The Real Story Behind Led Zeppelin’s Most Famous Lawsuit

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Led Zeppelin stormed onto the music scene, their sound felt untouchable. It was raw, electric, and entirely new. Yet beneath the roar of the guitars was a rhythm that didn’t begin in London. Its roots were planted in the American South, crafted by a bluesman whose work shaped the foundation of rock long before the world knew Jimmy Page or Robert Plant. Years later, echoes of that melody landed Led Zeppelin in a courtroom, where a judge had to decide whether the greatest band of its era had borrowed too much from the past. Stephen Davis and Kirby Ferguson share the story of how a single blues riff forced rock and roll to face its origins.

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