Hip Hop artists started sampling the rhythm tracks from older R&B, funk, and early rock and roll songs to create new pieces of music. Most people in this country have come into contact with one form of sampling or another.
In an older time certain aspects of making music, and making songs, was to use other people's musical pieces, and by "use", I mean to basically steal them. In a way this appropriation is a kind of sampling, and since music is collaborative and things can be done to change riffs and beats just enough to not be legally actionable, most artists seemed to have just said, salud, good for you, nice song.
The Keith Richards and Eric Clapton both started as white English guys ripping off American blues musicians, so there's a grand history to that sort of thing.
A song that is such a cultural touchstone for America, and was made by Americans, has in itself a rich legacy of appropriation. I speak of The Doors' "Break on Through (To the Other Side)".
The opening drum beat is a modified samba beat. The samba sound was reaching the States from Brazil around this time, and to use it in a rock song was as novel as it was radical. Instead of the brush on the snare-drum, John Densmore hardened the sound to make it a little more rock sensible by using a stick lightly on the cymbal.
The Ray Manzarek's organ starts, and the bass, being played by his left hand, is basically a repeating four note beat lifted directly from Ray Charles. Hearing it by itself it's pretty obvious.
Robby Krieger, on guitar, played a slightly modified riff of the driving part of "Shake You Money Maker".
String those components together behind Jim Morrison's words, a positive message about resistance and self realization, and you end up with an American classic.
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