Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

This compilation is not accompanied by an instalment in the country history, because the next chapter goes with the next mix. And, in some ways, it makes sense that this mix has no history (of course, the timeframe is covered by past articles in the series) because the late 1970s was a time of hiatus.

Many of the stalwarts of just a few years earlier ceased having strings of hits, and those artists who had grown out of the Outlaw movement now had their day. In this mix, the likes of Guy Clark, John Anderson, Larry Jon Wilson and Moe Bandy owed something to the Outlaws. Even Tom T Hall, who wrote so many mainstream numbers without ever being mainstream himself, is calling for the Outlaw guys to stick to their country roots and return to Nashville (while one of the leading Outlaws, Kris Kristofferson, sang the praises of Hank Williams).

A few bluegrass musicians kept the flame of that genre alive: here we have veterans Jim & Jesse and, with a view to the future, Boone Creek, which included Ricky Skaggs, one of the country superstars of the 1980s who would later return to bluegrass.

As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R and includes home-baked front and back covers.

TRACKLISTING
1. Kris Kristofferson – If You Don’t Like Hank Williams
2. Jerry Jeff Walker – Standing At The Big Hotel
3. John Anderson – Country Comfort
4. Funky Kings – Slow Dancing
5. Guy Clark – Anyhow I Love You
6. Mickey Gilley – Bring It On Home To Me
7. Herb Pederson – Can’t You Hear Me Calling
8. Jim & Jesse – Ashes Of Love
9. Johnny Cash – One Piece At A Time
10. Skeeter Davis – Homebreaker
11. Razzy Bailey – She’s Anybody’s Darling
12. The Statler Brothers – Your Picture In The Paper
13. Emmylou Harris – Pancho & Lefty
14. Larry Jon Wilson – In My Song
15. Merle Haggard – Ramblin’ Fever
16. Charlie Rich – Rolling With The Flow
17. Bellamy Brothers – Crossfire
18. O.B. McClinton – Talk To My Childrens’ Mama
19. Johnny Paycheck – Take This Job And Shove It
20. Crystal Gayle – Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue
21. Boone Creek – Dark Is The Night
22. Tom T. Hall – Come On Back To Nashville (Ode To The Outlaws)
23. John Prine – Sabu Visits The Twin Cities Alone
24. Billie Jo Spears – It Should Have Been Easy
25. Moe Bandy – I Cheated Me Right Out Of You

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Previously in A History of Country

Seeing as the History of Country series is proving so popular, let us put on a Santa-red Stetson and have a country Christmas. This lot is old-skool: Ernest Tubb riffs (badly) on his 1941 honky tonk classic, Loretta Lynn socks it to it disagreeable Santa, while Brenda Lee aims to lassoo him, yee ha. George Jones goes X-Mas twisting, and Buck Jones provides some serious pathos. And if you had to choose one man to sing Little Drummer Boy, it would have to be Johnny Cash, right? Hey, even horrid old Jingle bloody Bells sounds good here!

As ever, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R, and it comes with homebaked front and back covers.

TRACKLISTING
1. Loretta Lynn – To Heck With Ole Santa Claus
2. Skeeter Davis – Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
3. George Jones – My Mom And Santa Claus
4. Jim Reeves – An Old Christmas Carol
5. Marty Robbins – One Of Your (In Every Size)
6. Buck Owens – All I Want For Christmas Is My Daddy
7. Red Simpson – Truckin’ Trees For Christmas
8. The Everly Brothers – Christmas Eve Can Kill You
9. The Louvin Brothers – It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
10. The Statler Brothers – Mary’s Sweet Smile
11. Johnny Cash – The Little Drummer Boy
12. Merle Haggard – Santa Claus And Popcorn
13. Emmylou Harris – Christmas Time’s A-Coming
14. John Prine – Christmas In Prison
15. Willie Nelson – Pretty Paper
16. Dolly Parton – Hard Candy Christmas
17. Crystal Gayle – Hallelujah
18. Lynn Anderson – Joy The World
19. Charley Pride – Santa and the Kids
20. Brenda Lee – I’m Gonna Lasso Santa Claus
21. The Maddox Brothers & Rose – Jingle Bells
22. Johnny Horton – They Shined Up Rudolph’s Nose
23. Faron Young – I’m Gonna Tell Santa On You
24. Hank Snow – Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
25. Ernest Tubb – I’ll Be Walkin’ The Floor This Christmas
26. Chet Atkins – Jolly Old St Nicholas
27. Bob Atcher and the Dinning Sisters – Christmas Island
28. Dottie West – Blue Christmas
29. Roger Miller – Old Toy Trains
30. Eddy Arnold – I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
31. Waylon Jennings – Away In A Manger

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CHRISTMAS MIXES WITH WORKING LINKS:
Any Major Christmas Soul Vol. 1
Any Major Christmas Soul Vol. 2
Any Major Christmas Soul Vol. 3
Any Major Smooth Christmas (2010)
Christmas In Black & White
More Christmas In Black & White
Christmas Mix, Not For Mother
Any Major X-Mas Mix
PLUS: Rudolph, a victim of prejudice

More Christmas Mixes
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Thanks in large part to country-influenced acts like The Byrds, The Grateful Dead and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, rock fans were starting to dig the country scene — not Nashville’s crooners or John Denver, of course, but the Outlaws, Gram Parsons and some of the old pioneers.  Some of California rock’s great names had their roots in playing bluegrass; people like Eagles co-founder and Flying Burrito Brother Bernie Leadon, the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and the singer-songwriter J.D. Souther, who wrote for the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, the Texan “Queen of Rock” who made her start as a country performer before going the folk-rock route (she would later return to country, particularly in her collaborations with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton).

The convergence of rock and country found concrete expression on 17 March 1972 at a country festival in Dripping Springs, Texas. Long-haired rock people and tidy country fans — spliffs and stetsons — gathered to watch a bill that included the Outlaws-in-chief plus Tom T Hall as well as the classic artists Roy Acuff, Tex Ritter and Kitty Wells. Outlaw country crossed over to the rock market at the latest with the 1975 release of Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger album. A year later, an album of older tracks by Jennings, Nelson, Tompall Glaser and Jessi Colter, was released as Wanted! The Outlaws. It became the first country album to sell more than a million. Jennings’ subsequent Greatest Hits album topped that, going triple platinum. The Outlaws — well, Jennings and Nelson — and acts that followed the path of credibility they had beaten, such as Emmylou Harris and Rosanne Cash, were now mainstream, and many of the old guard disappeared.

Some of the old acts survived, if only for a while. Only a few, such as Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard, recorded into the new millennium. But new country-pop acts appeared, benefiting from the blurring between country, rock and pop; artists such as Crystal Gayle and Kenny Rogers (coming in from the cold). Their long-term impact would not be profound (has anyone listed Ronnie Milsap as an inspiration?), while Emmylou Harris became perhaps the most influential woman ever in country. A close collaborator with Parsons on his two solo albums before his death in 1974, Harris created a sub-genre of her own with her amalgamation of country-rock, bluegrass and honky tonk. Some important people emerged from Harris’ band, chiefly singer-songwriters Rodney Crowell (who’d become Rosanne Cash’s husband) and Ricky Skaggs, who played a crucial role in 1980s country, and a clutch of future producers.

TRACKLISTING
1. Charlie McCoy – Silver Thread & Golden Needle
2. Asleep At The Wheel – Ch’oo Choo Ch’ Boogie
3. Dolly Parton – I Will Always Love You
4. George Jones – The Grand Tour
5. Rusty Wier – Texas Morning
6. Gram Parsons – Hearts On Fire
7. Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge – Dakota (The Dancing Bear)
8. David Wills – There’s A Song On The Jukebox
9. Ronnie Milsap – Pure Love
10. B. J. Thomas – Hey Won’t You Play Another Done Somebody Wrong Song
11. Glen Campbell – Country Boy
12. Ed Bruce – Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
13. Waylon Jennings – Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way
14. Tompall Glaser – I Can’t Remember
15. Jessi Colter – I’m Not Lisa
16. John Prine – He Was in Heaven Before He Died
17. Emmylou Harris – Sin City
18. Willie Nelson – Bandera
19. Clarence Gatemouth Brown – Amos Moses
20. Moe Bandy – Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life
21. Billie Jo Spears – Blanket On The Ground
22. Merle Haggard – The Roots Of My Raising
23. Gene Watson – Love In The Hot Afternoon
24. Michael Martin Murphey – Wildfire
25. T.G. Sheppard – Devil In The Bottle

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Previously in A History of Country
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The last ever photo of the Beatles together, as far as I know. Ringo and Paul wave goodbye, George looks exceedingly pleased, and John looks for Yoko (or perhaps Allen Klein).

Tomorrow, 10 April, marks the 40th anniversary of Paul McCartney announcing the official disbandment of The Beatles. Of course, the Beatles were finished long before that. The final session for the Abbey Road album was, as the song had it, The End. And the guys knew it. Still, nothing was announced until 10 April 1970, when Paul unilaterally declared the Beatles kaputt. There was one post-Abbey Road recording: Harrison’s I Me Mine, which was finished in January 1970 and appeared on Let It Be (which therefore is correctly identified as the Beatles’ final album, even if almost all of it was recorded before Abbey Road, and the end of the group’s activity is accurately dated 1970, and even if John’s final contribution was in 1969).

I have featured The Beatles at length on this blog. First there two sets of album tracks and b-sides (here and here), then three post-split albums compiled from the Fabs’ solo carrer ( 1972, 1975 and 1981). On top of that, I’ve featured Beatles curiosities and curious covers, with more of that still in store, studied my favourite Beatles LP sleeves, and discussed songs that inspired the Beatles and that the Beatles inspired. Add to that a couple of originals of songs the Beatles covered, there seems to be only one significant gap in my Beatles coverage.

So here is the first of three compilations of good covers of Beatles songs. The first takes the songs of the 1962-66 period, up to Revolver. The tracklisting runs in a rough order in which the Beatles released these songs; I hope that despite the eclectic mix the sequencing is smooth.

Some of the featured songs are fairly rare. The Supremes’ version of I Saw Her Standing There, with the lovely and tragic Florence Ballard taking lead vocals, was recorded for their 1964 A Bit Of Liverpool album, but was not used for it. It was finally released in 2008. Likewise, the Carpenters’ splendid cover of Can’t Buy Me Love never was an album release. It appeared on a 1970 interview recording which also includes live-in-the-studio takes of 12 songs (including Can’t Buy Me Love, Help, Ticket To Ride and Come Together). The Bee Gee’s version of You Won’t See Me apparently was recorded in Australia (possibly for the Spicks And Specks sessions), shortly before the future purveyors of toothy hirsuteness broke through internationally.

Some songs presented an obvious problem: to select one of several great covers. The choice was the hardest between Jackie Wilson’s and Ray Charles’ versions of Eleanor Rigby, from 1969 and ’68 respectively. I have often cited the latter as a great example of a cover eclipsing the Beatles (the other, featured here, is Earth, Wind & Fire’s Got To Get You Into My Life). In the end I opted for Wilson’s lesser known version. Likewise, I was torn between Grady Tate’s version of And I Love Her and Esther Philips And I Love Him. Tate’s voice is one of my favourites in popular music, so he got in. It seems appropriate to close the set with a track from a song-for-song covers album, Taxman from the Don Randi Trio’s 1966 jazz-rock re-imagining of Revolver.

I have tried to keep the length of this mix to the standard CD-R length. Here, however, I had no choice but to exceed that length. It was a question of leaving out Deep Purple’s excellent 6-minute version of Help. I have left it in, so the running time is about 1h25min.

TRACKLISTING
1. Keely Smith – Do You Want To Know A Secret (1965)
2. The Supremes – I Saw Him Standing There (1964)
3. The Mamas & The Papas – I Call Your Name (1966)
4. Nils Lofgren – Anytime At All (1981)
5. Carpenters - Can’t Buy Me Love (1970)
6. Ramsey Lewis Trio – A Hard Day’s Night (1965)
7. Rosanne Cash – I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party (1989)
8. Grady Tate - And I Love Her (1974)
9. Marianne Faithfull – I’m A Loser (1965)
10. Pearl Jam – You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (2003)
11. The Dillards – I’ve Just Seen A Face (1968)
12. Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – Yesterday (1968)
13. ‘Wee’ Willie Walker – Ticket To Ride (1967)
14. Deep Purple - Help (1968)
15. Stevie Wonder – We Can Work It Out (1970)
16. Cheap Trick – Day Tripper (1982)
17. Johnny Rivers – Run For Your Life (1966)
18. Bee Gees – You Won’t See Me (1966)
19. Paul Westerberg – Nowhere Man (2001)
20. Miriam Makeba – In My Life (1970)
21. Bud Shank - Girl (1966)
22. Jonah Jones – Michelle (1969)
23. Earth, Wind & Fire – Got To Get You Into My Life (1978)
24. Jackie Wilson – Eleanor Rigby (1969)
25. Emmylou Harris – Here There And Everywhere (1975)
26. The Vines – I’m Only Sleeping (2001)
27. Don Randi Trio – Taxman (1966)

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Before we proceed with our roadtrip, I wonder why all of a sudden there so many searches for Jenny Lewis (the wonderful singer of Rilo Kiley) coming to this blog.

And so, on our tour of the USA, we have left Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Jessica Alba’s one-time hometown of Biloxi and still travelling along the gulf coast, and not accompanied by the strains of Lynyrd Skynyrd, we enter Alabama.

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Mobile, Alabama

As recorded last time, we’re covering French Louisiana’s successive capitals in a reverse chronological order. Before Biloxi, before New Orleans, before Baton Rouge, the capital of the French colony was Mobile. With its long history and cosmopolitan location, this Alabama town does not conform to the outsider’s perception of Alabama as populated by truck-driving, straw-chewing hicks who’d sooner don white hoods and lynch people for failing to skip off the pavement at their approach than do an honest day’s work (hey, I didn’t create the prejudices). Mobile, population 200,000, has a symphony orchestra, opera company, ballet troupe, and several art museums. And it is the subject of a Dylan song.

Actually, it’s not. As I understand it, Mobile serves as a metaphor for Dylan’s folk sound with Memphis representing rock & roll (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins) and the electric blues of  Beale Street (B.B. King et al). The song, if it makes any sense at all, seems to reflect Dylan’s confusion about the reaction he received at the Newport Folk Frsrival after going electric.

Which brings us to Jerry Reed, whose Guitar Man could have slotted into various destinations on our journey. It is right that it should settle in Mobile, since that is where the Guitar Man gets his big gig at Big Jack’s. “So if you ever take a trip down to the ocean find yourself down round Mobile, well, make it on out to the club called Jack’s,” he advises. And where do we find the club? “Just follow that crowd of people, you’ll wind up out on his dance floor diggin’ the finest little five piece group up and down the Gulf of Mexico.” Oh yeah, we dig.
Bob Dylan – Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again.mp3
Jerry Reed – Guitar Man.mp3

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Montgomery, Alabama

The Rosa Parks bus

We leave the coast and move inland, to Montgomery. And here we enter historical Jim Crow and civil rights movement territory. Montgomery, a city of about 200,000, became famous for its pivotal position in the emerging civil rights movement. These included the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and, ten years later, the three Selma to Montgomery marches. The bus boycott was sparked, as we know, by Rosa Parks’ courageous defiance of bus segregation. The conventional wisdom that a tired Rosa plonked herself down on a seat reserved for whites is a myth; her action was conceived and intended to animate protest. To that effect, she had only two week’s earlier attended a Memphis workshop on civil disobedience. Parks was not a random tired worker, but a political activist who knew exactly what she was doing. I rather prefer the truth to the myth: the  story of African-Americans taking charge of the anti-racist movement to lay claim to their rights. The mythology of the tired woman — though doubtless a potent mobilising tool at the time — now might invite ideas that these self-evident rights were granted out of some sense of pity, and not fought for and earned the hard way. (Discuss in 700 words)

The second featured song here is not about Rosa Parks or civil rights, but about a woman who happens to live in Montgomery. Her life didn’t quite turn out the way she had envisaged; she is clearly depressed and is now looking for an escape (the reference to her as an angel flying from Montgomery might hint at suicide). This is John Prine at his empathising best.
John Prine – Angel From Montgomery.mp3

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Birmingham, Alabama

And from Rosa Parks’ home we travel to the city where Martin Luther King Jr once ministered. Like Montgomery, Alabama’s industrial centre and capital was a primary site of the civil rights struggle. It was from a Birmingham jail that MLK, incarcerated for taking part in a non-violent protest, wrote his famous letter. And Birmingham was the city of the notorious bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church that killed for young girls (earning the city the moniker Bombingham), an act that still outrages.

The concerted non-violent protest campaign named Project C, in which 3,000 people were arrested and many more assaulted by police is credited with forcing the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By 1979, Birmingham elected an African-American mayor, Dr Richard Arrington Jr, which is not as dramatic as one might think since more than a three-quarter of the city’s population is black.

The featured song mentions Birmingham only by way of alliteration. It is Emmylou Harris’ lament for Gram Parsons, whose face to see again she would walk from Boulder, Colorado to Birmingham.
Emmylou Harris – Boulder To Birmingham.mp3

From Alabama we shall board the midnight train to Georgia.

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Previously on American Road Trip

Any Major Dude With Half A Heart is going on a tour of the USA. Not physically, alas, for Any Major Dude is poor and cannot afford to travel. So what we have here is a new series in which I start a musical journey, starting from a random place in the United States, post a song that mentions that location, and travel to the nearest town which brings to my mind a lyric, and then to another. Next instalment I move on from the last featured town. Sounds complicated? Well, come and join me on my tour and make sense of it as we travel together.

The scientific blind-stab-at-the-map of the United States brings us to…an empty spot in the middle of nowhere near Albuquerque. So in that amusingly-named town, we begin our journey

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Albuquerque, New Mexico

In Albuquerque we meet a fellow you seems to be too well-known in nearby Santa Fé, so he comes down to the bigger city of Albuquerque for a bit of anonymity, grabbing a cholesterol swelling breakfast on theway. Shall we accompany him on his return north to Santa Fé (where we might encounter Bob Dylan, Brooks & Dunn or Bon Jovi)? Head east, you say? Ok, do you know the way to Amarillo?
Neil Young – Albuquerque (1975).mp3

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Amarillo, Texas

It never occurred to me that Amarillo was a real place. Well, the good people of Amarillo will have you, and me, know that their’s is the 14th biggest city in the Lone Star state, with a population of about 200,000. According to Wikipedia, Amarillo also boasts one of the largest meat packing areas in the US, and has the only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility in the country. Wow! And here, in the one-time Helium Capital of the World, we meet sweet Marie, who is waiting for the sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-ing Tony Christie. As the church bells are ringing, we retire to a bar where we encounter a dude playing on a pinball machine, feeding coins into a juke box to play the country stylings of Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. The fool left the lovely Emmylou Harris behind in Atlanta, we learn. Which way is Atlanta? Due east? Let’s be on our way.
Emmylou Harris – Amarillo (1975).mp3
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Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

So we turned right from Amarillo and landed up in Oklahoma where the exciting new Wilco-esque band Deep Vibration (presumably named after the cellular adventures of one Ashley Cole) entertains us with a sound so rich, we have no idea what the man is singing. Something, it seems, is on his mind. Fun fact about Oklahoma City #1: It is twinned with Rio de Janeiro, which seems somehow less than obvious. Fun fact about Oklahoma City #2: It is the 31st biggest city in the United States. Fun fact about Oklahoma City #3: It has water taxis, which is pretty cool.
Deep Vibration – Oklahoma City Woman Blues (2008).mp3

Next stop north, south, east?

Everly Brothers – Love Hurts.mp3
Roy Orbison – Love Hurts.mp3
Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris – Love Hurts.mp3
Nazareth – Love Hurts.mp3
Don McLean – Love Hurts.mp3
Paul Young & the Q-Tips – Love Hurts.mp3
Monsieur Mono & Mara Tremblay – Love Hurts (direct DL)
It is possibly the greatest songs ever written from the perspective of heartbreak, with some gloriously bitter metaphors, and yet it took a long time to become a proper hit – and then in one of its worse incarnations. Love Hurts was written by Boudleaux Bryant who co-wrote several Everly Brothers hits. Love Hurts, however, was only an album track on the siblings’ 1960 LP A Date With The Everly Brothers. In 1965, they recorded a more upbeat version, but their mid-tempo 1960 rendition was sufficiently mournful for Roy Orbison to cover it tremulously the following year, releasing it as a b-side. Thereafter, the song remained dormant for 13 years, until Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris delivered the definitive version. Their sweet harmonies are drenched in the hot blood of a broken heart, Parsons perfecting the art of spitting his bile with tender vulnerability.

A year later, the song finally became a hit, in the misplaced hands of hard rockers Nazareth whose singer sounds mortified at having to sing these intimate lyrics. It sounds like he lost a bet at karaoke night. More covers followed soon after, but it was Don McLean in 1981 who returned the song the sensibilities of the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison, probably aware that an imitation of Gram Parsons’ take was impossible. One of the more interesting propositions, the same year, was Paul Young recording the song with the Q-Tips before going solo. One can imagine how well this underrated singer (who did much to feed the dim views of his artistry) might have interpreted the song. In the event, it is a rendition of curious interest rather than a competitor, sounding more like an Ultravox arrangement than a soulful lament. He apparently re-recorded it in 1993, hopefully nailing it the second time around…
A late addition, thanks to L’Homme Scalp, is a rather lovely 2005 French version of the song.
Also recorded by: Cher, Jim Capaldi, Jennifer Warnes, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Bad Romance, Kim Deal and Bob Pollard, Corey Hart, Barbara Dickson, Little Milton and Lucinda Williams, Robin Gibb, Pat Boone, Emmylou Harris, Stina Nordenstam, Sinéad O’Connor, Rod Stewart, Paul Noonan & Lisa Hannigan, Clare Teal a.o.
Best version: Parsons’ version is one of my all-time favourite song…

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Jacques Brel – Le Moribond.mp3
Rod McKuen – Seasons In The Sun.mp3
Terry Jacks – Seasons In The Sun.mp3
I might do my reputation no good at all when I confess that I can’t understand the vitriol levelled against Terry Jacks’ 1974 hit. Yes, it’s sentimental and drenched in syrup, but it hardly is the only offender among its contemporaries in that respect. Cheesy though it may be, it is difficult to denounce a song that originated in the mighty catalogue of the unassailable Jacques Brel. The Belgian king of the vivant recorded the song as Le Moribund in 1961. In Brel’s version, and in poet Rod McKuen’s translation, the cause of the impending death could be natural but well might be a suicide note (there are strong hints that the singer’s wife had an extramarital affair). The English version was soon recorded by the Kingston Singers, and later by the Beach Boys. The latter’s version was not completed or released, but featured among its session musicians Terry Jacks (who, some accounts suggest, introduced the Beach Boys to the song). The Canadian-born singer changed the lyrics, introducing Michelle, his little one, into the proceedings and lightened the tone of the song considerably. The comparative cheerfulness of his version seems to eliminate the notion of suicide; unlike Brel or McKuen, Jacks sounds like a man who has made peace with his mortality.
Also recorded by: The Fortunes, Nana Mouskouri, Nirvana (you won’t see that sequence too often), Bad Religion, Black Box Recorder, Pearls Before Swine, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Westlife a.o.
Best version: I really like McKuen’s version, which I received from our friend RH

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Dee Dee Warwick – You’re No Good.mp3
Linda Ronstadt – You’re No Good.mp3
Linda Ronstadt’s big country-rock hit of 1974 started life as a ’60s soul number. Written by the British songwriter Clint Ballard Jr, it was first recorded by Dee Dee Warwick, Dionne’s younger sister, in 1963. The same year Betty Everett (of Shoop Shoop Song fame) scored a minor hit with it. Ronstadt took the song out of its R&B context altogether, creating a new template on which future covers would be based. That is probably a sign of a really good cover artist: the ability of appropriating a song, changing it so much that it really will feel like a different song. These two versions are a great example of that attribute.
Also recorded by: Swinging Blue Jeans, José Feliciano, Van Halen, Elvis Costello, Wilson Phillips, Lulu, Jill Johnson a.o.
Best version: Ronstadt’s, probably.

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The McCoys – Sorrow.mp3
David Bowie – Sorrow.mp3
Speaking of covers, it is a vaguely amusing coincidence that albums of cover versions by David Bowie and Bryan Ferry – icons of cool both at the time – entered the British charts on the same day in November 1973. Proof, if any was needed, that the covers project is not a recent phenomenon in pop music. David Bowie scored only one hit from the Pin Ups album, Sorrow, which had been made popular in the UK seven years earlier by the Merseys. The original version of it, however, was by the McCoys, the US group better known for their big hit Hang On Sloopy, which also provided the title for the 1965 album which featured Sorrow.
Also recorded by: Status Quo, Tribal Underground, Powderfinger
Best version: Bowie’s shades it.

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Sting – I Hung My Head
Johnny Cash – I Hung My Head.mp3
Who would have thought that Sting could write a really excellent country song. Of course, Sting’s original of I Hung My Head is only notionally country – the arrangement could be by somebody like Tim McGraw, whose country music often is infused with rock music. It’s not a bad version at all, and I say so as somebody who generally holds old Gordon in less than high esteem. But it took Johnny Cash on his landmark 2002 album American IV: The Man Comes Around to give the song the country spin it really requires. Where in Sting’s version, the spine-tingling story drowns in overproduction, Cash slows it down and delivers it as if he had sung it as a bluegrass number since he was a little boy.
Also recorded by: Blue Highway
Best version: Cash, of course

I’m about to wipe everything off my iPod, and reload it (for housekeeping purposes). So, for the pure fun of it, here are the top 10 most-listened to tracks. I have arbitrarily decided to exclude anything from the Beatles’ Love album, because I didn’t listen to it more than once, though my nephews played it ad nauseam over Christmas. Where an artist was represented more than once, their subsequent tracks have been skipped for the purpose of this post. Tracks marked with an asterisk have been featured on this blog before.

1. Nicole Atkins – Brooklyn’s On Fire.mp3*
No surprise here: this song has been an constant earworm, and her wonderful Neptune City album a frequent companion. On the album Atkins hops across and fuses genres, being Abba-esque one moment, then grabbing the singing-torch before going all B-52s on our asses. It’s magnificent. “Brooklyn’s On Fire” has an abundance of exuberance, and probably is the catchiest thing on the album.

2. Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris – Love Hurts.mp3
If CD plays counted, this song would easily head the list. The arrangement and harmonies make this the definitive version of this oft-covered Everly Brothers song (certainly better than that by bloody Cher, or the ludicrously OTT effort by Nazareth). Gram and the lovely Emmylou persuade us that love is indeed “just a lie made to make you blue”. An all-time favourite.

3. Rilo Kiley – Portions For Foxes.mp3*
Strange that this older Rilo Kiley track should still appear ahead of the great stuff from 2007′s Under The Blacklight. Jenny Lewis has never sounded sexier than here. When she commands, “COME HERE”, I’m inclined to obey.

4. Colbie Caillat – One Fine Wire*
I have a fear that the Taste Police will before long declare Colbie Caillat a punishable offence, seeing that “Bubbly” is now a big hit and getting airplay on MOR radio stations. I suspect that Caillat’s success is in part due to the buzz created by the blogging community. So she is ours, bloggers and blog readers. Her stardom will be due not to The Man, but to the music blogs who gave her exposure and to the MySpace phenomenon. A reader of this blog had a brief but good discussion about how The Man will try to exploit music blogs and interactive sites like MySpace as a new form of marketing. But better that, with all the independence the credible music blogs can offer and the power of the My Space browser to click to the next page, than letting Sony’s A&R goons dictate public taste. Hopefully more people of genuine talent like Colbie will find stardom through that route, not via corporate manufacture.

5. John Denver – Rocky Mountain High.mp3
John Denver is overdue a rehabilitation. The music writer John Doran once responded to my point along the lines that those who would applaud Denver’s liberal politics are reluctant to like his music, and those who like his music are likely to detest his politics. My point is that there is much in Denver’s pre-1974 canon that should not be ignored, or subjected to clichéd jokes about straw-chewing hicks. 1972′s “Rocky Mountain High” is drenched in beauty and is free of the hackneyed shtick which by the late ’70s had turned Denver into a granny’s favourite and party-time Muppet.

6. Ben Folds – Gone.mp3
When I don’t know what to play, Ben Folds is always a safe bet. “Gone” is a great track to sing along to, at least the backing vocals. But don’t let that detract from the excellent lyrics addressed to a lover who left him and now won’t even write to him. He says he’s over her, but clearly he isn’t: ” I thought I’d write, I thought I’d let you know: In the year since you’ve been gone I’ve finally let you go. And I hope you find some time to drop a note, but if you won’t, then you won’t, and I will consider you gone.” I can empathise.

7. Billie the Vision & the Dancers (feat Hello Saferide) – Overdosing With You.mp3
One of the large group of fine Swedish Indie groups, this lot is as twee as they come, in a very enjoyable way (though clumsily monikered). This track features the wonderful Hello Saferide a.k.a. Annika Norlin, whom I’m possibly in love with. The lyrics to this song may be weak at times, but you have to love a song about couch potatoing the blues away with DVD box sets of NYPD Blue and Desperate Housewives (clearly not a bit too much sci-fi on Billie the Vision’s shelf, Ms Norlin). Did I mention, it has Hello Safreide, whom I’m possibly in love with, on it? You can legally download Billie the Vision etc’s albums on their webpage.

8. Scott Walker – Joanna.mp3
Walker’s vocal performance on this glorious Tin Pan Alley piece of treacle is stunning (it usually was stunning, but even more so here). Try singing this song; it is no accident that in the abominable Love, Actually, Liam Neeson mimes it to his son, doesn’t sing it. Which I would probably do, ill-advisedly or not.

9. Foo Fighters – Statues.mp3*
The more I hear the new Foo Fighters album, Echoes, Silence, Patience, Grace, the more convinced I am that it is the best thing Grohl and pals have ever done, and that the album deserves to be regarded as a classic in its genre already. Without any hyperbole. Just as it had come out, I expressed my dislike for “Erase/Replace”. Someone commented that I was very wrong about the song. And quite rightly so. It’s majestic! But “Statues” remains my favourite song off the album, a track whose simplicity disguises its depths.

10. Perez – Picture Perfect.mp3
Perez were a South African rock group which subsequently split. Which is a shame, because they were pretty good in an alt.rock sort of way. “Picture Perfect”, from 2002, is certainly superior to much that has been released in the genre. A fine song to sing while driving, and not a bad way to spend five minutes secretly playing the air guitar.