Try a Little Tenderness goes back quite a bit further than I thought.
Amy Grant recorded that song too.
I was wondering, after reading your first post, if those two would be commented on. Martha Reeves rocked. And Gladys was the one who gave Grapevine a shot, but Marvin owns it.
I didn’t know Elvis covered Hound Dog, that is was originally for **Big Mama Thornton **- and that he bowdlerized the lyrics…
A lot of the early R&R groups of the 50s/60s covered old hits. Spanky and Our Gang covered “Stardust” on one of their albums. “Do You Wanna Dance?”, covered by both The Beach Boys and The Mamas and The Papas was originally done in 1958 by Bobby Freeman.
A lot of the songs I first heard in the 50s/60s and thought were original to that era turned out to be revamped versions of R&B songs or 40s hits. The pop duo Chad & Jeremy had a hit with “Willow Weep For Me”, which was written in 1932!
Cherry Oh Baby is commonly said to have been written by Mick Jagger, not UB40. In fact it was Eric Donaldson who wrote the song, which was first covered by the Stones, then much later by UB40.
As I was checking about this I found out that The Lion Sleeps Tonight was a little…older than I thought. Any guesses? How about… 1939!
Yeah, I’ve read up on the history of the song (I still want to know what that repeated “weemoway” thing means – everybody glosses over it, as if you’re expected to know). Rolling Stone did an entire article on the history of the song, and how the original African creators never saw any royalties from it.
My contribution: Having heard Herman’s Hermits singing it in the 1960s. I didn’t realize that I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am was an OLD music hall ballad from 1910 (!), and that the Hermits were really only singing the chorus.
I was also surprisded to learn that, even in the old days, they sang that chorus fast. My original thought, upon learning its age, was that the Hermits had probably up-tempoed it. But it’s possible they may actually have slowed it down from the way some performers handled it.
I remember Wimoweh from the 50s, by The Seekers (with Pete Seeger). When it came out as a mashup by The Tokens, nobody would believe me that I had heard it in a much earlier version.
Black Oak Arkansas built a whole career on the song “Jim Dandy to the Rescue” with the lead singer calling himself “Jim Dandy.” First sung by LaVern Baker in 1956, though.
“Wimoweh” doesn’t mean anything–it was the Weavers’ phonetic approximation of the Zulu chant in the original song. According to Wiki, the word they were trying to say was uyimbube, which means “you are a lion.”
Did UB40 have any American hits that weren’t remakes?
Here’s what I posted the last two times this topic arose:
Yeah, I have an album called Risque Rhythm, Nasty 50’s R&B. These kids today, with their twerking and crap, thinking they’re so edgy.
Dinah Washington’s Big Long Slidin’ Thing (1954) is my favorite. (It’s about a trombone player.)
ETA: Just listened to it again and I’m compellled to to note that this lady has some serious pipes.
Just wanted to say that the original is soooooo by far the best version of this song. I had it on a tape I made off DMX (and had no idea who did it) and when I heard the “cover” version, I nearly puked and poked my eardrums out with an icepick.
The covers are rich in Suck.
Dr Hook had a big hit with She’s Only 16. I found out years later Sam Cooke had done it first.
Same deal with Ring Star’s You’re 16 (You’re Beautiful & you’re mine), one of the few solos he did that I like. It a cover too. Johnny Burnette did it first.
My mother was born in 1913, and she remembered singing this in grade school, some time in the early 1920s.
From the “male/female top 40 versions” thread:
“You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” Brenda Holloway (1967)/Blood, Sweat & Tears (1969)
(I did not know that!)
Why is it that, so often, if a group or performer is known primarily for one song, that song turns out to be a cover? (Among many examples are the previously mentioned “Don’t You Forget About Me,” and even, for many people, Janis Joplin/BBatHC’s “Piece of My Heart”). Suggests to me that great pop songwriting is a rarer gift than “great” (?) pop song performing.
I have a friend to despises Bob Dylan. He once remarked how much he loves the Jimi Hendrix song “All Along the Watchtower.”
When I told him who wrote that song, he refused to believe me. I had to go on line and show him that it was a Dylan song.
As I mentioned in a recent thread, I was surprised to learn that “Seven Bridges Road” wasn’t original to the Eagles.
For the longest time, I thought Act Naturally was a Lennon-McCartney composition they wrote for Ringo to sing.
The Fireball’s biggest hit “Bottle of Wine” is actually the cover song that made me discover Tom Paxton. Who also wrote a helluva lot of songs covered by a helluva lot of artists.
I got you beat, as a child of the '70s, in the 80s I figured Quiet Riot (heard on U68’s Power Hour!) were the song’s writers. 30 years later, watching some old episodes of the British '70s TV comedy “Doctor At Sea”, there was a scene in the ship’s disco where the DJ was playing “Cum On Feel the Noize”. OK, sounded a bit off but stilll…wait a minute - that episode was filmed a decade before the Quiet Riot release (the show featured the original Slade, took me a bit to find that out).
Seems Quiet Riot quite liked covering Slade, recording “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” as well.
Last time we did this type of thread I learned that Material Issue covered “Kim The Waitress” by Green Pajamas (as did Sister Psychic, who’s version is rather good too). I believe that Material Issue’s video is the only one that featured cannabilism, though.