That’s exactly what I had come here to say.
Unfortunately, Beethoven’s original recordings have been lost.
My mom used to buy those kinds of records for my brother and I when we were tweens in the Seventies. They were from K-Tel.
I had a set of “Greatest 100 Hits of the Seventies” or something like that that introduced me to loads of early Seventies music…by some random cover band.
The first version of “The Guitar Man” that I remember well was a cheap knockoff, not David Gates and Bread. The first version of “Killing Me Softly” I heard was a knockoff of Roberta Flack (though hers was a cover as well). There was even a cover of the theme from Shaft.
This placed me in the odd situation of some times hearing the original after the knock-off and having the same “it’s not the same!” response to the original that we traditionally have when we hear imitations.
Definitely “Cum On Feel the Noize.” As I understand it, Quiet Riot recorded their version as somewhat of a joke, not expecting much to come of it. Of course, it was wildly popular for at least a short time.
I have their cover and Slade’s version on my playlist. I definitely prefer the original, but there’s so little difference that I can’t say it’s a strong preference. Quiet Riot made a lot of money off the cover and I guess that’s justification enough for its existence.
Meg Myers’ version of “Running Up That Hill” is pretty useless. I heard it somewhat frequently on the radio a few years ago, but it didn’t seem to get much traction. Then “Stranger Things” made effective use of the original version by Kate Bush, and it rocketed up the charts.
Are you sure that was K-Tel? The only K-Tel albums I’ve seen (admittedly, a small sample) were compilations of the original recordings. And Wikipedia confirms:
Yes.
Also yes.
Also, Turn the Beat Around by Gloria Estefan. She even copied Vicky Sue Robinson’s vocal flourishes.
Originals for the most part, but ISTR a few tracks (e.g., “Pinball Wizard”) by some group called The New Seekers. I’m assuming that’s when KTel couldn’t get the rights.
Pretty sure. They were definitely covers, and everything my mom bought came from K-Tel. With that said, it is amazing the things I forget every day!
Example: several years back a co-worker brought in her copy of “Free to Be You And Me,” a children’s record full of not-so-subtle feminist themes that we all listened to in the 70s.
I noticed that the whole album had voices of celebrities from the era (e.g. Alan Alda, Mel Brooks, Rosy Greer, and Marlo Thomas of course…even Dick Cavett was there, doing a short reading). I was baffled, as I didn’t remember hearing any of those iconic voices when I was a child.
I called my mom and asked her what kind of cheap knockoff she had bought, and she assured me that we had heard the original with those same celebrity voices as children.
The problem was, at 5 years old I didn’t know any of them, so the voices didn’t stand out as special!
I make a distinction between covers a band plays live and covers they actually record. Live, it’s a shared moment with fans – “We love this song as much as you do!” – so hewing close to the original is cool. But if you record and release it, it’s pretty pointless if you don’t have a fresh take.
Legit question: Do current stars sometimes record and release covers by older artists they admire as a way to throw some royalties their heroes’ way?
Blink 182’s version of “Another Girl, Another Planet” is truly uncanny in that it appears to have destroyed the maximum artistic worth for the minimum musical change.
Sound alike covers aren’t just useless but their origin is in good old-fashioned American racism. Until the late 1950s, Black artists couldn’t get play on white radio stations so white singers would hire the instrumental musicians and producers who made records at the top of the R&B charts and cut a record that sounded almost exactly like the original but sell ten times as many records to white audiences.
True, it was bad, but it was quite different from the original and doesn’t really fit the spirit of the OP’s question.
Found it!
After I read this I thought long and hard and remembered seeing “King’s Road” on the set.
Not K-Tel…it was Pickwick, and they had a cover band named King’s Road that did pretty good imitations.
Wow, reading that list brings back memories. I listened to the King’s Road version of Crocodile Rock so many times! It was years before I heard Sir Elton sing it.
Supposedly Cream made sure Skip James got the royalties he deserved from their cover of “I’m So Glad”. I’m not sure if that’s why they covered it in the first place, though.
Ahhh, Pickwick records, not K-Tel! The folks who gave Lou Reed his start.
Nice that they used a 70s Tiesco Del Rey on the cover. So trashy and wonderful.
I also remember reading that David Bowie recorded his own version of “China Girl” and pushed to make and promote the video because he wanted to help co-writer Iggy Pop get paid.
I wonder if current stars have the same mentality, e.g. Luke Combs giving Tracy Chapman a big boost recently. (Although his cover of “Fast Car” is anything but useless, so this might be a derailment.)
I saw Todd Rundgren live, and he’d spin a wheel with dozens of songs (and other actions) on it, to decide what to do next. A lot of the options were names of his favorite 60s/70s/80s songs, so he did a lot of covers that night. Many of them silly and eye-rolling.
Fun sing-along quality… NOT up to “Let’s release this as a single!” standards.
Perhaps there’s a back story that I’m not aware of, but on its face, it annoys me. I’ve only heard it twice but each time all I could think was “how dare some white dude sing this iconic song about the Black experience, and a female one at that”?
Absolutely no offense, Akaj.
That’s absolutely a valid way to look at it.
I actually find it intriguing that a white country singer would sing something so strongly connected with a female perspective, even calling himself a “checkout girl.” And I never really connected the song with Black experience, even though Chapman is Black – I’d categorize it as “impoverished mother with useless drunk husband” experience, regardless of the protagonist’s race. But as a middle-class white dude I’ll grant there may be a more Black-oriented context that I’ve missed all these years.
Chapman is very complimentary and supportive of Combs’ version. Combs calls the song “perfection” and refused to so much as change the gender in the lyrics.
ETA: “Perfection” referring to Tracy’s composition, not his own version.