So here's ten more bold covers!
#10: Amy Winehouse's cover of the Teddy Bears' "To Know Him Is To Love Him." A few years ago in my "Rhetoric of Rock and Roll Course" I required students to read Greil Marcus' excellent book The History of Rock 'N' Roll in Ten Songs (Yale University Press, 2014). Yep, "To Know Him Is To Love Him" is one of Marcus' ten songs. The tune was written by Phil Spector and released by his doo-wop group The Teddy Bears in 1958. Winehouse released her cover in 2006, a powerful rendition that prompted Marcus to say that the song "took forty-eight years to find its voice." Writing about Amy's live performance of the song at the BBC studios, Marcus went further:
"In the three seconds that it took her to climb through the first five words, to sing 'To know, know, know him,' you were in a different country than any the song had ever reached before . . . each word as she sang it demanding to be the last word . . . the song expanded as if, all those years, it had been waiting for this particular singer to be born, and was only now letting out its breath."
Independent of this particular song, Suzi Quatro is one of the most important artists in the history of rock, in large part because she established an independent, rockin' female persona that ended up opening doors for women in the genre. Some might argue that Joan Jett, who is actually in Oshkosh as I write this on July 11, owes her entire act to Suzi.
Quatro has stated in interviews that Elvis called her in 1974 to say that her version of "All Shook Up" was his favorite. He invited her to Graceland but she declined to visit.
From Rockford, Illinois, Cheap Trick had been jamming tunes like "Ain't That A Shame" in Midwestern bars for years, then became popular in Japan, and then finally made it big in the States with their 1979 "Live at Budokan" album. What I love about Cheap Trick's cover of "Ain't That A Shame" is Bun E. Carlos' (born Brad Carlson) drumming in the first two minutes. If you're a fan of 1950's and early 1960's rock, in those two minutes you'll hear Bun E borrowing just about every drum lick from that era. Those two minutes represent one of the most ass-kicking attention getters in the history of rock and roll.
#7: Joss Stone's cover of the White Stripes' "Fell in Love With a Girl." When I first heard "Fell in Love With a Girl" in 2001, to me it sounded like Jack White imitating Jack White imitating Joey Ramone--or something like that. For me the fast pace and soaring guitar took away from the clever lyrics. But the song was widely acclaimed and became one of the Stripes' most popular, so what do I know.
Joss Stone's soul version ("Fell in Love With a Boy"), released in 2003 on her first album ("The Soul Sessions"), captures the craziness of this thing called love in what sounds like a more mature way than the Stripes' "from the gut" style. The irony is that Stone was only sixteen years old at the time of the recording.
The Black Crowes' version of the tune is noteworthy because in 1990 it represented a resurgence of guitar-centered rock and roll after 10 years of MTV electro-pop dominating the airwaves. With "Hard to Handle" the Crowes introduced a new generation to the excitement of a mid-1960s style of rock.
#5: Canned Heat's cover of Henry Thomas's "Bull Doze Blues." Okay, so technically this might be considered an "adaptation" in the sense that Canned Heat's "Going Up The Country" borrows the melody and instrumental styling but added a rock beat and changed the lyrics. Still, the tunes are close enough that "cover" is appropriate as a descriptor.
"Bull Doze Blues" was recorded in 1928 and--like most recordings of that time period--has a remarkable authenticity to it. When people say things like, "back in the day artists were passionate about their art," they have pieces like "Bull Doze Blues" in mind.
Released in 1968, Canned Heat's "Going up the Country" became nothing less than an anthem of the Woodstock generation. There will never be another vocalist like the late Alan Wilson. Just an incredible adaptation/cover that has aesthetic, cultural, and even political significance. Imagining a place where the water tastes like wine, where WE can stay drunk all the time expresses a desire for community that will always exist as long humans inhabit the earth.
"Bull Doze Blues" was recorded in 1928 and--like most recordings of that time period--has a remarkable authenticity to it. When people say things like, "back in the day artists were passionate about their art," they have pieces like "Bull Doze Blues" in mind.
Released in 1968, Canned Heat's "Going up the Country" became nothing less than an anthem of the Woodstock generation. There will never be another vocalist like the late Alan Wilson. Just an incredible adaptation/cover that has aesthetic, cultural, and even political significance. Imagining a place where the water tastes like wine, where WE can stay drunk all the time expresses a desire for community that will always exist as long humans inhabit the earth.
#4: Disturbed's cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence."
"The Sound of Silence" was released in 1965, but I don't think I actually listened to it seriously until my first year in high school (1975). The song has everything a nerdy, alienated, big city high school freshman in Catholic school would find attractive: a paradoxical title ("silence" somehow making a "sound"), a critique of so-called modern civilization ("and the people bowed and prayed/to the neon god they made"), and a declared vision of people as cold and brain dead. I'm certain that this song and others like it helped motivate me to read serious literature in philosophy, religious studies, sociology, and other fields. My ultimate interest in Rhetoric and Communication Studies came out of a desire, I am quite sure, to find a way to put whatever wisdom I culled from that literature into some kind of action. So thank you Paul Simon for being one of the sparks!
I hope today there are some nerdy high schoolers reacting to Disturbed's "Sound of Silence" in similar ways. Singer David Draiman's vocals on this cover can only be called "epic." If Luciano Pavarotti had been a rock singer, he would have sounded like Draiman in this cover: impossible for any listener to tune out once the tune is in aural range. It should also be noted that Draiman and Disturbed chose a perfect time to release the song: in 2015 the world was arguably much more fucked up than in 1965, and the tune offered an unpleasant (but necessary) reminder of that.
"The Sound of Silence" was released in 1965, but I don't think I actually listened to it seriously until my first year in high school (1975). The song has everything a nerdy, alienated, big city high school freshman in Catholic school would find attractive: a paradoxical title ("silence" somehow making a "sound"), a critique of so-called modern civilization ("and the people bowed and prayed/to the neon god they made"), and a declared vision of people as cold and brain dead. I'm certain that this song and others like it helped motivate me to read serious literature in philosophy, religious studies, sociology, and other fields. My ultimate interest in Rhetoric and Communication Studies came out of a desire, I am quite sure, to find a way to put whatever wisdom I culled from that literature into some kind of action. So thank you Paul Simon for being one of the sparks!
I hope today there are some nerdy high schoolers reacting to Disturbed's "Sound of Silence" in similar ways. Singer David Draiman's vocals on this cover can only be called "epic." If Luciano Pavarotti had been a rock singer, he would have sounded like Draiman in this cover: impossible for any listener to tune out once the tune is in aural range. It should also be noted that Draiman and Disturbed chose a perfect time to release the song: in 2015 the world was arguably much more fucked up than in 1965, and the tune offered an unpleasant (but necessary) reminder of that.
#3: Imelda May's cover of Tiny Bradshaw's "Train Kept a Rollin." Irish rockabilly revivalist Imelda May is most influenced by Johnny Burnette's 1956 great cover of the tune, but I just want to be clear in these "Bold Cover Tunes" posts about where the songs originally come from. Tiny Bradshaw's 1951 original version is a kind of jump-jazz number that anticipated the excitement of early rock and roll. Maybe that's why Burnette covered it.
After Burnette there were two covers of the song now widely considered to be definitive: The Yardbirds' 1965 version with Jeff Beck on guitar and Aerosmith's amazing 1974 rendition.
It would be tough for any rock and roller to top Burnette's, the Yardbirds', or Aerosmith's energized versions of "Train Kept a Rollin." I don't think that May does top them--which is okay because the point here is that she is being BOLD. May's is the first really great 21st century performance of the song, with her and her band managing to honor the previous covers without devolving into karaoke. For me, the way she sings "New Yawk City" with a Brooklyn accent is by itself worth the price of admission.
After Burnette there were two covers of the song now widely considered to be definitive: The Yardbirds' 1965 version with Jeff Beck on guitar and Aerosmith's amazing 1974 rendition.
It would be tough for any rock and roller to top Burnette's, the Yardbirds', or Aerosmith's energized versions of "Train Kept a Rollin." I don't think that May does top them--which is okay because the point here is that she is being BOLD. May's is the first really great 21st century performance of the song, with her and her band managing to honor the previous covers without devolving into karaoke. For me, the way she sings "New Yawk City" with a Brooklyn accent is by itself worth the price of admission.
#2: Patti Smith's cover of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." In 2016 Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." No doubt the words to tunes like "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," Dylan's 1962 mysterious but vivid depiction of a post-apocalyptic planet, were what the judges were thinking of as they pondered whether a songwriter should get a prize for literary greatness.
The song has been covered extensively over the years, by everyone from reggae star Jimmy Cliff to the legendary Bryan Ferry.
Patti Smith has been performing the song for many years. Nearly 70 years old at the time, her performance at the Nobel Prize Award ceremony in Stockholm in 2016 was memorable in part because she got nervous about two minutes in and had to start over. In this era of lip syncing and other performance aids that often hide talent deficits, there was something refreshingly HUMAN about Smith's apology for the pause and the audience's super supportive response to her. In a way that was fully appropriate given the man being honored, the unpredictability of Smith's performance can absolutely be called "Dylanesque." By the last few minutes her performance brings me to tears.
The song has been covered extensively over the years, by everyone from reggae star Jimmy Cliff to the legendary Bryan Ferry.
Patti Smith has been performing the song for many years. Nearly 70 years old at the time, her performance at the Nobel Prize Award ceremony in Stockholm in 2016 was memorable in part because she got nervous about two minutes in and had to start over. In this era of lip syncing and other performance aids that often hide talent deficits, there was something refreshingly HUMAN about Smith's apology for the pause and the audience's super supportive response to her. In a way that was fully appropriate given the man being honored, the unpredictability of Smith's performance can absolutely be called "Dylanesque." By the last few minutes her performance brings me to tears.
#1: Aretha Franklin's cover of Otis Redding's "Respect." Another Otis Redding cover! Rolling Stone Magazine gave Aretha's cover a ranking of #5 on their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. I can't say it much better than Rolling Stone:
Otis Redding wrote "Respect" and recorded it first, for the Volt label in 1965. But Aretha Franklin took possession of the song for all time with her definitive cover, made at Atlantic's New York studio on Valentine's Day 1967. "Respect" was her first Number One hit and the single that established her as the Queen of Soul. In Redding's reading, a brawny march, he called for equal favor with volcanic force. Franklin wasn't asking for anything. She sang from higher ground: a woman calling an end to the exhaustion and sacrifice of a raw deal with scorching sexual authority. In short, if you want some, you will earn it.
Thank you for taking the time to engage part II in Media Rants' series on Bold Cover Tunes. Not sure if there will be a part III, but if you follow this blog you will be the first to know!
Otis Redding wrote "Respect" and recorded it first, for the Volt label in 1965. But Aretha Franklin took possession of the song for all time with her definitive cover, made at Atlantic's New York studio on Valentine's Day 1967. "Respect" was her first Number One hit and the single that established her as the Queen of Soul. In Redding's reading, a brawny march, he called for equal favor with volcanic force. Franklin wasn't asking for anything. She sang from higher ground: a woman calling an end to the exhaustion and sacrifice of a raw deal with scorching sexual authority. In short, if you want some, you will earn it.
Thank you for taking the time to engage part II in Media Rants' series on Bold Cover Tunes. Not sure if there will be a part III, but if you follow this blog you will be the first to know!
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