Willie Dixon wrote the blues canon. Hoochie Coochie Man. Spoonful. Back Door Man. Little Red Rooster. I Just Want to Make Love to You. He wrote them for Muddy Waters, for Howlin' Wolf, for Little Walter -- and then watched as British rock bands covered them without credit, without payment, without understanding what they were stealing.

Led Zeppelin settled a lawsuit with him. So did a dozen others. Dixon wasn't bitter -- or maybe he was, and he channeled it into the next song. He was Chess Records' secret weapon: the bassist, the arranger, the A&R man, the guy in the back of the studio who handed Muddy a lyric sheet and said, 'Try this one.'

A giant of a man with hands that could palm a basketball and a mind that could turn a folk saying into a million-selling record. He made his own albums too -- I Am the Blues is the songwriter singing his own words, and they sound different coming from the man who wrote them. Deeper. More lived-in. The architect explaining his own blueprints.

Willie Dixon was the most important songwriter in blues history. Not the most famous. The most important. Without him, the Chicago blues songbook doesn't exist. Muddy, Wolf, Little Walter -- they were the voices, but Dixon was the pen. The British Invasion was basically a bunch of white kids covering Willie Dixon songs. They settled out of court.