too.

But the members of Zep were neither uneducated, poor or far removed from the music business. For years most of them worked smack dab in the middle of it, playing and producing sessions, etc.

What's more, they were preceded by peers like Cream who credited people like Robert Johnson even though Cream's versions of Johnson's tunes were radical departures compared to the originals and Zep's didn't stray nearly as far.

David, that looks like a great article. I'll read it. I do not know the Dazed and Confused details. I suspect what you're saying is, like You Need Love, they copped most of it and Jake Holmes' name is nowhere on the label.

And yes, John, bluesmen weren't above copping each others ideas or falling back on the old 12 bars. However, there is a difference between stealing a few ideas and most of a lyric, melody, or both.

And it's safe to say when we think of bluesmen we think of poor, uneducated men who other than making a few bucks at the local juke joint never get any closer to the music business or something as arcane to them as music publishing. Most of the best of them take in not more than poets do.

What's more, at this point, with all the exhaustive research by bluesologists, it's more than clear that people like Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon were innovators, creators, and brilliant, too.

But the members of Zep were neither uneducated, poor or far removed from the music business. For years most of them worked smack dab in the middle of it, playing and producing sessions, etc.

What's more, they were preceded by peers like Cream who credited people like Robert Johnson even though Cream's versions of Johnson's tunes were radical departures compared to the originals and Zep's didn't stray nearly as far.

I've not seen it myself but I believe that the most recent reissue of D and C actually credits Holmes. It only took 35 years.

Here is another great article on the same subject.

http://www.furious.com/perfect/jakeholmes.html

That is great. I was thinking it would make a great documentary...tracking down all the songs Zep is said to have stolen, interview the writers, play the original songs, tell the stories of when Page crossed tracks with these people. And try to get him on film once and or all responding to the allegations.

I don't understand the thought processes that go into "borrowing" of this sort. Dazed and Confused is so damned obvious.

In the cases of Zep and Page being accused numerous times of taking things in their entirety while giving no credit to the sources is indicative of the fact that all of the players in that band has histories as players and producers but not writers.

After many years of playing and not having to provide material they one day found themselves with a multi-album contract and lots of space to fill. And tried to pocket as much of the dough as possible.

It really is incredible how much material someone like Donovan, who Page and Co. backed on many albums, came up with in a short span of time. Perhaps Page was too busy doing sessions to learn how to write.