Covers

Remove this Banner Ad

Log in to remove this ad.

There's a bit of "what's the point?" with instrumental cover versions of famous albums/songwriters - it's a bit like the music/muzak I would hear watching the test pattern ABCTV on a Saturday afternoon while I was waiting for the WAFL football broadcast to start.

First off: Alan Jenkins & The Kettering Vampires from their Velvet Underground & Nico album Femme Fatale



Los Straitjackets from their Nick Lowe covers album What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love & Understanding



The Brinsley Schwarz original What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love & Understanding I used to have on an LP which I now regret having sold off



The Thurston Lava Tube - Ziggy Stardust. I think this is another Alan Jenkins project - I haven't looked into this deeply enough to find out if the "surf instrumental bands of the world" is real, or just different made-up names of groups performed by the same musicians.

 
Last edited:
stax on the mull said:
Los Straitjackets from their Nick Lowe covers album What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love & Understanding
Click to expand...
Love the Straitjackets. First heard them at the Seattle Bumbershoot Music Fest back in the 80s. Came around a corner in a less busy area of the park by a C stage where the music was kind of blocked and got blasted with this absolutely thumping surf bass and drum. Got closer, heard the guitars and WTF they're wearing wrestling masks LOL. That was it, I'm in. :thumbsu:
 
Last edited:
I’ve been avoiding this thread for years because I know of far too many examples of pop/rock songs that can be traced back over the decades to earlier folk/country/blues melodies from the American South/Appalachians (see also the related “Song’s That Sound Too Similar” thread). Here’s one example of literally hundreds of example, tracing the history of just one song.

In 1978, the British beat band, Status Quo, had a big international hit with ’Wild Side Of Life’ -


But back in 1951, the same songs was a # 1 country hit for innovative Texan western swing performer, Hank Thompson - quickly followed by the first # 1 solo hit by a country female performer, Kitty Wells, using the same melody but with answering lyrics from the female point of view. Here are both -


But Hank Thompson’s version wasn’t the original. In 1950, William Warren’s wife of 8 months left him. A few weeks later, Warren saw his now ex-wife drinking and carousing with a few cowboys at a Texas honky-tonk. Devastated, he went home and immediately wrote lyrics about the event. Warren then gave the song to Jimmy Heath and the Melody Masters, a local group that played in the honky-tonk his ex-wife regularly visited. As soon as she heard the song, she immediately knew who wrote the lyrics and what inspired them -


But the melody for ‘Wild Side Of Life’ was taken from Roy Acuff’s ‘The Great Speckled Bird’, a huge hit in 1937, the lyrics having a religious theme. This song propelled Roy Acuff to become the first solo country music star and the main act of the Grand Ole Opry -


However, Acuff’s ‘Great Speckled Bird’ in turn took the melody from the founding family of country music, The Carter Family’s ‘I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes’, recorded in 1929 -


Five recordings, 4 sets of lyrics, 4 members of the Country Music HoF, a UK beat group and all having massive hits with with the same tune.

Country music legend A. P. Carter, along with his African-American friend Lesley Riddle, travelled around the South and especially the Appalachians in the 1920’s, collecting hundreds of ancient melodies and their new lyrics as material for the Carter Family. ‘I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blues Eyes’ was one of the hillbilly folk songs he uncovered. In 1929 it became a huge hit for the family. While this hauntingly sad story of a love that had been lost far across the sea was new to most of the listening public, the melody was familiar to many who had been raised around the English folk music tradition. The fact was that the musical riffs and strains had come across the Atlantic a couple of hundred years before A.P. Carter had collected the tune’s Americanised verses. While “I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blues Eyes” was the first popular use of the tune, it was not the only one. Sara Carter, A. P.’s wife, remembered hearing other versions of it when she was a child.

I saw a listing some 20 years ago of pop and rock songs that had made the Billboard charts whose melodies were traced back to the folk/country/gospel songs collected by A.P. Carter and Lesley Riddle. The list was over 700 songs!
 
Last edited:

(Log in to remove this ad.)

I probably should have realised that these two versions were the same song by the song titles: "Teasin' You" and "Teasing You Again" but the transformation is remarkable. Only picked it up when I noticed the word "popcorn" appeared in both songs - although I don't know what the exact meaning of the putdown is. New Orleans slang?

I like the 70's version by Willie Tee better with the piano being prominent and the punchy horn arrangement of the original removed. The first version also appears on the b-side of his later recorded biggest hit: "Walking Up A One Way Street" - a song which makes it onto a lot of classic soul and mod compilations.



 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Remove this Banner Ad

Back
Top