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Young Jerry Garcia Covers “Long Black Veil” in 1963

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May 182018
 
jerry garcia long black veil

Jerry Garcia was not exactly known for his talkative stage persona. Though the legendary singer/guitarist of the Grateful Dead was adept at providing quality sound bites during interviews, whenever he stood before a large stadium crowd he was more likely to tune his guitar than engage in the typical “Hello, Cleveland!” stage banter. That’s what makes his recently released cover of “Long Black Veil” so intriguing. On May 4, 1963 while performing the song at Top of the Tangent in Palo Alto with his then-wife Sara (Ruppenthal) Garcia, Jerry was practically Mr. Chatterbox on stage.

“We had a request, or at least I did, after this last set, to do a song called ‘Long Black Veil,’ which is a modern country song,” he told the crowd, during a lengthy introduction to the tune. “But it’s pretty anyway, even at that. It’s not even a folk song, or anything. It’s just a song. Somebody wrote it and it’s on records with electric guitars and everything. But anyway, it’s a good song.” The track was included on the new box set Before the Dead, which chronicles Garcia’s live recordings with various groups in Northern California from 1961 through 1964. Long before the days of YouTube, somebody was seemingly always following him around with a tape recorder.

In early 1963, “Long Black Veil” was hardly the standard it is today. Originally recorded by country singer Lefty Frizzell in 1959, it had only been released commercially by a handful of artists at this point. The most notable version was by folk revivalists the Kingston Trio in 1962. Many of the more famous renditions had not yet hit vinyl. Joan Baez’s live recording would not be released until November 1963 and Johnny Cash did not put out his cut until 1965.

Garcia’s take on the song is simple and straightforward. He plays it, strumming his acoustic guitar without a psychedelic solo anywhere in sight. His voice strains a bit as he attempts to hit the high notes. Listening to Garcia sing, it feels as if he does not quite know who he’s supposed to sound like. While the song is by no means an essential addition to the Garcia canon, listening this track, and in fact the whole collection, is a bit like reading the original scroll of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Though hardly a finished product, the music provides a fascinating window into an artist developing and honing his craft.

Click here to listen to more covers of “Long Black Veil.”

Iron and Wine Covers “Long Black Veil” for Johnny Cash Tribute Album

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Aug 202012
 

Earlier this year, folk singer-songwriter Sam Beam, better known by the stage name Iron and Wine, joined a bill of prominent country artists including Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, and Sheryl Crow for a tribute show in honor of Johnny Cash’s 80th birthday. The concert was released on CD/DVD last week as We Walk the Line: A Celebration of the Music of Johnny Cash. Beam’s contribution to the album was a take on the much-covered track “Long Black Veil,” which Cash recorded for his 1965 album Orange Blossom Special. Continue reading »

Full Albums: Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’

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Dec 032010
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

black sabbath paranoid covers

From the political science of “War Pigs” to the applied pharmacology of “Fairies Wear Boots,” Black Sabbath‘s Paranoid features seven of the most iconic heavy metal songs of all time…and an instrumental ditty with the evocative title “Rat Salad.” Ozzy Osbourne‘s original wail forever eclipses his latter-day cries of “Shaaaaroooon.” Tony Iommi is the Lennon/McCartney of doom-laden riffs. Geezer Butler and Bill Ward make a mean rhythm section and an even meaner rat salad. And as the following covers demonstrate, the quartet’s hard rock mastery sounds good in any genre. Continue reading »

In the Spotlight: Dave Matthews Band

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Oct 152024
 

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

For those that celebrate, the closing gigs to The Dave Matthews Band’s Summer Tour, titled Labor Dave Weekend, are an annual highlight. Three days of raucous fandom mark the transition to Fall in the Gorge, Washington State. Those in The Pit had an extra thing to celebrate this year. After a fan movement failed to get the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, the band was elected this year and their enthronement takes place this weekend. Those fans will have had just enough time to recover from the weekend to get to Cleveland!

The Dave Matthews Band is an American phenomenon, in several ways. Across nearly 3500 live shows that the band and their spinoffs have played, not much more than 100 DMB events have occurred outside North America, and these shows are often populated by American fans on pilgrimage to the host country. Their seven consecutive number-one albums in the US includes records that never touched a single chart overseas. They have, of course, generated a billion dollars of concert ticket sales off the back of legendary, epic live shows. Their presence on the list of highest-grossing touring artists ever is a testament to the energy they can generate.

Almost everything in DMB’s world is vociferously debated somewhere.  The role of cover music in the sets is one of those matters. They have included hundreds of cover versions in their sets over the years, demonstrating a vast knowledge and appreciation of popular and not-so-popular music. When you have a world-class, jazz-infused drummer, a rock bassist, a roots-minded guitarist and a vocalist born overseas, not to mention touring musicians with decades of experience, you are going to have a lot to draw on.

Still, there are a group of people who get agitated every time a cover is included in one of their sets. The argument seems to be that, with a vast back catalog of their own, why do they need to play the music of others? That is understandable in some ways. If you made out with someone hot in your college dorm to a DMB song back in the ’90s, and that song doesn’t get played in the set, you miss the chance to fully relive that moment, perhaps even if you are at that concert with the hot person. Every set is different, but your memories stay the same. The covers that the band have played over the years have a rich heritage and history, and the band are not going to stop playing them, and Matthews himself is going to announce and perform them with enthusiasm regardless.
Continue reading »

Five Good Covers: “Powderfinger” (Neil Young)

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May 242024
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Powderfinger

I just kind of stopped all over.
–The final sentence of After Dark, My Sweet by Jim Thompson

Writing a first-person singular postmortem is the sort of project writers take on as a challenge. How to tell a tale when the teller is no longer with us? Where are they talking from? Do they know more than they did? It’s a gimmick, but like all gimmicks it has enough winners to keep people trying it.

Songwriters have taken up the challenge repeatedly, and the best of them – “Long Black Veil,” “El Paso,” “I Come and Stand at Every Door” – have met the challenge with style and grace. Neil Young’s “Powderfinger” is absolutely one of the best of them. The song’s death scene is as brief and vivid as the death itself – “Then I saw black, and my face splash in the sky” stays with you forever after you understand it.

One reason for that: it’s one of the few definite things about the song. Fans have long debated where and when it takes place, and what the song is “really” about. Neil himself rarely lets anyone peek behind the curtain, but did reveal in a 1995 Spin interview that “You may not see the anger, or the angst, or whatever in me lay behind a song like ‘Powderfinger.’ But I’ve seen things in my life that I’ll never forget—and I see them every day. And I see strength that I can’t understand, and weaknesses that I can’t deal with.”
Continue reading »

The Goudies Release Plaintive Folk Cover of ‘Fresh Prince’ Theme

 Posted by at 12:01 pm  1 Response »
Dec 022022
 
The Goudies

Back in college, I was in our local bar for “Acoustic Tuesday” and a guy came up on stage and played “Baby One More Time” on an acoustic guitar, as seriously as possible. I loved it but everyone around me rolled their eyes and there were even a few boos. Maybe some had heard something like this before. Maybe it seemed to obvious, to easy, or just too gimmicky.

That’s the danger with the serious acoustic guitar (or piano) cover of the goofy song everyone knows: people will likely dismiss it as a gimmick. YouTube has popularized this form in the decades since I was in college, but I still think there are plenty of people who just don’t like the idea and think these types of covers are cheap.

So there is danger is covering Will Smith’s theme song to ‘90s classic sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with an acoustic guitar, entirely seriously. But The Goudies are up to it, particularly since they treat it like a classic folk dirge along the lines of “Long Black Veil.”

Sam Goudie’s voice is plaintive and a little old timey. Beth Goudie’s voice is ethereal in that classic folk sense. They sing the lyrics, so there’s a new vocal melody and the phrasing is almost entirely different. In this version, the lyrics convey a loss; leaving one place and becoming “king” somewhere else doesn’t sound so great. Their guitars evoke a classic folk ballad, even when there’s the solo (which is very modest).

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