Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

The second mix of Beatles covers comprises songs from the group’s 1967-68 period, ending rather abruptly in the middle of the White Album selection. So the third mix will carry on with songs from that double album (leading with the Beach Boys doing Back In The USSR).

There are some quite unexpected covers. Ella Fitzgerald singing Savoy Truffle? Soul group The Moments singing Rocky Racoon, of all songs? Some performers are also surprising. Bill Cosby, for example. The stand-up comic did an album of covers in 1969, including Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s not mugging for comedic effect either, though it is fairly bizarre. Backing Cosby is the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band.

Elvis Costello’s performance of “an English folk song” was a minor highlight at Wembley’s Live Aid, not because Costello is doing it very well, but because the crowd is filling in the horn bits, thereby proving Costello’s introduction right. McCartney has attributed inspiration for the sound of Lady Madonna, particularly the piano, to Fats Domino, so it is apt that Domino’s cover, recorded soon after the Beatles released it, should feature here.

Some inclusions are entirely obvious: Pickett’s Hey Jude is the best version of that song, and Spooky Tooth’s cover of I Am The Walrus is masterful. I also particularly like Richie Haven’s take on Strawberry Fields and John Denver’s Mother Nature’s Son.

Part 3, covering 1968-70 will be posted next week.

TRACKLISTING
1. Richie Havens – Strawberry Fields Forever (1969)
2. Kenny Rankin – Penny Lane (1970)
3. Bill Cosby – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1968)
4. The Undisputed Truth – With A Little Help From My Friends (1973)
5. Syreeta - She’s Leaving Home (1972)
6. Gabor Szabo – Lucy In The Sky With Diamond (1967)
7. The Wedding Present - Getting Better (1988)
8. Big Daddy – Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite (1992)
9. Claudine Longet - When I’m Sixty-Four (1967)
10. José Feliciano – A Day In The Life (live) (1969)
11. Elvis Costello – All You Need Is Love (live) (1985)
12. The Impressions – Fool On The Hill (1969)
13. Spooky Tooth - I Am The Walrus (1970)
14. Ambrosia - Magical Mystery Tour (1976)
15. Fats Domino - Lady Madonna (1968)
16. Wilson Pickett – Hey Jude (1969)
17. Bobby Bryant – Happiness Is A Warm Gun (1969)
18. The Moments – Rocky Raccoon (1970)
19. The Five Stairsteps – Dear Prudence (1970)
20. Ella Fitzgerald – Savoy Truffle (1969)
21. John Denver – Mother Nature’s Son (1972)
22. Paul Weller - Sexy Sadie (1994)
23. Siouxsie & the Banshees – Helter Skelter (1978)

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Any Major Beatles Covers: 1962-66

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More Beatles stuff

About the only reason why I still bother to watch awards shows is to catch the sequence of people who have died since the last show (and of late successive shows have contrived to fuck that up by going for “artistic” camera angles which don’t hep the TV viewer in identifying dead people). Here is my In Memoriam section, with mix-tapes, for 2009, including only musicians, in three parts. The second will run next week, and the third early in the new year to accommodate late entries. so please don’t shout at me for having failed to pick up that the little singer of the Jackson 5 has died; he’ll feature in the second instalment. Feel free, however, to shout at the Grammys for omitting many of the departed musicians I will highlight.

The order of musicians does not run in the chronology of death, but is dictated randomly by the requirements of mix-tape sequencing — and the total aptness of leading with the Jim Carroll song as the theme of the mix. The songs featured on the mix should remind us what a debt we owe to those who have gone, and in some cases how much we are going to miss them, or cause us regret that we did not get to know them better.

Rest in Peace, y’all.

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Jim Carroll, 60, post-punk musician and writer of The Basketball Diaries, on September 11.
The Jim Carroll Band – People Who Died (1980)

Willy DeVille, 58, punk musician, on August 6
Mink DeVille – Just To Walk That Little Girl Home (1980)

Al Martino, 82, crooner and actor (Johnny Fontane in The Godfather), on October 13
Al Martino – To The Door Of The Sun (1974)

Ellie Greenwich, 68, Brill Building songwriter and occasional singer, on August 26
Ellie Greenwich – I Can Hear Music (1973)

Rusty Wier, 65, country singer and songwriter, on October 9
Rusty Wier – High Road, Low Road (1976)

John Martyn, 60, singer-songwriter, on January 29
John Martyn – Ways To Cry (1973)

Jay Bennett, 45, multi-instrumentalist, engineer, ex-Wilco member, on May 25
Jay Bennett & Edward Burch – Forgiven (2002)

Taylor Mitchell, 19, Canadian singer-songwriter, killed by coyotes on October 28
Taylor Mitchell – Don’t Know How I Got Here (2009)

Mary Travers, 72, folk singer and a third of Peter, Paul & Mary, on September 16
Mary Travers – Five Hundred Miles (1973)

Gordon Waller, 64, half of ’60s duo Peter & Gordon (represented here with a Lennon/McCartney composition), on July 17
Peter & Gordon – I Don’t Want To See You Again (1964)

Estelle Bennett, 67, member of The Ronettes and sister of Ronnie Spector, on February 11
The Ronettes – Silhouettes (1962)

Dewey Martin, 68, Buffalo Springfield drummer, on January 31
Buffalo Springfield – Sit Down, I Think I Love You (1966)

Billy Lee Riley, 75, rockabilly singer on Sun Records (sometimes backed by Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, as on this song), on August 2
Billy Riley – Pearly Lee (1957)

Gale Storm, 87, actress and singer born Josephine Owaissa Cottle, on June 27
Gale Storm – Dark Moon (1957)

Huey Long, 105, last surviving member of the Ink Spots (whom he joined in 1944), on June 10
Ink Spots – To Each His Own (1946)

Chris Connor, 81, jazz singer born Mary Coutsenhizer, on August 29
Chris Connor – They All Laughed (1957)

Kenny Rankin, 69, pop and jazz singer, on June 7
Kenny Rankin – Sunday Kind Of Love (1975)

Koko Taylor, 80, blues singer, on June 3
Koko Taylor – I Don’t Care No More (1985)

Johnny Carter, 75, R&B singer with The Flamingos and The Dells, on August 21
The Dells – The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind) (1971)

Leroy Smith, 56, founder and keyboardist of UK soul group Sweet Sensation, on January 15
Sweet Sensation – Sad Sweet Dreamer (1975)

Viola Wills, 69, soul singer who made a comeback as disco diva, on May 6
Viola Wills – Gonna Get Along Without You Now (1979)

Eddie Bo, 79, funky blues legend, on March 18
Eddie Bo – We’re Doing It (The Thang Pt1) (1970)

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\In Memoriam Vol. 1

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