This raises an interesting point. Is it a “cover” if the original was never released?
Ponch8 is correct: "Heard it Through the Grapevine, " written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, was originally recorded by Smokey Robinson on August 6, 1966, but Berry Gordy wouldn’t allow it to be released. Marvin Gaye then recorded it on April 10, 1967, and Gordy didn’t want that version released. Gladys Knight then recorded it on June 17, 1967. It took some arm-twisting, but Gordy finally relented and allowed the Gladys Knight version to be released, but put NO support behind it. All it did was reach #1 on the Billboard R&B chart and stay there for six weeks. It also reached #2 on the Billboard Pop Singles singles chart, and became Motown’s best selling single at that point in time.
Then Gordy was lobbied hard to allow the Marvin Gaye version to be released, but he wouldn’t let it go out as a single after Gladys Knight had made a hit with it. It got stuck on a Marvin Gaye album, “In the Groove,” and it became the most-played and most-requested cut from the album. It took the lobbying efforts of radio DJs to convince Gordy to release it as a single (in those days, radio was set up to play singles, not cuts from albums). It came out on October 30, 1968, eventually outselling Gladys Knight, and until The Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” a year and a half later, was the biggest hit single of all time on the Motown label. It was #1 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart for seven weeks. I well remember the first time I heard Gaye’s “Grapevine” on the car radio. I was a senior in high school and went to the record store and bought the 45 that day!
Smokey Robinson’s original recording of “Grapevine” was finally released on a compilation album called “Motown Sings Motown Treasures” in 1998 - 32 years after it was originally recorded!
Berry Gordy was a genius, and built one of the most legendary labels in the US from the ground up. He had a remarkable ear, and was an amazing judge of talent. I have never understood how he could have been so wrong about this particular song!
I thought “Everytime You Go Away” (composed by Daryl Hall) was first recorded by Paul Young. I didn’t know that it had been recorded by Hall and Oates for one of their albums three or four years before Young’s version.
I recently came across a recent recording and my reaction was “Aha! That was originally recording in the 1980s by So-and-so!” But when I looked at up, I found out that there was an even earlier recording, in 1962 or so.
For the life of me, though, I can’t remember any of the details.
A friend of mine commented that last year it was at an office function where he was informed that “Gin and Juice” was not originally a lounge-swing number.
Wasn’t the Badfinger version the original, not a cover?
That brings up an issue here. “Cover” is ambiguous. There are at least three meanings:
To me, the first recording of a song to be commercially released is the “original,” regardless of who the author was. Later recordings are “covers.”
To some people, any song recorded by someone other than the actual composer is a “cover.” For example, some people consider “Come and Get It” by Badfinger to be a cover, because it was composed by Paul McCartney and he had made a demo version. But, to me, the Badfinger recording of “Come and Get It” is the original.
To many musicians, “cover” the verb, means “to outdo the original version.”
And how annoying is it that the original Badfinger recording of “Without You” isn’t available on Itunes, only the “re-recording” done years later.
As I read I was also thinking of the implications of the use of the word cover. Sometimes a singer or group nearly “owns” a song and no one will ever do it better than their prototype version. When someone covers it, it’s a disappointment. Looks like a quick bid for bucks riding on someone else’s shirttails.
Other times when a song is covered the singer brings a new interpretation to the music which transforms the song to something new and makes it a gift, a surprise.
And generation is the key word here, for sure. When I first heard Mama Cass lazily crooning, “Dream a little Dream of Me” in her mellow, old-timey way I was mystified and enchanted. Later, upon learning about the song’s history, I was startled. A lesson had been learned. The world is not designed around my reference points!
By the time David Lee Roth and Taco came out with “Just a Giggolo” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” respectively, I was in on the sly joke and delighted.
I have only one request: if you must please, please do it well.
In the case of Mr. Roth the joke was supposed to be on the teenagers, I think. In which case he may have succeeded in spite of his clumsy efforts. Yes, it’s heavy-handed.
Taco is a different sort of jest. Much more subtle. A clever, I think, an indictment of capitalism with reference to “Cabaret,” sexual ambiguity, current dance form. I thought it was macabre and well done.
The Black Crowes’ own performance and Chris Robinson’s vocal stylings surely owe a debt to Ron McKernan and the Grateful Dead (here from June 1970, but they were playing it for more than a year before that).
Just the other day I was in a department store and Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi was playing on the music track. The girl stocking the shelves stopped what she was doing and exclaimed “THAT’s not John Mayer!??!!!”
I didn’t know John Mayer covered the song, but I had to laugh and tell her, no, this is Joni Mitchell, the song was written back in the 1970’s.
Not surprisingly, the girl had never heard of Joni Mitchell…
Interestingly enough, the term “cover version” only dates from 1966, according to Wikipedia.
It originally described a rival version of a tune recorded to compete with the recently released original version, such as Jo Stafford recording a version of the country hit Jumbalaya (On the Bayou), which actually brought the contemporary song to a larger audience.
However, the most striking example of this was when white acts in the 50s came out with their own versions of popular “race records”. The premiere example of this was Pat Boone, who covered Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally” and Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame”, “I Almost Lost My Mind” by Ivory Joe Hunter, “I’ll be Home” by The Flamingos and “Don’t Forbid Me” by Charles Singleton. Other acts guilty of this included The Crew-Cuts, who covered The Chords’ “Sh-Boom”, and The Diamonds, who released their version of The Gladiolas’ “Little Darlin’”.
Of course, the homogenized white groups outsold the original black artists, but more importantly to middle-class America, wholesome white kids were kept away from exposure to “black artists and their evil music”.
Yeah, that makes sense, because I am sure that I’ve seen Pat Boone interviews where he mentions the practice in such a way that it sounds like the term was used in the industry when he started to do it.
