Entertainment For Lively Minds
Werther's Originals
As I type, my ears are being assailed by one Jackie DeShannon belting out a hoaky, bar-band version of Kim Carnes' Bette Davis Eyes. Wordists better versed in trivia than I may have already known that Jackie was co-author of the song and recorded it seven years before Kim took up the mic. Thanks to Spotify (may its name be praised) I went on to sample Badfinger's original version of Without You. Oh dear. And in both cases, I'm mystified and awestruck by whichever producer or artiste saw such treasure gleaming from within the dun-brown slurry of these songs on first hearing. So point us towards them, Massive, so we can all listen and wonder more: the polished pairings of v. poor source material and its resultant sparkling gem.
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Slightly off subject...
...here is a splendid cover version of a recent hit:
A year before Elvis
That reminds me
Did the (apparently many) demos that P.J. Proby did for the Hound Dog hitmaker ever surface?
Not sure
Not aware of any.
I was just being lazy
Here's one. First P.J.'s demo, then what the Hunka Hunka hitmaker did with it (not a lot, really - surely Elvis must be the only artist to have based his interpretations on what a tribute act had done previously).
Elvis...
...God love him, wasn't blessed with originality when covering songs that he'd discovered. His business was doing these songs, sometimes as virtual carbon copies, and yet making them his. As Archie says, this was piss easy when the original was already hugely influenced by Elvis' style in the first place. To illustrate my point, have a listen to Jerry Reed's Guitar Man, Tony Joe White's Polk Salad Annie, The Box Tops' version of I'm Movin' On, Mort Shuman's (Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame, Terry Stafford's Suspicion, Dallas Frazier's Wearin' That Loved On Look or Sanford Clark's The Fool. Many are so desperately trying to sound like Elvis that for Elvis to cover them was like shooting fish in barrel.
I know which one I prefer
Inexplicably this was the hit, as compared to
"That'll do pig."
Something in my eye etc.....
"PIG" (in a Brummie accent)
(except Pig isn't in the clip - but it was the only one I could find)
Self-covering
Isleys Who’s That Lady 1964
Isleys Who’s That Lady 1973
Gallagher's Copies
Couldn't help reflecting that it's so much easier to identify 'sparkling gem' source material that's been turned into very poor, beige crud copicat versions, sometimes even with different lyrics and chord sequences.
Obligatory reaction
You need counselling man. Let it go...
Saturday Night...
Here's a bit of a musical-cred tautology: a crap hit based on a crap original which was (phew) itself based on asomething pretty good - 'Saturday Night' (mid 90s No.1 hit by blond, possibly not-from-round-here woman whose name escapes me) which I believe a judge concluded was unreasonably based on an eight note phrase in the recent-ish Lindisfarne & Gazza Bo-Diddley-ized version of Lindisfarne's 1971 classic 'Fog On The Tyne'. No doubt Alan Hull pleaded to the judge, 'It's all mine, all mine...' Not sure, if it were me, I would have been so keen to draw attention to that.