‘The Best Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
Are there any bad John Prine covers?
I mean, sure, there are bad covers of anyone worth covering. But it struck me going through the many candidates for this list that they mostly ranged from transcendent on the high end to pretty good on the low. “Pretty good” was about as bad as it got! I don’t think you could say that for anyone else we’ve featured in this series. Continue reading »
Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
By the mid- to late-’80s, John Hiatt was seen pretty much as a lost cause. True, a pretty decent songwriter, having penned a hit or two for others, Three Dog Night and Roseanne Cash both being welcome recipients of his muse. But himself? Deemed just another drunk by the majors, with Arista having been the last to throw in his beer-stained towel; sobriety seemed to have beckoned too late for that final chance.
Luckily for him, the then-tiny UK label Demon, run by the same mavericks behind Stiff and Radar, had a little faith. Indeed, Hiatt himself later said they were willing to put out the farts in his bathtub, so enamored were they of his talent. And they had some bucks to back that up, if not many. Enough for about four days in the studio, if they could keep other costs to a minimum.
Hiatt rustled up his old buddy Nick Lowe, who was married to Roseanne Cash Carlene Carter at the time. Lowe agreed to waive any fee and to share a motel room with Hiatt. Ry Cooder, whose 1980 album Borderline had included two Hiatt numbers (plus their author on guitar and backing vocals), was also up for it, as was journeyman session drummer supreme Jim Keltner. Remarkably, they were all free those four days, even if the material wasn’t entirely ready. Allegedly Cooder had to be persuaded to hang on a few hours at the end, whilst Hiatt finished writing a necessary tenth track. Another tale is how the impressively lairy rhythm of “Memphis in the Meantime” comes from Lowe plugging in and playing, less than an hour after arrival, for a song he had neither heard nor rehearsed.
But the gamble paid off, and 1987’s Bring the Family became Hiatt’s breakthrough, even if the same line-up were not available to promote it on the road. That came a full five years later, with, now, the band collectively entitled Little Village, coming together for an eponymous album, a tour, and no little rancor. Lowe later stated the problem was of too much time and too much money in the studio. But that’s another story.
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Mose Allison is possibly best known these days through his association with Van Morrison, who released Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison in 1996. Morrison probably gave Allison’s career a late boost, presenting him as a somewhat kindred spirit, albeit having a few more years on him, and hopefully a more benign presence than Van the Man, if even harder to classify.
I had always filed Allison under jazz, though blues was probably closer to his idiom, yet here we have If You’re Going to the City: A Tribute to Mose Allison, which sees him being covered by a slew of largely rock music gentry from the past few decades. Listening to this selection, it becomes easier to see that blues is at least the template to Allison’s songs. Not necessarily a version familiar to the backstreet bars of Chicago, this is a more polished version of the blues, with echoes of both supper club and Tin Pan Alley – though in Allison’s hands and voice, they sound perhaps a shade less archaic. These are fine songs and, if these covers succeed in pointing attention back to the originals, then at least part of the work of this collection has been done.
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In Pick Five, great artists pick five cover songs that matter to them.
Singer-songwriter Nicki Bluhm boasts a lot of experience with collaboration. Her new album To Rise You Gotta Fall (hear a track below) features two co-writes with her friend Ryan Adams, and in recent years she’s toured in Phil Lesh’s band and as part of the Incredible Stringdusters. When last I saw her live, she was singing “The Weight” in Levon’s barn as part of Amy Helm’s female-musicians collective Skylark.
So as someone who knows how different musicians and genres can blend to create unexpected classics, it’s no surprise she’s a fan of cover songs. She used to record amazing covers with her band while driving the van, and her new album includes a powerful blast through Dan Penn’s “I Hate You” (appropriate for a divorce record). And she digs deep in her cover recommendations below, going from a certain song you might remember from last month’s Best Beyoncé Covers countdown to a nod to a Grateful Dead song she has sung with Lesh himself. Check out Nicki’s picks below. Continue reading »
Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.
Raphael Camara was raised in the Philippines and is currently based in Leipzig, Germany. He’s been writing for Cover Me since 2014. Of all his Cover Me pieces, he especially likes his pieces on Aurora covering Bowie and Dani Mari & Second Sky covering Radiohead.
On September 2, 2014, Ray gave the go on my first news article and published it to Cover Me (unbeknownst to him, it was also my birthday). It’s been nothing but great fun working with the crew here and this fall we celebrate our Aluminum Anniversary by asking our team to compile a list of covers they hold dear.
Down below, in no particular order of importance, are my picks. Enjoy!
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