It Was All Too Beautiful

Steve Marriott (1947-1991) got his start in show business playing roles like the Artful Dodger in the stage play Oliver! in the early 1960's.  Later on he would form the Small Faces who had a number of hits, including my favorite, Itchycoo Park:

Humble Pie was a short-lived "super group" formed by Marriott from the Small Faces, Spooky Tooth, and a band most people never Herd of. I liked them because they were the first band my parents let me go see, just two years after this recording. Watch closely and you'll also see and hear Peter Frampton -- well before he came alive:

That's not the same version of "Four Day Creep" which appeared on the band's epic "Rockin' The Fillmore" but it's close to it. I'm guessing that this version didn't make the cut because of Steve Marriott's substitution of the word "f*ck" for "love" about 3 and 1/2 in,  but that's just my speculation.

What I also just discovered 40 years later, looking at the label on the vinyl, is that the song credits only someone named Ida Cox. Googling her, I found a 1927 recording called 'Fore Day Creep." Her song's title refers to infidelity -- a lover or husband creeping out "b'fore day." Curiously, Humble Pie's recorded version only credits Ida Cox for their version of "Four Day Creep," even though the two songs couldn't be more different. Here is the Ida Cox original: link

A few more facts before tying them all together. In 1962, Muddy Waters recorded a song written by Willie Dixon called "You Need Love" (link). Four years later, in 1966, the Small Faces recorded "You Need Lovin'," a version of the Muddy Waters/Willie Dixon song but which credited only Marriott and Ronnie Lane. I embed the Small Faces version because the singing arrangement so eerily predates another famous song by three years:

Years later, Steve Marriott wrote:

It was fantastic, I loved it, Muddy Waters recorded it but I couldn't sing like Muddy Waters so it wasn't that much of a nick. I was a high range and Muddy was a low range so I had to figure out how to sing it. So I did and that was our opening number for all the years we were together. Every time we were on stage that was our opening number, unless we had a short set. That's where Jimmy Page and Robert Plant heard it. Robert Plant used to follow us around. He was like a fan. link

Willie Dixon sued Led Zeppelin for plagiarism (and settled favorably out-of-court). The Small Faces weren't named in the suit. As Robert Plant pithily stated:

Page's riff was Page's riff. It was there before anything else. I just thought, 'well, what am I going to sing?' That was it, a nick. Now happily paid for. At the time, there was a lot of conversation about what to do. It was decided that it was so far away in time and influence that...well, you only get caught when you're successful. That's the game. link

I'm guessing that a lawsuit was already well under way in 1971 which is why Steve Marriott was careful to credit Ida Cox and to actually change the name of her song.