Ones

A common musical theme, the best known version of a song by this title is One by Three Dog Night (U2's song by the same name is a close second), a big hit in 1969.  The song was written by Harry Nilsson, a mostly-forgotten figure now, but a well known songwriter and singer in the late 60s and early 70s and one of the first popularizers of Randy Newman songs.  His two biggest hits were covers, Everybody's Talkin' At Me (from the film Midnight Cowboy) and the bombastic Without You, true 70s dreck.  This is a great Nilsson original, Without Her (you really should listen to the linked clip).  He was also a drinking buddy of John Lennon and Ringo Starr and worked on recordings with all four of the former Beatles.


My favorite cover of the song is by Aimee Mann.  This is her 1995 version (later featured in the movie Magnolia).  You may remember Aimee as the bass player and lead singer for Til Tuesday which had a hit with Voices Carry in the 1980s.

Here's her version of One (the woman in the video is not Mann).

And this is her 2009 version of Voices Carry.

Aimee also played one of the German nihilists in The Big Lebowski.  Another of the nihilists was portrayed by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers while Peter Stormare played the lead nihilist (can you have a lead nihilist?).  During his prior Coen Brothers appearance in Fargo, Stormare inserted Steve Buscemi into a wood chipper.  And, to close the circle, Buscemi plays the gentle and constantly perplexed Theodore Donald "Donny" Kerabatsos in The Big Lebowski but he is not inserted into a wood chipper in that film though, as in the previous movie, his remains end up scattered on the ground.

Smells Like 2 Cellos

A year ago today THC wrote about its favorite cover version of Smells Like Teen Spirit.  To celebrate we'll go with another fun cover of that song from 2 Cellos.

My Funny Valentine

Don't change your hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little valentine, stay
Each day is Valentine's Day

My Funny Valentine from the 1937 Broadway show Babes In Arms, written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Here are two very different covers of the song.

Frank Sinatra from the 1950s (the girl is his daughter, Nancy Jr)


This is Elvis Costello's version from 1978.  It has a more chilling tone.

Cream Of The Covers

In the mid-60s, Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker of Cream brought the blues to a whole new and wider audience (a new entry in the Covers series).

Here are two of many examples, I'm So Glad (from Cream's first album, Fresh Cream) and Crossroads (from their third album, Wheels Of Fire).   You can click on the song titles to hear the Cream versions.  Crossroads is live and features outstanding bass playing by Bruce and incendiary guitar by Clapton (particularly on the second solo).

I'm So Glad was written by Skip James.  Born in 1902 and raised in the Mississippi Delta, James recorded this song and others in a 1931 recording session.  An album was released but sold poorly and James drifted in and out of music and did no further recording for thirty years.

In the early 1960s a folk-based blues revival movement began in the U.S. and in 1964 one of its founders, John Fahey, tracked down Skip James at a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi.  Later that summer, James played at the Newport Folk Festival and made several recordings before dying in 1969.  Cream's version of I'm So Glad was the first cover of a James song by a popular rock band.
Another Delta musician, Robert Johnson, the composer of Cross Road Blues, is probably the most legendary of the early bluesmen.  He made several recordings in 1936 and 1937 before dying at the age of 27 the following year under mysterious circumstances (including a rumour that he was poisoned by a jealous husband).  There are many other covers of his songs including Love In Vain, which was covered by the Rolling Stones.  This is the original Cross Road Blues.
From a cinematic perspective James and Johnson come together in the movie, O Brother Where Art Thou?  In the film, set in 1930s Mississippi, three white escapees from a chain gang pick up a black blues musician named Tommy Johnson (played by Chris Thomas King) at a crossroads.  Later in the film King does a haunting version of Skip James' Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.

This Is The End (Of Reading Rainbow)

Channeling Jim Morrison, this is Jimmy Fallon & Co doing a spot-on imitation of The Doors.


As long as we're in Jimmy Fallonland, here he is with The Roots and Carly Rae Jepsen doing a version of her (very) annoyingly catchy tune Call Me Maybe, using an array of unusual instruments.

Covers

My nominee for the worst cover of all time.  Has anyone ever been able to watch this video all the way to the end?  You can find the original here.

Covers

All Along The Watchtower

A beautiful original with tension building throughout the song that's left unresolved with the final line: "two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl", followed by a brilliantly reimagined cover version.


Bob Dylan (Original - released Nov 22, 1967):     Haunting, full of foreboding
Jimi Hendrix (Cover - released Sept 21, 1968):   'POCALYPSE COMIN' - LET'S ROCK!!!

Hendrix started recording his version on January 21, 1968 after hearing the song for the first time that day and kept making changes and adding guitar parts until August.  He also played bass with Mitch Mitchell from the Experience on the drums.  Dylan did the original with five takes on one day (Nov 5).  Dylan has talked about how he started playing the song differently in concert after hearing the Hendrix version.

Covers

What makes for a good cover?  There are cover bands who do very skilled, precise and exact versions of  original tunes but that's not what I'm talking about.  It's taking someone else's song and making it your own through arrangement and vocal style.  Oh, and giving credit to the original composer is also important (see my prior post on The Evolution of Dazed and Confused).

I'm going to occasionally write about some of my favorite covers and we'll start with this one.

Here's Hoagy Carmichael with his 1930 composition, Georgia On My Mind

Nice tune, good lyric.

Now here is the Ray Charles version from 1960.  Listen to the creativity in Ray's arrangement along with his vocal which take the song to a different emotional level.  You can listen to it over and over again and I have.

Here's another Ray Charles cover - America The Beautiful.  Another great arrangement and vocal.  And he also transposed the verses, singing the little known second verse first which makes this a song about sacrifice for a greater cause instead of a travelogue.  The combination also takes this song to another emotional level.

Occasionally people have suggested that the The Star Spangled Banner be replaced as our national anthem.  I've never agreed but I could be persuaded to make it America The Beautiful if the only approved version used Ray's arrangement!

Smells Like . . . You're A Teenager in Love

Hey, now you can understand the lyrics to the best song of the 90s!  And, yes, these are the real lyrics.  Courtesy of The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain.