In The Spotlight: Bread

Even during their absolute peak of popularity in the early ’70s, when I was kid living for AM radio, the gushy, on-bended-knee, soft-rocking romantic balladry of Bread held no allure for me. My musical palate at that time, was as unrefined as my daily afterschool snack of a single Devil Dog™ with a Hawaiian Punch™ chaser. Sammy Davis Jr.’s “The Candy Man” and The Aristocats soundtrack were unironically being spun in my blue shag carpeted bedroom on a daily basis. I thought the Bay City Rollers were amazing and as good as The Beatles. But even my sugar-pickled brain with its relentlessly questionable taste, was able to discern that softer-than-soft rocking Bread were not cool.

I knew this because their songs were all icky-lovey-dovey like you’d hear at a wedding. I knew because in my grade school music class, their song “If” was deemed unthreatening and un-rock ‘n’ roll enough for we innocent children to be taught to sing. I knew this because they weren’t like, you know, cute, or at least cute enough for a table of pop-worshipping little gals at a lunch table to ever gush over (never happened ever). I knew this because easy listening crooners Andy Williams and Perry Como seemed really into covering Bread songs on their lame, grandma-seducing TV specials.

Bread’s imperial years ran from 1969-1973, during which time they released five (!) studio albums and landed nine songs in the Top 20 of the U.S. pop chart, every one of which is now a massively-streamed, seventies pop-soft rock monster standard. “Everything I Own”. “Make It With You”. “If”. “Baby I’m-a Want You”. “The Guitar Man”. Hits, hits, hits! The band—David Gates, Jimmy Griffin, Mike Botts, Rob Royer (from ’69-’71) and Larry Knechtel (’71-73, ’76-78)—broke up and reunited twice (1976-78, 1997-98)…and, as the timeline hints, there was a fair amount of inter-band drama.

Gates and Griffin were both were gifted songwriters but the former’s compositions featuring his lead vocals were the ones consistently released as singles. This led to a fair amount of bad blood and resentment which later manifested in a lawsuit over use of the band name which Gates and Griffin co-owned. Along with this excess of alpha dogs, there were drugs. Yes, even the sonically gentle Bread weren’t immune to all the traditional band-related tropes.

So why am I writing about these sappy suckers? Well, because as the years have passed, I’ve come to realize that while Bread weren’t “cool,” they definitely didn’t suck. They were in fact really good. Bread were a bottomless pit of memorable, lovely windblown pop songs…and they’ve inspired a staggering number of covers.

I’ve written a couple of lengthy, nerdy love letters on Cover Me about R &B covers of soft rock (here) and hoary old regular rock (here). While researching those pieces, I was struck by just how many covers of Bread songs there were. Not only were there a whole lot of soulful reinterpretations but there were a ton of alternately fascinating, weird and impassioned pop-flavored takes of Bread songs…and we are gonna explore.

Welcome to the gorgeous and goofy world of Bread covers.

Okay, I just realized I haven’t hit the quota of Bread jokes that were expected of me by editor Patrick so I’m gonna quick make up for it now (apologies in advance).

The covers that follow really rise to the occasion. You really knead to hear them. Some of them are truly Wonder™-ful. Rye-ight, I’ll stop now. Let’s hear some freakin’ Bread covers…

Ken Boothe — Everything I Own

David Gates wrote “Everything I Own” as a tribute to his late father, who passed away before Bread came to be. It is the most popular Bread song ever and, fittingly, inspired the most successful, beloved Bread covers ever. Yes, that’s plural. “Everything I Own” went to # 1 in the UK  twice in consecutive decades by two different artists. Jamaican singer Ken Boothe was most famous for his reggae-flavored covers which ranged from schmaltzy (McCartney’s “My Love”) to silly (Mungo Jerry’s “In The Summertime”) to serious (Syl Johnsons’s “Is It Because I’m Black”). Boothe’s delectable reggae-fied version of “Everything I Own” was a UK #1 in 1974. “Everything…” was a great pop song before KB got his hands on it, but it’s his distinctive, honeyed vocal performance on this cover that pushes it over the top and straight into free-standing, classic single territory. Boy George’s sweet-but-not-as-good cover of Boothe’s cover (!) went to #1 in the UK in 1987, listen here.

Bonus cut!: I love this 1974 Ken Boothe performance from Top of the Pops for many reasons. For the song of course. But also for his skin-tight white jumpsuit with the ruffled collar…and his flowy, emotive hand gestures…and for the extraordinary, early seventies-style camp-ness of the whole damn thing. Ken, you owned this.

Ronnie Dyson —Make It With You

“I wanna make it with you. I really think that we can make it girl”. The chorus of “Make It With You” goes both ways…meaning it is both horny and sentimental (and maybe one of the best of uses of a double entendre in a pop song ever). For the record, composer David Gates knew it sounded somewhat suggestive but figured people would get that it was ultimately about long term love (sure, why not). The track only features half of Bread, namely drummer Mike Botts and Gates who in addition to writing, singing and playing on it, also produced it. There are A LOT of covers of MIWY (let’s just call it). Hundreds. So many that there are a fair amount of good ones. We’ve already featured the spectacular live version by Aretha Franklin on Cover Me (hear here) so this time we’re going to spotlight a couple of MIWY takes that haven’t been fully showcased before and couldn’t be more different.

Oh Ronnie Dyson. A breakout star as a teenager in the original Broadway production of Hair, Dyson achieved only middling success in his subsequent pop-soul recording career, but man oh man, did he have an incredible voice. Piercing, feminine and soaring. While the original MIWY cuddles and snuggles, Dyson’s 1970 cover runs across a hillside Sound of Music style and ascends straight to the sky.

Okay, now for something weird…

Claudine Longet — Make It With You

French chanteuse Claudine Longet was once married to our aforementioned friend, middle of the road crooner Andy Williams. That is not her primary claim to fame unfortunately. Nor is her career as a pop singer/actress in the ’60s. In 1976, Longet shot and killed her boyfriend, former Olympic skier Spider Sabich and was charged with negligent homicide. The event was relentlessly reported on by the national news media and the tabloids in particular. She has long since faded from the public eye but it still feels weird talking about her, even now.

Longet’s 1971 cover of MIWY was produced by prolific arranger extraordinaire Nick DeCaro who turns what could have been an anodyne cover into a Serge Gainsbourg-flavored ice cream cone. The instrumentation and arrangement are fabulously breezy and beautiful (Flute! Sax!). That part is well and truly lovely. As for Longet, she is helpless in the face of this luscious ‘n’ hazy wall of sound. Her vocal is as commanding as a tiny blown bubble floating over an active volcano…or at least it is until the last minute of the song. That is when she stops singing completely and takes drastic measures to turn the spotlight back to her, letting loose with a series of, oh yes baby, orgasmic gasps ( Very Gainsbourg-ian indeed). It’s clear from this artistic flourish that no one in the studio was hearing the song as a celebration of commitment. No, to them it was a song about making it, like, for real (Insert bonus Longet moan here).

Thanks for listening, we hope you’ve enjoyed the most salacious Bread cover ever (Insert bonus Longet moan here). Onward!

Bonus Cut!: I wanna give a nod to two of my fave soul ladies who both masterfully covered MIWY (and who I wish had made more records). Dee Dee Warwick (Dionne’s sister) had a freakin’ incredible voice (Hot Take: It was better than Dionne’s). Her (approximately) 1971 version of MIWY is an effortless, unassumingly transcendent bit of soul (Hear here). Ruby Wilson’s 1981 version, which we’ve written about before, is also stunning (Hear here).

Eddie Kendricks — If

“If” has been covered hundreds upon hundreds of times. While cringily corny to some (me included), the song has proven to be a powerful catnip to others, especially those early ’70s easy listening crooner blokes I mentioned in the intro. Those guys were all over this shit. Andy Williams (the mention of whom is now officially a drinking game in this essay), Perry Como, Jerry Vale, Johnny Mathis and Jack Jones all took swings at “If”-ing” things up. For the record, Jones even went so far as to record a whole album of Bread songs (!) in 1972, titled Bread Winners. Personally, I would’ve gone for the more esoteric title of Breadth but I see where he was coming from, in wanting to keeps things both winky-cute and to-the-point descriptive…which brings us to this 1974 cover of “If” by the Temptations legendary falsetto man Eddie Kendricks.

My hope upon first hearing this, was that Eddie would imbue some much needed cool into “If,” which he kind of did simply by virtue of the fact that he is Eddie (freakin’) Kendricks. Still, this cover straddles the line between okay and mediocre very, very finely. On the up side is the stunning Stevie Wonder-style orchestration that opens and closes the track. On the confusing side is the unbelievable fragility of Eddie’s vocal performance. He sounds as if he could fall off the wire at any second. He never sounds comfortable, which while not necessarily a selling point, makes for an oddly compelling listen.

Bonus Cut!: Check out Glen Campbell’s acoustic version from The Tonight Show in 1974. It is If-ing beautiful. Hear here.

Bobby Bare Jr. — The Guitar Man

Bobby Bare Jr., son of the country legend, was born in 1966 making him a true blue ’70s kid™. In 2009, he released an EP titled American Bread that featured covers of songs by Bread and their ’70s soft rockin’ brethren America. In an interview with American Songwriter around the album’s release Bare was asked how he discovered Bread;

“It fits into my “school bus music” category. I had to ride the school bus for one hour twice a day and we got to listen to 70’s FM radio through little speakers. It was great.  America. Bread. Seals and Crofts. Dan Fogelberg. All that stuff is stuck in my head…With American Bread I tried to sincerely embrace the songs with one arm and molest them with the other hand, with just as much enthusiasm”.

Embrace them with one arm and molest them with the other hand. Damn. We’re only a handful of paragraphs into this essay already having been confronted with Ken Boothe’s skintight jumpsuit and Claudine Longet’s impassioned moans and now yet another “adults only” situation has emerged from the wholesome Bread box. What the hell is happening here? When did the Bread discography become the ’70s soft rock equivalent of Pornhub?…which brings us to maybe the most brilliantly beautiful Bread song ever, “The Guitar Man” ( It doesn’t really, I’m just trying to steer us back to “approved for all audiences” territory).

“The Guitar Man”—legendarily sung as “The GIT-tar Man,” is regarded as Bread’s “coolest” song. It is the one that Bread and Soft Rock haters are the most into and will admit to liking. This isn’t surprising as not only does it possess a lustrous twisty-turny melody but features some actual “rock” flavoring thanks to Larry Knechtel’s goofy wah-wah-ing on the GIT-tar.

Bare Jr’s. American Bread EP is a reverential and relaxed charmer and his version of “The Guitar Man” is the highlight. Delicately country-fied with a pinch of Johnny Cash, Bare’s grizzled, lowdown vocal performance, transforms the light and airy original into a lovable ‘n’ dusty dirt ball.

Bonus Cut!: Also wanna give a nod to the 2004 cover by alt-rock weirdos Cake which, despite its squelching, slacking and grinning, sounds like love (Hear AND see, here).

Barbara Jean English — Baby I’m A Want You

“Baby I’m A Want You” wasn’t meant to sound like cringey baby talk. It’s just that David Gates had a melody in hand he didn’t want to change. There was “a note left over” and to fit the words into the existing tune, he had to add an extra lyrical syllable that would fit, hence the “I’m A”.

Barbara Jean English was a member of late ’50s and early ’60s girl group The Clickettes and is the voice behind to two straight-up, stone cold Northern Soul classics, “(You Got Me) Sittin in the Corner” and “I’m Living a Lie”. The latter tune appeared on her solo debut album So Many Ways in 1972 as did this string-laden cover “Baby I’m A Want You” (P.S. The title track of this LP is also f-ing amazing but I digress). There is something incredibly striking about Barbara’s voice. She sounds like a slightly higher-pitched and more fanciful version of our friend Dionne Warwick. Fittingly, Barbara adds a flock of, yes, fanciful, of extra syllables herself, to fabulous effect. She “just can’t live without-ow-ow-out” lovin’ and affection, she’s praying “that you’ll always be a-stay-ay-ayin”. Extra points for that ad-libbed coda too (“gotta have you baby”). Go on girl.

Wee Gee — Aubrey

David Gates’ inspiration for his ode of unrequited love, “Aubrey” was actually an “Audrey,” the most famous one to be exact, actress Audrey Hepburn (He’d just watched the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s).

And now, a weirdy little origin story. So in 1972, Maria Elizabeth Arcenas Mate aka Wee Gee and her husband moved from the Philippines to Thailand. Wee Gee found the transition difficult and turned to her guitar for comfort. One day, a guy from EMI heard her singing as she was walking down the street and approached her about making a record. And just like that, Wee Gee’s musical career began (!). Her 1974 debut album Donna Donna features a mix of folk songs and contemporary pop tunes of the day, including this beauteous cover of “Aubrey”. There’s nothing fancy here, just a lonely harmonica, some spare string plucking and Wee Gee’s wistful Karen Carpenter-esque (!), sad girl voice floating over the top. It’s plain old quietly beautiful, and that’s more than enough.

Here’s a cool little mini-doc on Wee Gee from 2020 produced by Thai PBS, if you want to meet her. She’s really cool, watch here.

Jimmy Helms — It Don’t Matter To Me

Jimmy Helms has been a member of soul-dance band Londonbeat since the late ’80s (They of the worldwide 1990 megahit “I’ve Been Thinking About You”). Prior to that gig, he was a solo soul man. His 1975 album Gonna Make You an Offer!  is named after the LP’s swoony and, frankly, downright stalker-ish title track, which was a top ten hit in the UK pop chart in ’73. Despite its front cover showing a menacing, airbrushed illustration of Jimmy holding a gun and grinning malevolently, he doesn’t want to hurt anybody. We know this because there is a sweet Bread cover present. Jimmy brings the drama on his fabulously arranged version of “It Don’t Matter To Me”. It’s all extravagant harmonies, drums tripping and tipping forward, and a lead vocal that is a freakin’ rocket to the sky. It rules.

Bonus cut!: As hard as it is to believe, Helm’s version is actually the second greatest cover of “It Don’t Matter to Me’. The greatest version is one we’ve already written about here at Cover Me, namely the 1970 take by soul hippies The Friends of Distinction. It is horn-fueled groovy and as breezy-beautiful as a passive-aggressive song about accepting a partner’s wishes to play the field can possibly be. Hear it here.

Bergen White — Look At Me

Master arranger Bergen White’s CV includes evergreen oldie classics like Jimmy Buffett’s “Come Monday,” Ronnie Milsap’s “Smoky Mountain Rain,” and Elvis’s “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me”. He’s worked with everyone from George Jones to Kris Kristofferson to Tim McGraw. In addition to his prolific arranging career, he also recorded a few albums of his own, the best of which is his fabulous debut album with the please-use-me-as-seduction-soundtrack title of, For Women Only in 1970. Reissued in 2004, FWO is full of lush, orchestral, soft and very-of-its-time melodic pop and it is BEAUTIFUL. Seriously. And one of its loveliest residents is a cover of the Bread deep cut “Look At Me”.

“Look at me, I’m blending into the wall, and I wonder if I’m really here at all”. Sigh. “Look At Me” is the darkest, moodiest track in the Bread canon, a David Gates composed song about alienation, otherness and not feeling seen or wanted (So technically it’s deep squared , meaning it’s a deep cut expressing deep feelings. Deep.). While White’s version is faithful to the original melody, it is more instrumentally fulsome than the Bread version i.e. It sounds more like one of those plaintive, rainy day, late ’60s/Early ’70s Paul McCartney songs then it does a Bread tune. If you ever crave a Bread cover to soundtrack staring out a window on a grey day, this one’s for you (and me).

John Holt — Too Much Love

Melodious country-rocker “Too Much Love” was not written by David Gates but by his Bread-mates Jimmy Griffin and Robb Royer. Despite its excellence, it was never released as a single, thus was “doomed” to life as a deep cut on Bread’s 1971 album Manna. 1971 was also the year the Eagles began and it’s striking how the song predicts the sound they themselves were to perfect in the years that followed (Check it out here).

There are two (!) Bread covers on one of the greatest reggae albums of all time. John Holt’s 1973 LP,  1000 Volts of Holt is lightweight and sweety, sweet, sweet, sweet. It’s a warm and comforting listen, and definitely one of those “that’s my Mom/Dad/Grandma/Grandpa’s favorite album” albums. It consists of 12 covers ranging from beloved cheeseballs like “Mr.Bojangles” and Lobo’s AM radio mega-hit nugget “I’d Love You to Want Me” to esteemed beauties like “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and the Bee Gees much covered “Morning of My Life”.  The Bread babes featured on 1000 Volts are “Baby I’m a Want You” and “Too Much Love”. The cover of the former is a total doll. But the jaunty and bittersweet version of “Too Much Love” is an even tastier confection of infectious perfection.

Stargard — Diary

“I found her diary underneath a tree, and started reading about me”. So begins “Diary,” the story of a guy who reads a diary belonging to his wife/girlfriend/crush, thinking her declarations of eternal love were about him, only to discover that they were about some other guy. Fact is, it’s not cool to be nosing around in someone’s diary so you know, that’s what you get. Still, there is something breezily optimistic about the song’s melody. And the lyrical sentiment isn’t so much tearful as it is resigned. This cover of “Diary” by Stargard, on the other hand, is upset, girl. It is mascara tears. It is trying, trying to keep it together.

If you know who Stargard are, you’re probably a bit of a soul nerd (And I see you). The funk-disco-R&B band’s first single  “Theme Song from ‘Which Way is Up’ ” hit #1 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1978 and got as high as #21 on the Billboard pop chart. The song, written by the legendary Motown producer-composer Norman Whitfield ended up being Stargard’s only crossover hit. Between 1976 and 1983 they released five studio albums (all of which featured songs composed by band member Rochelle Runnells). Their lack of major success is no reflection on how good they were, because they freakin’ were. Basically,  if you like The Pointer Sisters or Taste of Honey, then Stargard will be right up your alley.

Stargard’s “Diary” sounds a lot like a classic Chic ballad, regal, mannered and noble in the face of despair (Think “At Last I Am Free”). It’s also two whole minutes longer than the original Bread version, making room for a gorgeously mournful piano riff, a wash of angsty string action and plenty of eerie, otherworldly harmonizing. When Runnells and Janice Williams kick up the vocal volume in the next to last verse to wail “SOMEONE ELSE,” after all the dignified emotional restraint they’d displayed ’til then, it’s hard not to crack a smile. And that outro is heavenly.

Gladys Knight & The Pips — Part Time Love

Our concluding cover is special. You might wanna put on your hyperbole goggles now, as there’s some serious gushing coming up and you are gonna get wet.

While David Gates’s Never Let Her Go, from 1975, is technically a solo album (his second), the backing band he enlisted to record it were actually his Bread-mates Mike Botts and Larry Knechtel. So it’s nearly a Bread album which is why I’m “cheating” and featuring it here. Also, I just really wanted to share this freakin’ incredible cover, so here we are.

“Part Time Love” is not a wishy washy song, it’s a to-the-point to confrontation about commitment. Of course, that didn’t stop our horny fun friend David Gates from sneaking in a suggestive lyrical passage in the last verse because as we now know, Bread were dirty:

And if we grow together, daring to dream
I know we’ll find our share of peaches and cream
And when the juices flow
I don’t want no no no excuses

Anyway, while the David Gates version is string-laden, falsetto-festooned plea, Gladys Knight and The Pips 1975 cover is a straight-up demand, as in Gladys has had it with this shit and you need to make up your damn mind.

The song begins with Gladys cooing gorgeously in your ear..and then comes the explosion. Listen in awe as The Pips form a human (vocal) pyramid and Gladys climbs to the top and tells it like it is. Her vocal is a gale force wind. She infuses so much outrageous drama into “If you like the music baby, get up and dance,” that all you can do is wave your hands in the air in surrender. It’s that f-ing good. Her ability to go from the downbeat to the dramatic in a matter of seconds is mind-blowing. But that’s Gladys, always more pulled together and sophisticated, and less emotionally shambolic and tortured then her all-time greatest contemporaries Aretha, Marvin and Donny, but able to positively bring it in every situation and deliver the truth in every performance.

One last bonus cut!: Hey Breadheads! I’ve gathered a whole slew of soul/R&B covers of Bread classics into a single playlist if you crave a bit more! Bread Classics: Soul Style includes the fab soul-flavored covers shared here, plus a whole bunch more! Hear it here.

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