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When it comes to repertoire, in jazz there's a common device known as "contrafacts", a name coined by James Patrick in 1975 to describe the replacement of the melody from a song by a different one while maintaining the underlying chord progression, as in, for instance, "How High the Moon" becoming "Ornithology" (see this Wiki list for more examples). Patrick's article (published on the Journal of Jazz Studies, vol. 2, no. 2) dealt with the compositions of Charlie Parker, who popularized this device, although it must be said that it was used in the Swing era: one example is "A Smo-o-o-oth One", based on "Love Is Just Around the Corner". Besides artistic considerations, note that this bit of trickery allowed the composer of the new melody to copyright the whole composition, and receive the appropriate royalties, even if the chord progression had been "borrowed".
