I found a list of songs where an artist or group was sued for copyright infringement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... m_disputes
I'm sure that there's thousands of other cases, but these are some of the most famous, or infamous.

I heard "Transmitting Live From Mars" on the Dr. Demento show.
All they had in common was the beginning line "Ahhh uhh".

All the ones listed as plagarisms are far too recent for me to have heard!

Bob

Right, there are some instances where the law suit failed to prove plagiarism, and they should be separated from the cases of flat out stealing of melody or lyrics. The list could use some editing.
In many cases, songs were covered and recorded without change to the tune or lyrics, but the liner notes failed to acknowledge the writer?

At least that's the way it looks to me, such as the Beatles recordings that should have shown Chock Berry as the writer, Surely they weren't pretending to have written those songs, but the writer was overlooked in the final production of the record? Not the same as plagiarism.

On the late afternoon program on CBC Radio 2, they have a segment called "Distant Cousins" where listeners will send in a pair of song titles that they believe have some similarity in the words or music. They've been doing this every weekday for several years, and they haven't run out of songs yet.

All old news.

In the early to mid '50's, there were numerous "white cover" recordings of black artist originals, with the same titles and lyrics. For the most part, the originals sounded MUCH better. Examples;

Tweedlee Dee, La Verne Baker, 1954; https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Tweedlee_Dee+ ... 8vb4hyS49s

Now Georgia Gibbs was good, but she just wern't no match, a year later; https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Tweedlee_Dee+ ... 6oyYkG-5SM

It's Too Soon To Know, The Orioles, 1948; https://duckduckgo.com/?q=its+too+soon+ ... 3KYOtKR1fI

Again, the white cover, by Pat Boone 10 years later was good, but just didn't have the soul of the original sound; https://duckduckgo.com/?q=its+too+soon+ ... zxu46HqeHI

Hey Richard, thanks for your input. I think there was so much of this adopting of tunes going on that the record producers ignored the writer and simply adopted it for their purposes of producing a Top 40's hit record.
There's a really bad Pat Boone recording of a Blues tune that has slipped my memory, which is a good thing.
One soulful tune that Boone did croon is "Moody River".

I like Big Joe Turner's version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll", and the way he could throw tunes together on stage makes me think he wrote it. He could just make the tunes up to whatever the band was doing, shoutin' the blues. Never got much recognition. The late 60's changed that I think.

So do I.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNpvOUm ... eathWilson


Bill Haley and the Comets copied some of his records.