I first heard this song on Led Zeppelin's 1969 debut album. It became my favorite from that record, combining Jimmy Page's folk and electric guitar and Robert Plant's soulful and powerful vocal in an incredibly dynamic and dramatic fashion. The song carried the notation - "Traditional; arr. by Jimmy Page".
It wasn't until many years later I learned the back story. Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You was composed in the 1950s by Anne Bredon, a student at Berkeley. After hearing Anne perform, Joan Baez made the first recorded version on a 1962 album. It sounds very, very different from Zeppelin's.
It was not until 1990 that the credit on Zeppelin's album was corrected to attribute the composition to Bredon and she was paid back royalties at the time. Zeppelin was known to take creative credit for modifying compositions originally done by other artists. The most famous is Dazed and Confused which was actually composed by Jake Holmes.
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