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From: cosell@BBN-LABS-B.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Cover Versions
Message-ID: <6269@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 1-Dec-84 20:11:59 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.6269
Posted: Sat Dec  1 20:11:59 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Dec-84 05:57:06 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
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Maybe terminology has changed over the years, but `cover version' used to mean
something quite different back in the old days: cover versions of songs were
those done by 'more suitable' artists of songs that had no chance in the mass
marketplace by the original artists.  Gale Storm and Pat Boone made whole
careers out of such practices (e.g., Gale Storm's version of 'I hear you
Knockin'' made it to #2 -- Smiley Lewis's was nowhere to be seen; In 1955
"Ain't That a Shame" made it to the charts twice: Fats Domino only got to #10;
Pat Boone made it to #1).

While the practice is hardly enviable, it did serve a useful purpose: it helped
open the doors so that non-mainstream artists could eventually participate on
thier own.  And in some sense the practice still goes on: you often get the
very-popular artist taking advantage of the obscurity (or unsuitability) of
another artist and providing a crack-in-the-door for new material (for example,
I think that PP&M had a great deal to do with Bob Dylan's eventual popularity
-- for the most part I rarely like the PP&M version better than Dylan's own
version (gravelly voice and uninspired guitar and all), but there's a lot of it
that I would have never heard of failing PP&M's exposing it.

I have a less charitable view of the typical 'remake'.  It has always struck me
as usually being little more than outright plagiarism of the arrangement that
some other artist/arranger came up with and I always wonder whether we wouldn't
have been just as well served to have had the original re-released: Joan Jett's
version of Crimson and Clover is a note-for-note remake Tommy James's.  It is
hard to say that the original is better, since the remake is an EXACT copy.  In
days past, they often just re-released singles.  I'd just as soon they went
back to that in preference to the original artist's being ripped-off by less
worthy come-lately.

        /Bernie