>>… Johnny Rivers. Blue-eyed soul my ass.
Gotta jump in here.
Listen to live Johnny Rivers (from anywhere, but esp. the Hungry i) – just a kid from Loosiana rockin’ the house. If you can ignore the “hits” with their sappy strings and listen to the early stuff, yes, he did have soul.
Trisha Yearwood and LeAnn Rimes both recorded versions of “How Do I Live” and released them both in May of 1997 (yr?), a few sources saying they were in fact released on the same day. They both climbed the country charts, and Rimes’ also climbed the Top 40 as an (oh, the odious word!) “cross-over” hit. Both versions were nominated for the same Grammy, too.
For whatever that’s worth.
How about 8 hours? LaVerne Baker cut “Tweedle Dee” for Atlantic in the morning in 1954/55 or so. In the afternoon Georgia Gibbs(female version of PBoone) had the same background group, the Cues, I believe the same engineer ,Tom Dowd, same musical arrangement, & AFAIK the same band. It was released on Mercury.
Just to clarify the rules of the OP- we’re looking for the shortest time between chart debut of original song, and chart debut of first cover version. Not shortest time between consecutive cover versions (as above), and not shortest time between recordings, as in doctordoowop’s example above.
Carl Perkins - Blue Suede Shoes
Covered several times within a couple months of release.
Hendrix did a cover of “Sgt. Peppers lonely hearts club band” live the day (or the day after) the album was released.
unclviny
I think if you go back into that mid-50s era of Motown, that’s where a lot of covers outpaced the originals. There’s probably several covers that were released BEFORE the originals (Is that possible? Would they really be called “covers” in that case?).
Perhaps the “best achieving” covers were issued in 1957.
Sonny James’ Young Love was released and covered later in the year by Tab Hunter. Charlie Gracie released Butterfly and Andy Williams covered it that year. All four releases topped the charts.
And there’s the sort-of-famous example of Louie Louie, which was written and recorded in the 1950s, but then laid around until the Kingsmen and Paul Revere and the Raiders both decided to record it at the same studio, within two days (or nine, memories differ) of each other.
Both versions then bounced around record companies for the same length of time, and were released virtually simultaneously, only to have the Kingsmen’s version win out.
IIRC, There was a band that my friends and I referred to as “All For John Michael Montgomery” (actually “All For One”), who had a habit of covering JMM songs a few months after he released them.
Not quite as close as some of the examples already given, but Robin Lee’s cover of “Black Velvet” (#15) was released only a few weeks after Alannah Myles’ original (#1).
Linda Ronstadt released Hasten Down the Wind in 1976, the same year that Warren Zevon released the same song.
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned I’m Into Something Good by Earl-Jean (6/27/64) and Herman’s Hermits (8/20/64). Source: Mindbenders day to day musical history.