Songs separated at birth

Cafe Society
41

Ripping off the Bo Diddley riff is practically a musical industry tradition.

Diddley did it himself with Mona, Pretty Thing and many others

Among those that base the whole song on it, or offer a tribute to it are

Willie & the Hand Jive - Johnny Otis

I Want Candy - The Strangeloves

Not Fade Away - Buddy Holly

Who Do You Love - notably Quicksilver Messenger Service, which rang the changes through an extended jam on their Happy Trails album with sections called, When You Love, Where You Love, How You Love and Which do You Love and added a version of Diddley’s Mona to boot

Hey Little Girl - Dee Clark

Billy Bones and the White Bird - Elton John

Faith - George Michael

Goose Getting Down - Goose Creek Symphony

Rocky Road - The Dead Reckoners

Iko Iko - Dr. John

Even rodeo’s top country star Chris LeDoux paid homage in his Little Long-Haired Outaw

And the Allman Brothers were known to quote it in their jams

42

“All Day and All of the Night” and the Sex Pistols’ “Submission”

43

Thematically, Elton John’s “Rocket Man” and Harry Nilsson’s “Spaceman” and John’s “I Think I Want to Kill Myself” and Nilsson’s, “I’d Rather Be Dead.” Both of Elton’s songs were on Honkey Chateau and both of Nilsson’s were on Son of Schmillson.

44

Hearing or singing “We’ll Meet Again” always sends me straight into Pink Floyd’s “Vera Lynn.”

45

Bobby McFerrin - Don’t Worry be Happy / 4 Non Blondes - What’s up?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HE8Q_1WD4

46

Funny. It turns into “Ob-La-Di” by the Beatles for me.

47

Deep Purple’s “Painter” and Santana’s “Jingo.” I once did a mashup of the two in the 1970s, mixing from two turntables onto tape.

May have to tackle that again with sophisticated tools.

48

I once did a tape mashup of Floyd’s Money with Zeppelin’s How Many More Times – very similar bassline.

49

Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life and *You Can’t Hurry Love *sound just the same to me.

50

Ooh, remembered one: Bolero and Uptown Girl.

51

Same tune: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and The Alphabet Song

I also used to have a habit of making lyrics fit alternate tunes. So: Amazing Grace = Puff, the Magic Dragon = America the Beautiful = The Billboard Song.

Sorry , I’ve got a toddler. Oh, how I miss grown-up music! ! !

52

Daughtry’s “It’s Not Over” and Fuel’s “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)”. When one comes on the radio, it takes a few seconds for me to figure out which it is.

53

“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” (written in the 1950’s by Anne Bredon as a folk song, covered by Joan Baez, and then again, presumably with an entirely different spin, by Led Zeppelin in 1969), and Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4,” which came out in 1970.

Chicago used Led Zep’s machine-gun guitar/bass descending motif (“dum-dum-dum-dum-dum! [beat] dum-dum-dum-dum-dum! [beat]…”) but overlaid the whole thing with a soaring melody carried by their horn section and added snare drum licks to fill the interstitial beats: (“dum-dum-dum-dum-dum! [snare lick] dum-dum-dum-dum-dum! [snare lick]…”).

Or as the Wiki article dryly notes: “One year after the album *Led Zeppelin *was released in 1969, Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4” came out as a single, and sounds similar to the progression used in the Led Zeppelin version.[5]”

54

Back in the '70s, I was surprised to learn that those two were not both by the same artist.