Recognise it? Well, of course, it's...
...Johnny Cash and The Tennessee Two's "Folsom Prison Blues", and The Man in Black was forced to pay Gordon Jenkins $75,000 as the result of a lawsuit for copyright infringement. A humungous amount of money in those days, given that RCA bought out Cash's Sun Records stablemate Elvis Presley's for a mere $35,000. Anyway, it's the first I'd ever heard of this particular example of plagiarism. Similarly, I'd never realised that the Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant borrowed his whole "ravenous gerbil down the pants" singing style from another English singer - and, from the sound of this 1966 Small Faces LP track, it seems more than a singing style was "borrowed":
Plant was generous in his praise for Steve Marriott, acknowledging that the Small Faces' lead singer had a better voice. One reason for the Faces not suing Led Zeppelin over the lyrics pinched from "You Need Loving" was probably that the Faces had pinched them from the superb 1962 Willie Dixon-penned Muddy Waters' number, "You Need Love". But Robert Plant didn't get away scot free - Dixon eventually sued for plagiarism, and won.
I came across these examples of artists borrowing from earlier records while looking into the question of whether Mick Jagger modelled his vocal style on the great South Carolina R&B singer, Don Covay, which was brought up by ex-KCS in the comments section of a recent post on this site. Here's the evidence:
So, that would be a "yes", then. Still, not a bad choice of model (something Mr. Jagger has evidently done a lot over the years).
Don Covay died in February, last year - and I somehow missed it. He was a great singer and a terrific songwriter. Here are three more of his best '60s recordings (the first, recorded in 1961, was successfully covered by Chubby Checker):
And here's the best version of one of Covay's songs by another artist - Aretha Franklin with the sublime "Chain of Fools":
We were so spoiled back then!
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