"That gal done stole my song!"

[Velvis]

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

Johnny Cash - Hurt

[toomanyhatz]

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Yeah, I probably should've mentioned that in the initial post, that's such a big one.

"Personal Jesus" is another. I mean, in a way I guess it's a mis-reading of its intention. But I think the de-ironification of it was kind of genius.

They're two of the more unlikely songs to become "Johnny Cash songs" but I think it's impossible to deny that he pulls it off.

[Dr Markus]

When I think of Dear Prudence I think of Siouxsie and the Banshee's version, rather than the beatles. Probably gonna be alone in this but what the hey.

[toomanyhatz]

I like the Siouxsie version of it a lot, but yeah, you might be alone in that.

Though one definitely worthy of mention is Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help From my Friends," which he really makes his own. Not enough to make anyone forget about the original, but there are now two identifiable ways of doing it...

[Twang]

I Heard It Through the Grapevine

[Canis lupus]

...My Girl - Otis Redding (IMO)

plus
Try a Little Tenderness
Shake
Pain in my Heart

[Muskrat]

"On Broadway" was originally done by the Cookies before it was covered by the Drifters. The first is almost Gershwin-esque with a muted trumpet part. The second formed a prototype for The Who's first album. It's The Drifters Sing My Generation.

Crystals, actually. Leiber and Stoller rewrote Mann and Weil's lyrics and doubled the composer credits for the Drifters version.

Good call on Gershwin, which I'd never picked up on. (And of course Spector played the guitar solo on the Drifters record, somehow bringing it full circle).

[Modesty Forbids]

"On Broadway" was originally done by the Cookies before it was covered by the Drifters. The first is almost Gershwin-esque with a muted trumpet part. The second formed a prototype for The Who's first album. It's The Drifters Sing My Generation.

The Crystals were the first to release it, although the Cookies version (not released at the time, while the Crystals version was on their He's a Rebel album) was apparently recorded first. The Drifters version (definitive in my view), has rewritten lyrics and a tempo change. And of course a Phil Spector guitar solo

[Muskrat]

Great minds...

[Charlie O.]

Twist and Shout - The Beatles

which was better than the Isley Brothers version (oh yes it was), which was way better than the Top Notes version (an early Phil Spector production)...

[fange]

I think a lot of punters don't realize that UB40's 'Red Red Wine' was in fact written by Neil Diamond in the late '60s. Since it became so popular though, Diamond has turned to playing it as a reggae song in concert.

[Loki]

[toomanyhatz]

I like that Joni Mitchell's version of "Woodstock" is a bit somber - she wanted to be there and couldn't - but I think CSNY's version matches the lyrics a lot better. As does Mathew's Southern Comfort's. But CSNY's is definitive and one of my very favorite recordings by them.

[Osgood]

Debatable I guess, but for me the definitive version of Mama Told Me Not To Come was Three Dog Night's, even if I myself prefer Randy's, issued a few weeks later. In any case after these two, Eric Burdon's original from 1966 got a well-deserved oblivion.

[Hugh]

I may be on my own here but I far prefer Manfred Mann's version of Blinded By The Light to Springsteen's Dylan-lite version.

[take5_d_shorterer]

Good call on Gershwin, which I'd never picked up on.

Not actually my observation. I heard that in a radio documentary on Atlantic records a long time ago. I think it was Leiber and Stoller who described the Cookies' rendition that way. It does have that kind of American in Paris feel to it.

In this sense, I think the tune illustrates a lot of problems that the Great American Songbook faced from about 1950 to the present, in which the older version is written as something that might have been in that Songbook. The Drifters' version, though, doesn't fit at all in the Songbook. It's also a lot better.

That's a basic problem that songwriters have had to deal with for at least 60 years. The earlier tradition doesn't really work anymore. It's easy to say that people don't write melodies the way they used to (that's what Paul Simon says, and he's right to a certain extent).

On the other hand, the old format doesn't yield music that is as powerful.

(And of course Spector played the guitar solo on the Drifters record).

Wild.

I did not know that.

[Count Machuki]

Every once in a while, I come up on a "wait, that was a cover?!" song
This was the best one in a long while, though I love the Supremes version in a totally different way



Harvey Fuqua sighting!

[sloopjohnc]

The Rivieras California Sun was a cover, and then the Ramones eclipsed their version. Rivieras still the best though.

The Dictators version shits all over the Rivieras and Ramones.

[sloopjohnc]

"On Broadway" was originally done by the Cookies before it was covered by the Drifters. The first is almost Gershwin-esque with a muted trumpet part. The second formed a prototype for The Who's first album. It's The Drifters Sing My Generation.

When I hear On Broadway, I hear George Benson.

[Modesty Forbids]

The Rivieras California Sun was a cover, and then the Ramones eclipsed their version. Rivieras still the best though.

The Dictators version shits all over the Rivieras and Ramones.

I have all three of them, and no it doesn't.

Have you checked out the When the Ball Dreams thread in sorting life, sloop? lots of disc and hoops action