Rod Stewart could be singing the blues in more ways than one soon.
The “Maggie May” singer has been slapped with a copyright infringement lawsuit that claims he ripped off the very similarly-titled song “Corrine, Corrina” for his 2013 album “Time.”
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. district court in Georgia by Miles Floyd, the administrator of the estate of blues performer Bo Carter, whose real name Armenter Chatmon.
Chatmon was the first artist to record the song “Corrine, Corrina” and, according to the suit, he also wrote the tune, first registering the song with the U.S. Copyright Office in 1929.
Since Chatmon recorded the song, numerous recording artists have performed variations of it, including Big Joe Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley & His Comets, Bob Dylan and others.
The lawsuit claims that “Corrina, Corrina,” a bonus track from Stewart’s hit 2013 album “Time,” is “nearly identical” to Chatmon’s work, and contains “substantially similar defining compositional elements, including, but not limited to lyrics, melody, rhythm, tempo, meter, key and title.”
The track is credited to “Traditional” on the Stewart album.
The lawsuit, which also names Capitol Records, Universal Music Group and Decca Records as defendants, also claims that Stewart performs the allegedly infringing tune during his concerts.
The lawsuit is asking for unspecified actual damages and the profits from the song or, in the alternative, “statutory damages … in the amount of $150,000 for each act of infringement.”
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.