Song of the Day 2/24: John Paul Jones and Playing for Change, “When the Levee Breaks”

Playing for Change, the non-profit music education charity that proselytizes and raises money by sharing covers featuring musicians both famous and obscure from all over the world, dropped a killer track this week. Featuring John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin on bass, it answers the musical question, “If you replaced Jimmy Page with Derek Trucks, John Bonham with Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addiction, and Robert Plant with Susan Tedeschi, would it still sound like Zep?”

Spoiler alert: Not exactly, but it might be better.

Led Zeppelin is literally more guilty of cultural appropriation than any other act of the rock era, several times taking credit (and royalties) from other musicians, particularly blues legend Willie Dixon, until courts ruled otherwise. But when this song appeared on the Led Zeppelin IV in 1971, they did credit Memphis Minnie, who recorded it with Kansas Joe McCoy in 1929, two years after the Great Mississippi Flood that inspired it. The original helps confirm that when Led Zeppelin stole a song, they didn’t just polish it up, they overhauled and customized it.

For the sake of comparison, here’s what Zep did with that raw material. The lyrics and 12-bar blues structure are the same. The musical treatment and resulting effect are not.