John Scalzi over at Whatever came up with a meme that seemed entertaining to me: pick a song that has been covered a lot, and review five cover versions. Mr. Scalzi picks “Unchained Melody”, leading to a bit of discussion of what is a cover and what isn’t. I have a broadish sense of the term, so I apply it to jazz standards, but I am aware that lots of people don’t. Still, I don’t have five versions of anything other than jazz standards. There are a few early R&B songs I have three versions of, and I could probably find two more that I wouldn’t much like to make the review interesting. Not much point in that, though.
What it really did was provide me with the impetus to go through my collection again to see how many recordings I had of what. Unsurprisingly, the “St. Louis Blues” tops the list with twelve different sides; for some time I used the presence of that song as a criterion for purchasing an album. It’s also unsurprising that I have eleven versions of “My Funny Valentine”, since it is Our Song and during the eighteen months or so of my engagement to my Best Reader I kept looking for the best version to use at the reception. The eleven versions of “Honeysuckle Rose” can only be attributed to its ubiquitousness, as I haven’t sought it out, nor is it the theme song for an orchestra I particularly collect. “Sweet Lorraine”, for instance, shows up ten times, but three of those feature Nat King Cole, who particularly liked the song. Similarly, three of my ten versions of “Solitude” are recorded by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and another has the Duke sitting in on piano. Three of the seven versions of “Lover Man” on my hard drive are Billie Holliday’s. On the other hand, the eleven versions of “I Got Rhythm” are all from different singers/bandleaders, and the nine versions of “A Fine Romance” has two Billie Holliday versions and two Fred Astaire versions. I could review five covers of “Mood Indigo” without touching a Duke Ellington recording. I have nine versions of “A Fine Romance” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”, eight of “Someone to Watch Over Me”, “All of Me”, “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love”, and “Oh, Lady be Good”, and seven of “Embraceable You”, “Night and Day”, and “I’ve Got You under my Skin”.
That was fun and time-consuming. I think it’s interesting that quite a few of my real favorites (the “St. James Infirmary”, for instance, or “Do Nothin’ ’til You Hear from Me”) don’t turn up high on the list. Also, it seems odd to me that without having a whole heck of a lot of Fred Astaire, I have three different versions of him doing “Puttin’ on the Ritz”. I mean, yes, but still. OK, time to pick a song and review it.
I’ll pick “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”.
First, the Duke Ellington more-or-less original, which is actually a 1947 recording: The band is really bright-sounding, more like the 50s orchestra than the 30s. The vocal (Al Hibbler) is smooth but not terribly interesting. The instrumental chorus is, of course, marvelous, particularly the voicing behind the sax solo. The trumpet on the bridge is wonderful; it’s probably Ray Nance, but it might be one of the other guys. The ending is quick and a little disappointing, actually.
Etta James: This is from 1961, and there are way too many strings for YHB’s taste. There’s an odd pizzicato rhythm-section thing going on, and some woodwinds come in for the bridge. Ugh. On the other hand, Etta. On the other other hand, Etta is not really believable as someone who doesn’t get around much anymore. She plays up the frustration, rather than the melancholy. And at the end, when she repeats the title again, low and intimate, I get the impression that if she isn’t getting around, she isn’t staying in alone, either. C+
Louis Armstrong: This is from the 1961 Louis and the Duke sessions, and features a small group with the Duke on piano. The great thing about this recording is the great Barney Bigard’s clarinet playing, which winds around and answers Satchmo’s singing. The piano is tinkling in the background through that, and then comes front to take an uninspired solo. The whole thing swings surprisingly gently, up until the last few bars, when Louis gives it a boffo ending. B
Mel Torme: Young Mel, but not Very Young Mel, probably the early sixties. A big band, no backup singers. He does the Mel thing, where he screws around with it. Takes what would be the instrumental chorus himself, soloing around the melody more freely than many instrumentalists do, and of course adding words and phrases as he goes. Also does the intimate repeat thing, but then adds a ‘Yeah’ holler for no apparent reason. B-
Paul McCartney: This is from the Former Soviet Album, recorded live in 1987, and it smokes. The fuzzy guitar noise that replaces the clarinet line isn’t really to my taste, but it suits the version. The instrumental chorus is great (and brief), with piano pounding, guitar slashing, and the drummer whaling. And, you know, vocally, he’s doing that rock star thing that I like. He’s so cute. B+
B.B. King: This is quite early, and not distinctively B.B., either instrumentally or vocally. There’s a good hot brass line, with a plunger mute trumpet at the start that’s very good. When it comes to the instrumental chorus, there’s mostly imitation Duke with trumpet and sax calling back and forth, followed by a very good trumpet. I should look up who that is. B.B. does do some interesting bending of the melody, particularly on the ‘Mind’s more at ease’ part of the bridge, but there’s no guitar solo, and one the whole, you wouldn’t know it was him. B-
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
i don’t even have one version of it. i have a version in my head though, with a nifty electric guitar … probably ella … yah, got it, from the late 50s, from sings the duke ellington song book. i must have heard it in a movie or something. really grabbed me. would this have been with duke’s band?
i would like to say though for the record that mingus’s version of a foggy day, complete with instrumental urban ambient noise, is a kick.
i don’t have 5 of anything apparently. 4 of “all of me” (dinah w., satch, sassy, hot club of san francisco); “caravan” (duke, ella, made in the shade, paris washboard); “guantanamera” (joseito fernandez, estrellas de areito, cuco valoy, wyclef jean); hup, there we go, 6 of “honeysuckle rose”: benny carter, benny goodman, benny reinhardt and benny grappelli, benny fitzgerald, benny waller, and benny armstrong.
“i got rhythm”: tatum, goodman, reinhardt/grappelli, ella, fats waller, mitchell-ruff duo. “solitude”, “st. louis blues”,
“guantamera” is probably a true cover and would be fun to review because the song is generally covered in order to pile on gigantic, inventive instrumental arrangements – wyclef’s layering, including celia cruz singing a straight version as a starting gun, is really pleasurable i think.
Synchronicity… sometime this week I will probably post the results of a rather crazy project L & I undertook Sunday night–listening to the sound clips on iTunes of all fifty-plus versions of Ol’ Man River, and then buying a selection of fifteen having various tempos, styles, excellence, and levels of humor and/or just plain awfulness. The mix CD will be a present for her brother, who likes the song.
There’s one version whose genre we could only describe as “acid trip”, and which we still haven’t managed to hear in its entirity–it’s just too awful, and six minutes long. Other versions–the Temptations, the Beach Boys, Django Reinhardt, the Oscar Peterson Trio–are nifty or clever. The reggae and bassa nova versions are … well, musically they’re competent, but they’re still totally wrong. The manic dixieland version is really odd–do these people know this was originally a dirge? And the tuba version is just … well, can anyone really take a tuba version seriously?
As I said, I hope to post real reviews sometime in the not too distant future.
The UNC college radio station has a show called Hell or High Water that broadcasts stuff from the Southern Folklife Collection. They usually seem to get librarians and folklorists in to do their music selection, and they’ve occasionally done thirty-versions-of-one-song shows. They tend to be a lot of fun if you’re interested in the changes, but I know a lot of people who would run screaming from the mere idea.
On the Old Man River front, I hope you have Paul Robeson in some version or other. He does an astounding job with that piece. Of course, I’m just in love with his voice.
On the meme itself, and checking iTunes here, we appear to have no more than three versions of anything, and only one case (The Butterfly) with that many.
We have a fair number of twos, though. Leaving out the two-versions-by-the-same group case, though, there are only 29 of them–6 by Woody Guthrie, 1 by Leadbelly, and 22 by Trad.
And then there are the 1600 or so songs of which we only have one version.
Yup, the first Ol’ Man River on the CD is the Paul Robeson original Broadway cast recording, and the last is from Paul Robeson’s Carnegie Hall concert thirty years later. What I’ve heard was that the song was written for his voice, which if true would explain why he does such a good job with it 🙂