Synchronicity - I just found this out yesterday, when the Sirius Beatle’s channel played the Mama’s and Papa’s version. I don’t think I’d ever heard the Beatle’s do it until I looked it up on Youtube when I got home.
I prefer the M&P version, but I have a strong “like the first heard version” bias, and am a sucker for harmonies.
*You *may not care. *You *aren’t everybody, and *you *don’t speak for everybody.
I care. Apparently many other people in this thread (and the other cover threads we’ve had) care. Instead of denying obvious reality, perhaps you should put your time and effort into understanding how the rest of the world differs from you.
Yeah, I didn’t know I care, but reading this thread, it’s really interesting. And I’m discovering artists and even genres of music I was unaware of. The “1st Recording Of” playlist on YouTube is a gold mine of new experiences!
What makes covers especially special to me is that they often lead me to discover bands and albums I would have otherwise missed. To me, it’s always interesting to hear the original version and see how it’s been resurrected and reworked over time, and what the cover recording artist found inspiring in it. With the type of music I listen to, covers are often homages to bands the cover recording artist finds worthwhile. For example, I discovered the Vaselines via Nirvana’s covers of “Molly’s Lips” and “Son of a Gun” off Incesticide. Television I came to via a REM cover of “I See Know Evil,” of all things. Green Pyjamas via the Material Issue (and Sister Psychic) cover of “Kim the Waitress.” And I think I probably came to the Velvet Underground via The Cowboy Junkies’ take on “Sweet Jane.” (I didn’t really start listening to VU until the mid-90s, and remember learning quite late that “Sweet Jane” was a cover.) Jesus and Mary Chain via the Pixies “Head On.” I’m sure there’s many, many more, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind for me.
When I hear a song and discover it’s a cover, I really want to hear the original. It’s fun learning the history of a song, and it leads to great discoveries, musical side roads, a Youtube rabbit hole, and enjoyment for me. And, quite often, I do end up enjoying the original at least as much, if not more.
Dammit. Back in 1983, I had a thick paperback called the Billboard book of #1 hits from the Rock Era (or something like that). I’m sure that the entry for that song included an anecdote from Joan about how she was inspired to write the song by listening to the Stones singing “I Know It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” and thinking “What do you mean ‘ONLY’? I love Rock ‘n’ Roll!”
Somebody lied to me. Either that book, or my memory.
In the case of “Dazed and Confused,” the word you’re looking for is not “reworking” or “cover” — it is “theft,” pure and simple.
Jimmy Page originally performed this song while still a member of The Yardbirds, with nearly identical lyrics. By the time of the Led Zeppelin recording, Robert Plant had changed some of the lyrics, but the music was the same (albeit arranged much more bombastically) as Jake Holmes’ original recording.
But at no time did Led Zeppelin credit Holmes as the composer of the song.
A couple of clarifications:
[ol]
[li]While on tour with The Yardbirds, Page heard Holmes perform “Dazed and Confused” in a Greenwich Village club. Holmes did not “open for” The Yardbirds.[/li]
[li]You’re conflating this story with another one involving alleged LZ thievery. An ongoing court case alleges that Page stole the opening riff of “Stairway to Heaven” from an instrumental entitled “Taurus” by the band Spirit. Spirit DID open for Led Zeppelin.[/li]
[li]Jake Holmes was not British. He was American born in San Francisco.[/li][/ol]
Minor point, but I’d quarrel with “mostly.” The song tells a story and paints a portrait of its narrator that’s pretty clear. IMHO. (I’ve used this song in a high school class, and the kids figure it out when they read the French lyrics in translation.) Some parts are a little nonsensical, but you can follow it. (Part of the problem is the use of Belgian slang.)
Ditto – especially because Parton was a well-known musician and actress and personality when Houston’s version came out. It was many years before I heard that it was Parton’s song.
I will add to the list:
The Clash’s “I Fought the Law” – when looking up the lyrics (again, for classroom use) I discover that it’s a cover, and the original is pretty great! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgtQj8O92eI
Same for “Police On My Back” – great Clash song, but in the last year or so I do a little research to use it in class, find out it’s a cover, and the original is also pretty great! Never heard of The Equals, but they’re pretty badass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXJxYNUoJKs
Also, “Iko Iko.” I grew up hearing the Dixie Cups version on the radio occasionally; then came the cover they used in Rain Man. Not until I watched Treme did I get the New Orleans/Mardi Gras connection and eventually find James “Sugar Boy” Crawford’s original, titled “Jock-a-Mo.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgOrIar_qGk (Another song where the lyrics sound semi-nonsensical at first – but they make a lot more sense once you know about Mardi Gras Indians.)
To show that no one can “out-anal” music/chart freaks, there’s an even further distinction made among these fine folks.
To such individuals, the term “cover” is reserved for the very narrow instance in which two or more artists release their own versions of a song at roughly the same time, and those two or more versions make the charts at the same time.
This was a much more common occurrence in the 1950s (when, for example, there were seven versions of “Only You” on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously). It still happened occasionally in the 1960s, such as Kenny O’Dell’s and Bobby Vee’s competing versions of “Beautiful People” in 1967.
But outside of these rare occasions, in every other instance involving an artist who comes up with his/her/their own version of a song originally done by someone else, and it comes out after some time has passed from the first instance, these are properly referred to as “remakes” rather than “covers.”
As someone who has played in bands for decades and has routinely used the term cover to mean “any song we didn’t write ourselves,” I think the distinction above can properly be reserved for only those very arcane circles. The rest of the world is going to just as properly ignore it.
:eek: You should see the look on my face right now.
I went a on a cruise in August. They had a woman doing a Dolly Parton tribute show and I could not figure out why she was singing that song. Now I know.
Oh shoot, one more – I’d loved The Specials’ “A Message to You, Rudy” for at least 20 years before I found out it’s a cover, too. Dandy Livingstone - Rudy, A Message to You (Official Audio) - YouTube
**So – which do you like better? **
(I prefer the mournfulness of Parton’s version, myself, but I can also see why Houston’s was the monster hit.)
What this points out is the tremendous gulf between the pop charts and the country charts in the U.S. (and probably everywhere else). Dolly Parton actually charted twice on the country charts with this song — the original and a new version she recorded for the film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Both versions reached #1 on the country charts.
But as the majority of listeners to rock/pop radio (at least in those days) never came near a country station, they were unaware of it.
I’d wager the same thing applies to the many pop hits Ray Charles culled from his Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music series of albums. Perhaps pop listeners might have been vaguely aware of the Hank Williams originals of some of them, but I’ll bet few knew that Eddy Arnold originally recorded “You Don’t Know Me” or Don Gibson recorded “I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You.” Even fewer knew that “Busted” was first done by Johnny Cash.
As a charter member of the annoying anal music freak club, almost all of the examples cited here are ones that have long been known to me.
But there was one cover song I didn’t learn about until many years after the fact. My excuse is that the song wasn’t actually a hit at all the U.S., though it did very well in the UK and Europe.
The song is “Alright, Alright, Alright” by Mungo Jerry (the “In the Summertime” guys). I found this on a pile of discarded promo 45s in the 70s and always liked it a lot. But it turns out it’s actually a cover (at least musically, if not lyrically) of a 1966 French hit by Jacques Dutronc.
The first time I heard Alison Krauss’s “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You” was in the Bridget Fonda movie Delivering Milo (2001), and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
Months later, I was trying to find it on YouTube (I wasn't sure of the title), and I stumbled across the original version by The Foundations (1967), which of course I knew, having been born in 1955. The two sound so different, I never made the connection between them until I played them back to back! ** DUH! ** :smack:Exactly. The only Dolly Parton song I remember hearing growing up was “9 to 5.” I knew who she was: the lady with the big hair and, er, big chest who was always on TV – or being joked about on TV (or in the schoolyard – Dolly Parton jokes used to be a thing).
But I never really checked out her magnificent catalog until Whitney Houston died and I finally heard that she wrote “I Will Always Love You.”
The best Dolly Parton joke I heard is the one she told herself on some talk show: “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap!”.
I know next to nothing about her, but you can’t help buy admire someone with that sense of self-deprecating humor.
So I’ve never seen photographic evidence of this, but supposedly Parton has butterfly (?) tattoos all over her arms. I believe I read about this in a news story quoting Roseanne Barr, who claimed to have seen them, so take it with a grain of salt given the source.
Still: I WANT TO BELIEVE that Dolly Parton is a tatted-up lady.
EDIT: who hides her tats from the public.
I’d add time and the generation gap as another gulf, and include sampling along with plain old covering. For example, I’ve had roughly the following conversations w/ younger folk:
“I love this hip hop song, especially the rift!”
“Yeah, that’s Ventura Highway by America.”
“I love this rap song, especially the rift!”
“Yeah, that’s Sundown by Gordon Lightfoot.”
“I love this song about dancing like Uma Thurmond, especially the rift!”
“Yeah, that’s the theme song from The Munsters.”
In another lifetime, I was a country music DJ and emceed many shows.
I don’t recall the artist who did this, but in the midst of one such show, the star looked out into the crowd and said “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to announce that we have a celebrity in the audience! It’s Dolly Parton!” (Amazingly, a few of the patrons actually gasped.)
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he went on to say. “My mistake. It’s just two bald guys sitting next to each other.”
Many of those 80’s ska hits were covers of 60’s ska songs. One Step Beyond by Madness is another one. This led to my realization mentioned by the OP – my sister had a tape of all the originals. Depressing.
Then, it happened again just a few weeks ago – Smoke Two Joints by Sublime is also a cover!