Apr 042025
 

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

Sexual Healing covers

The American, or Caribbean, musical expatriate in Europe has been a constant since travel between the continents has been easy. From the Jazz Age to the present day, some artists prefer to ply their trade on the European continent rather than the American one.

Each individual had their own reasons for their move. Pianist Hazel Scott was a huge success in the US, becoming the first Black American woman to host a network TV show, but the McCarthy witch hunts chased her out of America. Others were trying to escape drug or alcohol problems, or vindictive individual drug dealers, or, in the case of Chet Baker, were hoping that the authorities in Europe might take a more lenient view of their drug habits, which they had no intention of curbing.

A significant theme from many African American artists, from Josephine Baker onwards, was that the segregation policies and lack of appreciation of Jazz or Rhythm and Blues as art forms in their home country made Europe an enticing prospect. They could feel more appreciated in their art, and love who their heart wanted to love rather than who society was willing to let them love. This has been eloquently described by Sonny Rollins, and features in all the biographies of Miles Davis. Artists who had been to Europe fighting in the Second World War on behalf of their country, contrasted their acceptance as heroes in the lands they helped liberate, with their status back home.

This world is beautifully captured in one of the greatest movies about music ever made, Round Midnight. In the movie, saxophonist Dexter Gordon (who spent many years himself in Copenhagen) plays jazz musician Dale Turner. His alcohol problems have made him unwelcome in his favorite playing spots in the US, and so he takes a residency in Paris.  There he finds a supportive community of post-bop musical superstars, and people who lionize him as a person and support him in his craft. The story itself is based on the life of Bud Powell. Through love, nurturing and appreciation as an individual, Turner/Gordon refinds his muse and his mojo. The Oscar-winning soundtrack albums, curated by Herbie Hancock, are exquisite works of art.

Marvin Gaye’s time in Europe followed one of the tropes. Creatively, emotionally and financially broken by years of drug abuse, he had lost his marriage, record deal and reputation, and moved to Europe in the late ’70s. His relocation to the port town of Ostende, Belgium in 1981 was an attempt to get away from his problems. It seemed to work, and Gaye was able to start recording after curbing his drug use, and getting fit both physically (by running) and spiritually. Forced by circumstances to be innovative with his music, he learned how to use the Roland TR-808 and Jupiter 8 synthesizers (then mainly used as drum machines) to create a whole sound.  From that the album Midnight Love and its biggest hit, “Sexual Healing,” emerged.

Recovery from cocaine addiction can awaken all sorts of things in the addict. In Gaye’s case his libido returned.  He was still a young man. He used that energy and creativity to create one of the great songs about sex.  It also gave Gaye one of his biggest hits and led to receiving his only two Grammy Awards.

One of the biggest risks the expatriate faces is when he thinks he is over the worst and can return across the Atlantic to face his demons, with greater strength. It does not always work out as they hope.  In the same way that Dale Turner/Bud Powell struggled when they returned to the US, Gaye’s potentially triumphant return to musical stardom and his family home soon ended in disaster.

The universality of the message and success of the song has meant that there have been many covers over the years.  Here are five of the best.
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Jul 122024
 

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

Nebraska covers

A Full Album post of covers of Nebraska? Surely, you say, Cover Me has done this before. Well, I have checked, and whilst we have published posts about officially released full album versions of Born in the U.S.A., Darkness on the Edge of Town, and Tunnel of Love, as well as our Best Ever of Bruce covers piece, and even reviews of Nebraska tribute albums here and there and here again, we actually haven’t. So then, cometh the day, and this man’s job is to find ten Nebraska covers, one of each song, while avoiding as much duplication as is possible. You up for that?
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May 212024
 

Long Distance LoveWell, how about that! On the same day as a still-going Little Feat put out a blues cover album, Sam’s Place (review incoming), so too choose Sweet Relief to put out Long Distance Love, a star-studded charity tribute to their late founder and lynchpin, Lowell George. Star-studded? Well, let’s say the likes of Elvis Costello, Dave Alvin and Ben Harper are all present and accounted for, with George’s own daughter, Inara George, also putting in an appearance.

Lowell George was a slide guitar maestro, a singer/songwriter with a penchant for complex swampland boogie, polyrhythmic shuffles to delight both brain and bootheels. He formed Little Feat back in 1969, after a short spell with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. A set of well-received albums followed, until 1979, when George (a) dissolved the band, (b) released his solo album Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here, and (c) died of a massive heart attack at the age of 34. It took eight years before the relicts of what had assuredly been his band reconvened, and they remain a vital presence, with George’s songs still the ones the fans mainly come to hear. These are the songs that return to the spotlight on Long Distance Love, and the four and a half decades since Lowell’s voice was stilled have done nothing to dampen their vibe.
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Aug 042023
 

Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.

Badlands

Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska confounded a lot of people when he released it in 1982. Probably still does, especially among recently converted followers. I mean, how do you explain it someone who’s yet to hear it? I tried in my book Heart of Darkness: Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, writing this:

Nebraska is raw, primitive, ancient, otherworldly, spiritual, nihilistic, heartbreaking, horrifying and a whole bunch of other things that come to you like apparitions whenever you enter its province (ideally under cover of darkness)….And like the great films and the great novels, it holds up well. It holds up well because it still has something to teach us about ourselves and the world we live in, and maybe even the world beyond this one.

Just as Springsteen was inspired by Woody Guthrie and Flannery O’Connor and Night of the Hunter and Suicide and Terrence Malick and Martin Scorsese on Nebraska, so too has Nebraska become a touchstone for artists of myriad forms – Bruised Orange theatre company’s The Nebraska Project, Tennessee Jones’ short story collection Deliver Me from Nowhere, and Sean Penn’s directorial debut The Indian Runner, based on the song “Highway Patrolman.”

And then there is, of course, the tribute album, Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, helmed by producer and filmmaker Jim Sampas.
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Mar 082023
 

Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.

The Church With One Bell
By 1998, John Martyn had lost the teen-idol good looks and the equally angelic voice of his debut recordings. He’d been through a few bumps along the way as well, distressingly, walking proof of what happens when you don’t “just say no.” Let’s just say his appetite for a self-destructive intake was prodigious; when his website describes him as a “maverick,” often you can paraphrase that into “drunken bum.” The irony is, at the time of his demise in 2009, he was several months sober and about to embark on new work. I have difficulty when character is allowed to impact on appreciation, with individuals being disappeared on account their attitudes. After all, across the centuries of artistic endeavor, to paraphrase Ian Dury, “there ain’t half been some clever bastards,” with the emphasis on the latter word as other than a term of affection or illegitimacy. Sure, there is a line to be drawn, but, I ain’t drawing it here.

Most folk know only the early stuff, with “May You Never” the frontrunner amongst the songs known to civilians, even if only from the versions of others, like Eric Clapton or Rod Stewart. I freely confess it was only as he became more ragged and less reliable that I took to him, and to his later work. In fact, it wasn’t until the Glasgow Walker album that I plucked up enough interest to fully engage, any residual folk singer in him long since buried. Now he planted his feet very much more in a smoky jazz club dive ambience, where his superlatively slurred delivery matched the swirls of brass, often embracing elements of the then-new trip-hop movement.

It was around about this time that he put out The Church With One Bell, his only collection of covers, sourced across an enormous range of styles and influences. How often would Portishead and Billie Holiday find themselves as bedfellows? His 20th studio release, it was actually put together in 1998, so two years ahead Glasgow Walker, and was made with long term associates Spencer Cozens (keyboards), John Giblin (bass) and Arran Ahmun (percussion). Remarkably, or not, depending on your opinions as to whether the sometime murkiness of sound is deliberate or not, it took barely a week to conceive, choose and put together. And the church on the cover? Martyn’s. The deal was, apparently, that his fee was the purchase, for him, of the same church as pictured, along with its solitary bell, as he liked the look of it. Fair enough?! Whether the company recouped is left unsaid, the record only attaining a peak position of 51 on the chart of the day. Irrespective, it has remained a core favorite amongst his following and deserves a place in this ongoing series.
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Oct 052020
 
best tribute albums

Over our time tracking cover songs (13 years this month!), we’ve written about hundreds of new tribute albums, across reviews, news stories, and, when they’re good enough, our best-of-the-year lists. We also have looked back on plenty of great tribute albums from the past in our Cover Classics series. But we’ve never pulled it all together – until now. Continue reading »