Ultimate Oldies But Goodies Collection Has Arrived

Happily, Time-Life’s new Ultimate Oldies But Goodies Collection box set, graciously sent to me from the compilation’s producer, Joe Sasfy, arrived late last week. I would like to say that I am now ready to present my informed opinion of the recently-released box set, but I simply didn’t have the time this weekend to sit down and gather my thoughts on it—three days is neither time enough to fully assess the contents nor fully assess the presentation. I most certainly will offer my considered judgment as soon as I’m able, very soon. I suspect that many of those who have come across my blog as the result of a web search already have seen the amusing infomercial being hosted by former Sha Na Na member Bowzer, and want to know, frankly, if the collection is worth the money: it is currently listed on Time-Life’s website at $149.95 (with free shipping), which works out to less than $.99 a song, the current price of a download at Apple’s iTunes. I can’t say I’m ready to pronounce my final judgment on the collection at this point—whether it is worth paying $150 for (although I have seen it for sale on eBay for much less), that is to say. I can say, though, that the box consists of five jewel cases tucked within a handsome, sturdy case that imitates in miniature the old portable LP caddy with a latch and handle in which one would cart around one’s vinyl records. And like the old portable caddy, the case lid hinges at the top rear so that you merely tip the lid back to open it up. Snugly tucked inside the case are five individual jewel cases each holding two discs, the first CD in each labeled Side A and the second Side B; each disc contains 16 songs for a total of 32 songs in each individually titled unit—except for the fifth, the one titled “The Ultimate One Hit Wonders Collection,” which, for some mysterious reason, contains only 15 songs on each of the two discs (surely there were more than a mere thirty songs from this period qualifying as “One Hit Wonders”). Hence, just as the promotional advertisements claim, there are 158 songs included in the collection. Each individual jewel case has been allotted its own accompanying 8-page booklet containing liner notes on various songs and/or artists contributed by critic John Morthland.

The song selection ranges from 1954-1962, with the vast majority of them, as one might expect, from 1956-59. Nineteen of the songs date from 1960-61; only one (The Corsairs’ “Smoky Places”) dates from 1962. Rather than being organized chronologically (my own preferential form of organization), the songs are (loosely) grouped thematically. Hence each of the five 2/CD cases is given a title: the aforementioned “Ultimate One Hit Wonders Collection,” plus titles derived from the name of a song included in the individual subset: “Teen Beat,” “Rock Around the Clock,” “Raunchy,” and “Sh-Boom.” Whether a thematic (or perhaps lyrical) form of organization is optimal in this instance is debatable, as each disc contains songs from different years and consisting of different styles. For instance, “Teen Beat” intersperses instrumentals throughout the two sides—e.g., “Tequila,” “Honky Tonk (Part 2),” “Teen Beat”—but these songs are placed side-by-side with songs such as Larry Williams’ “Short Fat Fannie” and—oddly—The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley.” Why not a whole disc (“side”) devoted to instrumentals? The argument might be that such as presentation imitates the format of Top 40 radio, when commercial programming would have dictated such heterogeneous presentation. Perhaps, but then why not organize the songs by year of release, and then in turn present them in order of release, when the information on the songs' chart position (available in the booklet) would make a bit more sense, contextually speaking?

At this point I’m still working my way through the selections and the way they are sequenced on the individual discs, so again, I’m not ready at this moment to present my final assessment. But I wanted those many individuals searching for information on the collection to have my initial thoughts. I’m loath to delay further, but there’s currently too much at the moment on my proverbial plate. I hope this information is useful to those considering purchasing the collection. More in a few short days.

Caravan of Prophets, Seers & Sages

Previously, in my entries of May 16, May 31, July 1, July 22, and August 18, I have discussed at length my experiment of trying to listen to all the rock and R&B albums released in the calendar year 1968 in the order in which they were released. Please refer to these earlier blog entries for the explanation for such an unusual project (and all its pitfalls). Listed below is October's listening schedule, for anyone wishing to duplicate my experiment. As I’ve reiterated many times, I cannot claim my list is infallible, but I continue to work to improve it. If you look back over the previous postings, you'll notice that I have continued to add to, and revise, them once I've received new or updated information. Here's the list I have assembled for October 1968, a rather interesting month in terms of the heterogeneity of albums released.

The Association, Greatest Hits
The Beau Brummels, Bradley's Barn
Canned Heat, Living the Blues
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Strictly Personal
Caravan, Caravan
Cream, [Live Cream Vol. II] [3/9-10 & 10/4] [March 1972]
Jethro Tull, This Was
Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland 10/14
Nazz, Nazz
Procol Harum, Shine on Brightly
Sly and the Family Stone, Life
Traffic, Traffic
Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention, [Ahead of Their Time] [10/23] [1993]
Tyrannosaurus Rex, Prophets, Seers & Sages - The Angels of the Ages 10/14

Additions and/or emendations are, as always, welcome.

A Head With Hair

Perhaps because our society largely judges one another by appearances, clothes, weight, and hair are crucial factors contributing to what is known as “body image.” Perhaps that explains why, for as long as I can remember, hair has been so frequently referred to in lyrics to popular songs. When I was a small boy, Elvis’s hair was a topic of conversation: he used oils and creams to “grease” his hair, in imitation of black men who used oils and creams to straighten their hair in order for it to look like white men’s hair. Soon after, the Beatles’ hair became a controversial issue, and soon after that hippies and their (long) hair became a subject of controversy. In the 1970s, rock stars preferred “blow-dried” hair; subsequently, in the 1980s, hair dryers and gels contributed to the cultivated image of what are now referred to as “hair bands.” For as long as I can remember, hair has received as much attention as clothes and weight.

There are lots of songs about hair; there has even been a list compiled of songs about hair. If one is only concerned about compiling songs with the word "hair" in the title, then the list might remain rather short. But songs about hair are far more plentiful than such a narrowly defined list might suggest. Hence I have also set out to compile a list of songs about hair, but I have not felt especially compelled to limit my choices to mere titles, but to crucial references to hair in the lyrical content. To the aforementioned list, I add the list below, not exhaustive by any means, but a good indication of the extent to which hair is frequently invoked more than titles alone might indicate, and in ways that might be surprising. Hair isn’t simply eroticized or fetishized in these songs: it is a sign of individuality, non-conformity, but also a form of sexual innuendo.

America – Sister Golden Hair
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Hair Pie: Bake 1 and Hair Pie: Bake 2
Johnny Burnette – You’re Sixteen
Rodney Carrington – The Pubic Hair Song
The Cowsills – The Rain, The Park & Other Things
Elvis (Presley) – Treat Me Nice
Five Man Electrical Band – Signs
Stephen Foster – Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair
Hall & Oates – Sara Smile
Don Henley – Dirty Laundry
Waylon Jennings – Amanda
George Jones – Would They Love Him Down in Shreveport
Willie Nelson – Red Headed Stranger
Nazareth – Hair of the Dog
Dolly Parton – Jolene
Gene Pitney – She Lets Her Hair Down
Jimmie Rodgers – Honeycomb
Kenny Rogers and The First Edition – Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town
Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band – Night Moves
Sammi Smith – Help Me Make It Through the Night
Sonny and Cher – I Got You Babe
Conway Twitty – I’d Love to Lay You Down
Leroy Van Dyke – I Fell In Love With a Pony Tail
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London

Vestis Verum Reddit

In last night’s blog on the subject of “sleaze,” I said that, considered as a matter of fashion or style, sleaze does not immediately invoke glamor—indeed, it seems resolutely anti-glamorous, a fashion statement which is firmly anti-fashion. Since the adjective "sleazy" originally was used as “a slur on cheap products from Silesia,” primarily cheap or inexpensive cloths and fabrics, I woke up this morning, for rather obvious reasons, thinking about clothing. Vestis verum reddit Quintilianus observed, “Clothes make the man,” and that ancient adage seems to be true at least far as popular music is concerned.

Here’s roughly two dozen pop songs exploring the old adage vestis verum reddit:

The Beatles – Baby’s in Black
Clarence Carter – Patches
Bob Dylan – Boots of Spanish Leather
Bob Dylan – Man in the Long Black Coat
The Eagles – Those Shoes
John Fred and His Playboy Band – Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)
The Hard-Ons – Girl in a Sweater
The Hollies – Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)
Brian Hyland – Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
Dickey Lee – Patches
The Steve Miller Band – Abracadabra
Dolly Parton – Coat of Many Colors
Buzz Rabin – Angels in Red
Otis Redding – Try A Little Tenderness
Diane Renay – Navy Blue
Marty Robbins – A White Sport Coat (And a Pink Carnation)
The Rolling Stones – Factory Girl
The Royal Teens – Short Shorts
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels – Devil With A Blue Dress
Sonny and Cher – Baby Don’t Go
Rod Stewart – You Wear It Well
Traffic – The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
The Velvet Underground with Nico – Venus in Furs
Bobby Vinton – Blue Velvet
Stevie Wonder – The Woman in Red
ZZ Top – Sharp Dressed Man

Sleazy

My previous blog entry discussed the word “raunchy,” in which I concluded by saying there was a rather significant difference between the meanings of raunchy and sleazy, insisting that the words are in no way synonymous, and indeed they are not. Raunchy is a term derived originally from the operation of the olfactory organ: the word raunchy was most likely derived from the Latin rancidus, meaning “rank” or “stinky.” In contrast, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the adjective sleazy dates from around 1644 and was used, according to William Safire, as “a slur on cheap products from Silesia,” particularly fabrics:

1644, “hairy, fuzzy,” later “flimsy, unsubstantial” (1670), of unknown origin; one theory traces it somehow to Silesian “of the eastern German province of Silesia” (Ger. Schleisen), where fine linen or cotton fabric was made (Silesia in ref. to cloth is attested in Eng. from 1674; and Sleazy as an abbreviated form is attested from 1670, but OED is against this). Sense of “sordid” is from 1941; sleaze (n.) “condition of squalor” is a 1967 back-formation; meaning “person of low moral standards,” and the adj. form, are attested from 1976.

The word sleaze encompasses the worlds of music, art and fashion in the same way the words “Punk” and “Grunge” do, but whereas the latter two movements (strongly associated with a particular form of popular music, rock) had exemplary figures or “stars” (e.g., Johnny Rotten, Kurt Cobain) whose striking singularity attracted the interest of outsiders, sleaze does not. Sleaze is not organized around any glamorous key figures, and while it resolutely lacks glamor, it most certainly expresses an “attitude” – an adopted form of behavior and a preferred set of values. To understand sleazy (understood as a form of cheap, or poorly made clothing) as sordid is to invoke the latter word’s etymology: sordid is from the Latin sordidus “dirty,” from sordere “be dirty, be shabby” (as in attire), sordere related to sordes, “dirt.” But to be sleazy can also mean to be morally corrupt, a meaning also derived from sordid by the process of metaphorical elaboration, meaning “festering” (as in corrupted, or infected), but also “foul, low, [and] mean [common, without distinction].”

A Sampling of Sleazy Songs:
[In some instances, the featured artist may not be the composer of the song]

The Doors – The End
Tommy James & the Shondells – Hanky Panky
Mary MacGregor – Torn Between Two Lovers
Meatloaf – Paradise By the Dashboard Light
Nine Inch Nails – Closer
Prince – Darling Nikki
John Prine – Let’s Invite Them Over
Gary Puckett and the Union Gap – Young Girl
The Rolling Stones – When the Whip Comes Down
Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs – Li’l Red Riding Hood
Millie Small – My Boy Lollipop
Soft Cell – Seedy Films
Starland Vocal Band – Afternoon Delight
Rod Stewart – Maggie May
Rod Stewart – Tonight’s the Night
Conway Twitty – Tight Fittin’ Jeans

Raunchy

The word raunch is to raunchy as the word sleaze is to sleazy—or the word grunge is to grungy: by the process known as back-formation, a new noun is created by omitting the -y from an adjective. Raunchy, of course, is a word used by those who disapprove of bawdiness, smuttiness, licentiousness, and various other manifestations of blatant sexual arousal. Rock music in its Dionysian mode—Elvis 1954-58—has frequently been called raunchy, no surprise since the collocation “rock and roll” is, as almost everyone knows, a euphemism for sexual intercourse in Black English Vernacular (BEV). How did the word raunchy get its start? According to William Safire:

There may be a connection to the Latin rancidus, “rank, stinking,” and its English offshoot, with a more general sense of “odious, nasty.” The O.E.D. has a 1903 citation of ranchy, about a “flea-ranchy” old monkey. An early sexual connotation was in a 1959 British book that described a wedding at which the bridegroom spoke of his intent to worship his bride’s body. “There was an embarrassed pause at this; and then one of the bridesmaids remarked, ‘A bit ranchy, that.’”
[…]
Along the way, users of the adjective clipped the last letter, turning it into a noun. “Presley made his pelvis central to his act,” wrote Time in 1964, “and the screams of his admirers were straight from the raunch.”

Hence the pelvis is to raunch what sweat is to Funk, and smell, in the sense of body odor, is common to both. Raunchy is etymologically linked to the Latin rancidus (“stinking”), and “bad body odor” is also, according to Michael Jarrett, one of the meanings of Funk as derived from “the African concept of lu-fuki” (33). Raunchy and funky are therefore roughly synonymous, both invoking the body in all its rank, pungent fecundity. But neither raunch nor funk is synonymous with sleazy.

Sleazy songs are a subject for a future blog.

A Few Raunchy Tunes:

James Brown – Cold Sweat
Tim Buckley – Get On Top
The Commodores – Brick House
Confederate Railroad – Trashy Women
Elvis (Presley) – Hound Dog
Exile – Kiss You All Over
Johnny Horton – Sugar Coated Baby
The Isley Brothers – Between the Sheets
Bill Justis – Raunchy
Led Zeppelin – The Lemon Song
Jerry Lee Lewis – Great Balls of Fire
Montrose – Rock Candy
Little Richard – Tutti Frutti
The Rolling Stones – Honky Tonk Women
Joe Tex – Aint’ Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)
Johnny Winter And – Rock And Roll Hoochie Koo

MiniMoog

I received an interesting email from David Borden, Director, Retired, of the Digital Music Program, Department of Music, at Cornell University, containing information that adds yet another piece of knowledge to our understanding of the Moog synthesizer in the context of the late 1960s and early 1970s rock culture. Mr. Borden wrote in response to an entry I posted back in early May about the particular modular Moog that was featured in Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg’s Performance (1970). I encourage readers to refer to, or to re-read, the complete text here, but for purposes of convenience I reproduce below the relevant excerpt from my earlier blog:

The special virtue of the Moog was its durability; there was no “right” or “wrong” way to use it—no particular grouping of patches, or combination of knob settings, could damage it. On the other hand, some patch combinations and knob settings would not yield any sound, so while there may have been no right or wrong way to play around with it, if you didn’t know what you were doing, nothing would happen. At the time, therefore, someone who knew how to use it—such as Jon Weiss, "the man from Moog”—was quite valuable.

However, based on his considerable experience with early versions of the Moog synthesizer, David Borden offered a correction to this passage, saying that I was not quite right about the durability of early Moog synthesizers. He writes:

Actually, there was a way to mess up the Moog modules by patching. I did it many times—in 1967. By the time Jon [Weiss] got there (to the Moog Co.) Bob had redesigned the modules so that (mostly) nothing could ruin a module due to strange patching.

I would encourage those interested to visit David Borden’s website, where one can find lots of information on his very interesting career. For instance, in 1969 he formed one of the first live performance synthesizer ensembles, called Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company, with Steve Drews and Linda Fisher. His work Easter was performed live on Easter Sunday, 1970 featuring the first live performance of a MiniMoog (pictured above; the official debut of which was still months away). At the time, no one else was performing with Moog synthesizers except for Wendy Carlos and Richard Teitelbaum, but Wendy Carlos performed live infrequently (in part due to the patching difficulties of early modular synthesizers--the MiniMoog would change that) and Richard Teitelbaum was still in Europe. Later, director William Friedkin commissioned Borden to write the score for The Exorcist, but as is well known Friedkin opted for Mike Oldfield’s minimalist derivation on his work Tubular Bells, and only about 45 seconds of Borden's material was used in the completed film.

I wish to thank Mr. Borden for writing in and sharing his knowledge about the early period of the Moog synthesizer. We can now better approximate the adoption of the Moog (that is, the MiniMoog) by rock musicians beginning in the early 1970s.

A Few LPs On Which the MiniMoog Appears:

Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978)
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition (1971)
Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company – S/T (1973) [Reissued as 1970-1973 with previously unissued recordings (1999)]
Gary Numan/Tubeway Army – Replicas (1979)
Rush – A Farewell to Kings (1977)
Synergy [Larry Fast] – Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra (1975)
Rick Wakeman – Six Wives of Henry VIII (1973)
Yes - Close To The Edge (1972)

Chill, Baby

The word “cool” emerged out of 1940s American jazz culture known as bebop. Bob Yurochko observes: “[One] phenomenon that rose from bebop [of the 1940s] was a new language or slang used by musicians called “bop talk.” Musicians communicated with each other with words like “hip,” “cool,” “man,” “cat,” or “dig” to form their own lexicon, which became part of the jazz musician’s heritage” (A Short History of Jazz, p. 103). “Cool” became a word used to describe an entire way of behaving and managing the self, in short, a behavioral style. Robert S. Gold, in A Jazz Lexicon, calls the word the “most protean of jazz slang terms” and meant, among other things, “convenient . . . off dope . . . on dope, comfortable, respectable, perceptive, shrewd—virtually anything favorably regarded by the speaker” (65). In other words, anything the speaker regarded as Good was “cool.” The approbation, “That’s cool,” first used by the members of the jazz culture, was later enthusiastically adopted by rock culture.

For Beat figure Jack Kerouac—he himself an exemplary figure of cool as both attitude and behavior—bebop was the music that represented modern, that is, hip, America.

At this time, 1947, bop was going like mad all over America, but it hadn’t developed into what it is now. The fellows at the Loop [in Chicago] blew, but with a tired air, because bop was somewhere between its Charley Parker Ornithology period and another period that really began with Miles Davis. (On the Road: The Original Scroll, p. 117).

The form of cool associated with Miles Davis is what Michael Jarrett calls prophetic cool, a form of cool “characterized by barely harnessed rage” (19). Exemplary figures of prophetic cool are the young Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and Ice-T. But Kerouac himself epitomized what Jarrett calls “philosophical cool,” which might also be called existential cool—the self as an effect of performance. Besides Kerouac, exemplary figures epitomizing existential cool are Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Keith Richards, Nico, Snoop Doggy Dogg—and the old Bob Dylan.

Addendum: 1 September 2008, 11:43:43 a.m. CDT: See Bent Sørensen's article on Kerouac's language titled "An On & Off Beat: Kerouac's Beat Etymologies" available on-line here. Thanks, Bent, for providing the link.

The Quiet Sun

In the history of rock music there have been several musicians whose mental illnesses have severely impaired their careers. Immediately one thinks of the troubled lives of the late Syd Barrett, founding member of Pink Floyd, of Roky Erikson of the 13th Floor Elevators, of British jazz-rock pioneer Graham Bond, of Derek and the Dominos’ Jim Gordon, and of Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, the latter the subject of a recently issued documentary. Many legendary rockers have suffered from depression—Nick Drake, perhaps Kurt Cobain—and many have sought treatment for drug and alcohol abuse. Of course, these sorts of maladies are not peculiar to rock musicians (although one site wants to suggest that there is a connection between rock music and mental instability, as if there were a cause-effect relationship), but rather an instance of the statistical probability that some members of the general population who suffer from mental illness may become rock musicians. Whether the entertainment industry in general—“Show Biz”—has a statistical higher probability of having sociopaths (and psychotics) than the general population as part of its membership is not a subject I feel competent to discuss; if there has been a study done exploring this subject, I would love to read it. I suspect that such a research project would be fraught with problems, however.

I do think, however, that because they are in Show Biz, these individuals as a consequence are more visible to the general population. It is therefore interesting that an article in today’s Los Angeles Times about the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson foregrounds his fragile psyche and his “psychological torment.” The article appears as part of the publicity apparatus employed to promote the 66-year-old Wilson’s new album, That Lucky Old Sun. The press seems to view each new Brian Wilson album as a significant achievement, an arduous hurdle for the troubled artist whose “storied masterwork Smile, the long-abandoned Beach Boys project . . . plunged him into an abyss of psychological torment,” that is, initiated his professional decline at the height of his popular success. Hence it seems impossible to discuss Brian Wilson without invoking the Romantic myth of the tortured artist. Most certainly his latest album doesn’t carry with it the heavy mythology of Smile, and hence isn’t likely to have that album’s impact. But it is certainly a happy occasion to learn that one of rock’s great mythologists—who almost single-handedly created the myth of Southern California as a place of expenditure without consequence, of endless of fun and sun—is still at work and seemingly content with the way his life has turned out. His example is a counter-myth to one of rock's most cherished (and Romantic) myths, the self-destructive artist.

ED 4

Today is Michael Jackson’s birthday. Born in Gary, Indiana in 1958, he has turned 50 years old. The event has caused barely a ripple in the media, another indication that the pop star’s fame may have begun to dwindle somewhat—not especially unusual, really, since fame is like love, either waxing or waning. Other pop stars who celebrated the Big 5-0 this summer, also born in 1958, were Prince (born 7 June in Minneapolis, Minnesota) and Madonna (born 16 August in Bay City, Michigan).

Another Michigan-born celebrity also turned 50 this year—the inimitable Bruce Campbell, star of the Evil Dead films. He had the good fortune to be born on my birthday, June 22, but I’m afraid I passed the 50 mile marker much sooner than he did. Sam Raimi’s three Evil Dead films are some of the great syncretic works of the cinema, fusing slapstick and horror, making them examples of perhaps the most under-theorized of film genres, horror comedy. For fans of the series such as myself, Campbell’s remark to MTV News, made a week and a half ago, that he will star in Evil Dead 4 if the sequel goes ahead, is great news indeed. It’s hard to believe that it has been almost sixteen years since Army of Darkness was released (filmed 1991, released early 1993)--during which, incidentally, a robust cottage industry sprang up comprised of Evil Dead merchandise--and perhaps it is time for the latest installment. Rumors about ED 4 have circulated for years, but perhaps his latest remarks suggest a new installment is no longer merely possible, but probable, and we can all take our boomsticks off the rack and dust them off. As Mr. Campbell correctly observed, "You don’t have to appeal to the studio. You’re already pleasing them by giving them part 4." Groovy!

Maneater

In popular literature, song, poetry, and film, the femme fatale is a wicked, dangerous, irresistibly alluring woman who seduces and then leads her lover to his doom. She represents the male fear of female sexuality, that is, the danger of the single woman unfettered by conventional restraints: marriage (monogamy), home, church, family, motherhood. In ancient Greek mythology, she’s variously represented, by the Sirens (think of Cream’s “Tales of Brave Ulysses”: How his naked ears were tortured by the Sirens sweetly singing) and by Circe, who turns men into swine. In the Judeo-Christian, or Biblical, tradition, she has received various incarnations, proper names such as Lilith, Eve, Jezebel, Delilah, and Salomé. Actually, these five female figures embody all the characteristics of the femme fatale: witch or pagan (Lilith), complete ontological destruction (Eve), sexual seductiveness (Delilah), apostasy (Jezebel), and cruelty (Salomé).

In popular song, especially rock and country music, the femme fatale is widely celebrated, and upon occasion has been given a new proper name, but remains the same old belle dame sans merci.

A Few Exemplary Songs About the Femme Fatale:

The Beatles – Girl
Big Star – Femme Fatale
Cream – Tales of Brave Ulysses
Derek and the Dominos – Layla
Duran Duran – Femme Fatale
Bob Dylan – As I Went Out One Morning
Hall & Oates – Maneater
Lefty Frizzell– Long Black Veil
Chris Isaak – Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing
George Jones – The Grand Tour
Tom Jones – Delilah
Roy Orbison – Leah
Dolly Parton – Jolene
Stan Ridgway – Peg and Pete and Me
Marty Robbins – El Paso
Marty Robbins – Devil Woman
Kenny Rogers and The First Edition – Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town
Kenny Rogers – Lucille
Billy Joe Royal – Cherry Hill Park
Simon & Garfunkel – Cecilia
Rick Springfield – Jessie's Girl
The Faces – Stay With Me
Rod Stewart – Maggie May
The Velvet Underground – Femme Fatale
ZZ Top - Pearl Necklace

(Under) Cover

In the discourse about popular music, you’ll find that that the re-recorded version of a song previously recorded by an earlier artist is referred to as the “cover version” or, more often, “cover.” The implications of the word “cover” merit exploring. If you explore the issue in depth, then you’ll find that the word “cover” is a contranym or an antilogy—a word that is its own antonym (it is what it is not). A cover is an open response, a challenge made, to the received understanding of a previously existing musical text, but it also conceals (hides), and also protects (to ward off damage or injury). Hence the existence of the “cover version” invokes one of the many sets of oppositions animating popular music criticism, in particular the opposition between original and copy. What this means is that the original recording must be regarded as definitive (authentic), while any subsequent version must be considered a copy (a simulacrum, or a “fake”). But there are any number of other implications of the word “cover,” one of which means to efface or erase the original: to do a “cover version” is “cover up” (hide) a previous version. It has been argued that white rock musicians (e.g., Elvis Presley) covered (hid) “the blackness” of the songs they made famous to white listeners. A case in point would be Elvis’s cover of “Tutti Frutti,” made more palatable in his version to white listeners than Little Richard’s raunchier (first) version. Did Elvis’s version also efface the meaning of the song title in Italian, “all fruits,” one meaning of which is bisexuality? Is this what is meant by “cover,” as in hide, to obscure?

Viewed less pejoratively, that is, more benignly, the cover version is the re-interpretation of song previously recorded by another artist. But why is the “cover version” always singled-out or announced as a copy, that is, stigmatized as debased, as a duplicate? Why should anyone care? The paradox is, Americans generally have always privileged the re-interpretation, the re-invention, of an existing work. That is, since the Jazz Era, the improvisation—the artistic response—has been valued higher than the composer (the source of intentionality, the origin). Popular music privileges improvisation, while classical music privileges the composer. In other words, American popular music since the Jazz Era has valued idiom (style) over strict adherence to any pre-existing text.

The history of rock has numerous examples of the “cover” effacing the original (first) version. Where does one begin? Where does one stop?

Elvis Presley – That’s All Right (Mama)
The Beatles – Ain’t She Sweet
John Lennon – Stand By Me
Ringo Starr – You’re Sixteen
The Carpenters – Ticket to Ride
U2 – Helter Skelter
Jimi Hendrix – All Along the Watchtower
The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man
José Feliciano – Light My Fire
Van Morrison – It’s All in the Game
Shadows of Knight – Gloria
The Blues Brothers – Soul Man
Carl Carlton – Everlasting Love
Vanilla Fudge – You Keep Me Hangin’ On
Van Halen – You Really Got Me