I love Johnny Winter’s cover of Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited
The Allman Brother’s cover of Robert Johnson’s Come Into My Kitchen is outstanding
The Rolling Stone’s cover of Just My Imagination is great as well as their cover of Robert Johnson’s Love in Vain
Aerosmith’s cover of the Beatle’s Come Together is quite good…much more ominous.
Stevie Ray Vaughn’s cover of Jimi’s Little Wing
Joe Cocker’s cover of the Boxtops’ The Letter
Bonnie Rait’s cover of Del Shannon’s Runaway
Brother Ray’s cover of America, the Beautiful
Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kevin Mongomery’s cover of Buddy Holly’s Wishing
Any Nitty Gritty Dirt Band cover of any Buddy Holly song, for that matter.
I’m a dork. Just to warn you. And I don’t know if any of this actually counts. Eh.
Anthony Warlow, Unexpected Song
Anthony Warlow, Skylark
Bruno Pelletier, Miserere
Linda Eder, Bridge Over Troubled Water
Michael Ball, Last Night of the World
Michael Ball, Gethsemane
Sarah Brightman, Il Cuore Mio Va (My Heart Will Go On, in Italian)
Though they mixed the lyrics, I go with Cream’s cover of Roberts Johnson’s Crossroads.
Manfred Mann’s version of Blinded by the Light is much better than Bruce Springsteen’s.
Sorry, but I respectfully disagree. Manfred Mann takes an energized, kick-ass rock-and-roll anthem and sucks every bit of life out of it in that over-produced dirge they released. Never has a band so completely misunderstood a song, IMO. Bruce’s version, not surprisingly, is outstanding.
Thre Byrds used only the second verse and the chorus to Dylan’s Mr .Tambourine Man, but they were very effective.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=200596&highlight=covers
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=189726&highlight=covers
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=124185&highlight=covers
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=118550&highlight=covers
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=113594&highlight=covers
By capacitor: “It wasn’t a cover, it was a parody. Big Mama was singing about a no-good mooching man. Elvis was singing about a real hound dog.”
Eh? A real hound dog? I thought everybody knew Elvis was singing about a no good mooching girl and parodied her as a dog. Oh well, just goes to show ya’.
Anyway, are cover and parody mutually exclusive? Since the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber/ Mike Stoller received writer’s royalties for that song from both artists, I’ll assume the music industry considered it to be the same song, and thus a cover.
Ranger: A cover of any Buddy Holly song being better than the original? That’ll Be The Day!
Leiber & Stoller wrote it specifically for Big Mama in about an hour. She couldn’t believe “those 2 white boys” did it. Being the main writers for early Elvis, it made sense he sang it for RCA. It was NOT a parody, despite that rock HATER Steve Allen making Elvis sing it to a dog on his TV show.
I have to change radio stations if I hear it come on… a travesty!!
Throwing a little country in the mix:
Garth Brooks’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “To Make You Feel My Love” and Mary Chapin Carpenter’s cover of John Lennon’s “Grow Old With Me.”
Also (not country), “Dream a Little Dream of Me” done by both the Mamas and the Papas and Mel Tormé. Separately, I mean. There’s an M&P version and a Mel version. They’re both cool in their own way.
One more Dylan cover: Kenny Wayne Sheppard’s cover of “Blue on Black.”
How about Freddie Cannon’s “20th Century Fox.” ? Oh, never mind, thought this was worst.
HA ! Good one ! Hahahahaha If you actually like the song itself , try finding a copy of the Austrailian band Heaven doing it. Allen Fryer’s voice is perfect on that one .