Nov 052021
 

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

Green Onions

Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Lewie Steinberg, and Al Jackson were the core of the MGs, the house band of Stax Records in Memphis. They played on scores of the R&B hits of the day, backing Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett, amongst many others. In 1962 they got some downtime to mess around on their own in the studio. Utilizing a standard 12-bar format, and working from the germ of an idea of Jones, they largely improvised it into sounding something special. They called it “Green Onions” – green at label co-owner Estelle Axton’s suggestion, and onions because they were the funkiest thing Steinberg could think of. “To him they were funky because they were stinky,” Cropper later said.

Suitable as a b-side for a track, “Behave Yourself,” that had already been commissioned of them by Jim Stewart, Cropper rushed the tapes off to Scotty Moore at Sun Records to cut the disc. Once it had secured a few radio plays, it became apparent the a and b were the wrong way around, and they were flipped, with “Green Onions” racing up the chart, hitting a peak of number 3. In the near 60 years since, it has never lost appeal, with numerous releases gaining a nod from successive generations. Both of its time and timeless, it has become musical shorthand by film makers and advertisers to evoke a the image of the early 60s, all beehives and flat tops, prime American Graffiti-styled mythologizing.

So what could you possibly do if you decide to cover this most iconic of instrumentals, other than to kill it or copy it? Which, pretty much, is what most versions do, often at the same time. That includes a whole host of folk who should know better (looking at you, Tom Petty and Dave Edmunds), jumping on the coattails of the song for either a quick fix of audience nostalgia or a quick buck in a fading career. Plus a shedload of ultimately weird discoveries, like the California Raisins and a pre-Beach Boys Bruce Johnston, doing little other than to let it sell their product, whether that be dried fruit or party music for co-eds. But there are some absolute belters tucked away out there, where much thought has been taken to give a little more back to the tune than Booker T and co. ever gave. From some surprising sources. Plus one liberal helping of good ol’ messy just for the hell of it.
Continue reading »

Jun 112021
 
They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!
Howlin' Wolf covers

Born 111 years ago this week, Chester Burnett, better known as Howlin’ Wolf, was a blues musician who possessed one of the most distinctive voices in 20th century popular music, and who wrote some of his genre’s most enduring hits. With his rival Muddy Waters, Wolf defined the electric blues style that reverberated out of Chicago in the 1950s. This sound in turn altered the course of the nascent rock music genre, as youngsters like Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton absorbed Chicago blues, and brought their own trippy flavor of it to new and wider audiences. Wolf was among the first black musicians to capitalize on white youths’ love for the blues form.
Continue reading »

Jun 042021
 

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

Lucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams, the album, was the game changer for Lucinda Williams, the artist, even if few knew or realized it at the time. Sneaking out on Rough Trade records, home of the Smiths, it started a slow burn of releases, initially only by drip feed, speeding up over the ensuing decades to a now near insatiable speed.

Williams’ debut, 1979’s Ramblin’ On My Mind, was an overly polite album of blues covers and country staples. Next was Happy Woman Blues, a first stab at her own material, in 1980. Now, with her self-titled third record, she was finally paired with a band, and the combination of the developing rawness of her vocals, allied to some country-folkie-blues, was a hit more with critics than the public, a fate she was to endure for some time yet.
Continue reading »

May 272021
 
molly tuttle stop draggin my heart around

As both Stevie Nicks‘ most famous duet and, unofficially, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers‘ biggest hit, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” might have inspired more than a few covers. But it’s only in the 21st century that people have taken it on, and only occasionally.

Bluegrass singer-songwriter Molly Tuttle is a regular at Cover Me, her covers featuring in a number of our Best-Of lists since the pandemic started. Her album but I’d rather be with you was a highlight of 2020 and it she has a sequel, the new EP but I’d rather be with you, too. It’s for this new EP that she’s taken on the Nicks/Petty classic. Continue reading »

Nov 092020
 

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

tom petty metal covers

While going back through the hundreds of new covers I’ve amassed in preparation for our upcoming Best Covers of 2020 list, I noticed a micro-trend: Heavy metal covers of Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down a Trend” were big this year. So let’s rank three of ’em.

The Don’t Sleep cover is good.

The Two Minutes to Late Night cover is better.

The Inter Arma cover is best. Continue reading »

Aug 202020
 
angel olsen hand habits walls cover

Hand Habits is Meg Duffy, a guitarist known for their work with The War on Drugs, Weyes Blood and others. Angel Olsen is a singer-songwriter from Missouri. Many have noted their music similarities, and they joined forces on a new cover of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers‘ “Walls (Circus).”

“Walls (Circus),” from Petty’s soundtrack to She’s the One, was a much bigger hit in Canada, which is why it feels like one of his biggest songs to us up here. A second, more subdued but faster version of the song (subtitled “No. 3”) was released on the album as well, but it’s significantly less familiar. Continue reading »