[BklynBlue]

In 1962, Willie Dixon got Chess Records to lease a couple of backing tracks from an earlier session that he had produced and played on for Mel London, featuring Earl Hooker. He wrote lyrics for each and gave them to Muddy Waters to record. The results were ‘You Need Love’, based on a Hooker instrumental, and ‘You Shook Me’, a variation on ‘Rock Me Baby’ credited to Dixon and J.B. Lenoir. (Hooker’s original instrumental track for the latter was released as ‘Blue Guitar’ on London’s Age label).
Chess released ‘You Shook Me’ as the B-side to ‘Muddy Waters Twist’, while ‘You Need Love’ was treated with a little more respect and was paired with ‘Little Brown Bird’.
In 1964, the Pye label in England released the four tracks as an EP and the two Hooker pieces were soon picked up on by a number of budding English blues fans.
In 1966 The Small Faces cut ‘You Need Love’ for their first LP, recasting it as a hard R & B number, complete with hand claps and gritty organ, (while the arrangement was original, and surprisingly effective, simply re-titling the number ‘You Need Loving’ did not justify Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane nicking the writing credit).
Savoy Brown’s 1968 recording (it was released in July of that year) allowed ample time for not only a guitar solo from the recently added “Lonesome” Dave Peverett, but also a bass solo and a drum solo (the rhythm section was also new).
As was vocalist Chris Youlden and while he proved to be a very good blues singer the tempo was far too fast to be sexy (reminiscent of the early Rolling Stones cover of Muddy Waters’ ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You’).
The most famous “cover” of the song takes the opposite tack, slowing the beat, and intensifying the attack.
As with The Small Faces recording, Led Zeppelin could honestly claim the title and arrangement of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ was their own but the lyrics were still Dixon’s. Dixon successfully sued, and settled out of court, and his name has since been reinstated on the writing credits.
The use of Zeppelin’s title on bootlegs and its subsequent appearance in various sources most likely stems as much from the novelty value of the idea that Fleetwood Mac covered a “Led Zeppelin song” (for those unfamiliar with the recording timelines) as from a lack of knowledge of the song’s origins.