This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we return to our American stories, and now it's time for another rule of law story,

which is a part of our rule of law

series, where we showcase what happens in the absence and the presence of the rule of law

in our lives. And we love music on this show, too. It's a big part of our lives, all of our

lives. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with a story of how one of the biggest bands in the world

had to pay an influential musician from the deep south a bit of money.

Here's a question. How do a southern blues man and a lot of English rock bands from the 60s and 70s connect?

It turns out, in the case of Led Zeppelin, at least, a lot of ways, including

in a courtroom. Here's Stephen Davis, author of Hammer of the Gods, with more on that

Southern man in question. Robert Johnson was considered by Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, all the English

guitarists of that period, to be the founder of rock and roll, basically, and is indeed the

founder of recorded blues.

I mean, he wasn't by any means the first blues guy to be recorded, but Columbia Records

sent down a producer called Don Law to Arkansas in, what, 1938 or something?

And he made these 20 or 30 recordings with Robert Johnson.

That is the bedrock of the blues, of R&B, of rock, of rock and roll.

And so it's interesting, you know, that from a southern perspective, at least, Mississippi,

Arkansas, the Delta, that, you know, this is where Led Zeppelin comes from in the first place.

So it's not surprising that later in their career they would be charged with plagiarizing blues artists like Robert Johnson and Book of White and Willie Dixon.

Here's Kirby Ferguson, creator of the documentary series Everything is a remix with more.

So Zeppelin is a great band, but they do have this unusual history of copying from other artists, not transforming the things that they copy,

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