Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

Roger Miller – Me And Bobby McGee.mp3
Kenny Rogers & The First Edition – Me And Bobby McGee.mp3
Kris Kristofferson – Me And Bobby McGee.mp3
Janis Joplin – Me And Bobby McGee.mp3
It is odd when a legend of popular music ends up covering his own song. So it is with Kris Kristofferson who was commissioned to write Me And Bobby McGee by a record label boss.

The song”s first version was recorded by Roger Miller in 1969. His was a mid-tempo country-pop number, rather bereft of emotional engagement, an entirely misjudged drumtrack and, in the carnivalesque “la la la” part some ill-advised ’60s horns and some background whooping. It failed to set the world of music alight, making it to #12 in the country charts, and failing to dent the pop charts. Things could only get better. The next version was by the First Edition, featuring Kenny Rogers, who even in 1969 looked like your middle-aged uncle. If one doesn”t know that version, one can imagine Rogers performing the song in his languid way, the gravelly baritone drawing out all the gravitas of the lyrics. But imagination can be treacherous: the treatment here is light and quirky and much faster than one might think. A bit like Miller”s original.

The following year Kristofferson finally recorded it himself. Introducing a live version of it, KK seems unsure whether it is a country song or not, deciding that if it sounds like it is, then it must be. A couple of country types mucked about with it over the following few months, before Janis Joplin ““ a former lover and friend of KK”s ““ decided it was really a blues-rock number. Recorded just a few days before her death, Joplin is initially restrained before launching into a climax of screams and groans, as was her wont. Her take is not lacking in poignancy, especially given the circumstances, and many would regard hers as the definitive version, but ““ as with much of Joplin”s output ““ I distrust the notion that histrionics necessarily express true emotion. Indeed, Me And Bobby McGee is a country song; it tells a story whose narration requires no excessive emoting (especially if, as Willie Nelson claims, Bobby McGee is actually a guitar). In the space of three years, the song would be recorded 15 times.
Also covered by: Ramblin” Jack Elliott, Gordon Lightfoot, Bill Haley, Dottie West, Loretta Lynn, Grateful Dead, Hank Snow, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam The Sham, Olivia Newton-John, Charlie McCoy, The Statler Brothers, Lonnie Donegan, Gianna Nannini, Skid Row, Willie Nelson, LeeAnn Rimes, Anne Murray, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Alison Crowe, Dolly Parton & Kris Kristofferson, Arlo Guthrie a.o.
Best version: Kris Kristofferson nails his own song by delivering a tender, sadly resigned narrative of loss and freedom.

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Kingston Trio – Sloop John B.mp3
Beach Boys – Sloop John B.mp3
One of the biggest Beach Boys hits was in fact an old Caribbean sea shanty about the ship John B which was sunk in a Barbados harbour in 1900. Borrowing from a 1935 recording titled Histe Up the John B. Sail, folk pioneers the Weavers first recorded it 1950 as The Wreck of the John B. But it wasn”t that version from which the Beach Boys borrowed their tune, but the 1958 take by clean-cut, stripey-shirted folk singers the Kingston Trio, who were the first to record the song under its now established title. The Kingston Trio”s version has an appropriate calypso lilt, giving it a lightness that invites a spot of finger-snapping.

One”s digits are safe from being used as a rhythm section in the hands of the Beach Boys, equally famous for their striped shirts (Pendeltones, fashion fans) before adopting the excessively hirsute line of appearance. Al Jardine suggested the song to Brian Wilson on to the song. Legend has it that Brian didn”t know the song, a myth peddled by Wilson himself. The great Kingston Trio fan Wilson of course knew the song “” there reportedly are tapes of a young Brian singing the tune with high school friends.

Wilson was initially reluctant to adapt Sloop John B., but eventually mapped out the complex arrangement within a day, one which made the Kingston Trio”s attractive version seem very dull indeed. Its recording and single release preceded the recording of Pet Sounds by a while; which might explain the misguided resistance to Sloop John C by many fans of the album ““ because it feels out of place on an otherwise coherent set. It was included at the urging of the Beach Boys” record company, Capitol, who apparently could not see much by way of hit singles on the groundbreaking album, other than the traditional Beach Boys sound of opener Wouldn”t It Be Nice. Sloop may be a cover version, but it is as autobiographical of Brian Wilson “” then under the thumb of his Dad-from-hell Murry and the hectoring Mike Love (who did not dig the Pet Shop vibe at all), and quickly disappearing into the world of drugs “” as any track on the album. The line “this is the worst trip I”ve ever been on” reflects the mind of the tortured artist; the desperation in the line “I want to go home; please let me go home” anticipates the growing frustration and alienation of Wilson, the genius who was being told how to arrange his music by the musical hack Murry and pressured to keep writing about surfing, girls and cars by cousin Mike “” a conflict that came to a head with the aborted Smile album.
Also covered by: Lonnie Donegan (as I Want To Go Home), Tom Fogerty, Roger Whittaker, Johnny Cash, Jimmie Rodgers, Dick Dale, Relient K, Okkervil River a.o.
Best version: You can”t get passed the harmonies of Brian Wilson”s arrangement, even though vocals include the loathsome Mike Love.

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Gladys Knight & The Pips – I Heard It Through The Grapevine.mp3
Marvin Gaye – I Heard It Through The Grapevine.mp3
Gladys Knight believes she has good reason to be pissed off. There Gladys and her Pips had delivered an excellent dance number with I Heard It Through The Grapevine, scoring a US #2 hit in 1967, and Motown”s best-selling single up to then. And yet, a fair number of readers will be surprised to know that the song was in fact not a Marvin Gaye original. One has to feel for poor Gladys, but Marvin”s version is flawless in every way. Released a year after Gladys” hit, it was at first just as an album filler. Marvin appropriated the song, investing himself into it so much that nobody can conceive of it as anything other than a Marvin Gaye number. Look at the list covers: would you really need to hear any of them in any way other than out of curiosity?

If you feel jaded by the song, as I once did, sit down and listen to it carefully again; I still find little surprises with every airing. Written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, several Motown stars ““ including Marvin Gaye as well as Smokey Robinson and the Isley Brothers ““ tested for the song before Gladys Knight”s version was approved for release. If she had not been upstaged by Marvin (whose single release pipped, as it were, her Motown sales record), her version, not Marvin”s, would feature prominently on all those Motown compilations. Instead it is a neglected stepchild, a point of trivia. It deserves better, but how can it compete against one of pop music”s rare moments of absolute genius?
Also covered by: Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers, King Curtis, The Miracles, The Temptations, The Chi-Lites, Ike & Tina Turner, Young-Holt Unlimited, Ella Fitzgerald, The Undisputed Truth, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Earl Klugh, Average White Band, Joe Cocker, The Slits, The Flying Pickets, Ben Harper, Emmerson Nogueira, Michael McDonald, Kaiser Chiefs a.o.
Best version: I have made my case and hereby close it.

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The Nerves – Hanging On The Telephone.mp3
Blondie – Hanging On The Telephone.mp3
If it is not widely known that Blondie”s 1979 hit Hanging On The Telephone is a cover, then it probably is because the original performers, The Nerves, only ever released a four-track EP in 1976, which included the song. And having obtained it recently, I think it”s a very fine EP it is, too. The Nerves ““ a trio comprising songwriter Jack Lee, Paul Collins (who’d later join The Beat) and Peter Case (later of the Plimsouls) ““ were a heavy-gigging LA-based rock band which despite their extremely recording career proved to be influential on the US punk scene. The members of Blondie surely have were aware of the song. A year after The Nerves split, Debbie Harry and pals picked up the song and enjoyed a huge worldwide hit with it. The original hasn”t aged much: it reminds me of the Von Bondies or The Killers.
Also covered by: Mephisto Waltz, Scheer, L7, Germ Attack, Johnny Panic, Cat Power, Def Leppard, Girls Aloud
Best version: Much as I love Blondie, The Nerves”s original is superior. Though I”d like to hear Cat Power”s take.

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Bruce Woolley – Video Killed the Radio Star.mp3
The Buggles – Video Killed The Radio Star.mp3
This slice of sci-fi flavoured nostalgia, inspired by a JG Ballard story, was co-written by Trevor Horn and Geoffrey Downes (then new members of horrible prog-rock band Yes) with Bruce Woolley. So it seemed right that it should be recorded by the two parties ““ the Yes contingent and Woolley ““ in 1979. The latter got in there first, with his Camera Club. It is a breathless version with much energy and a quite nice guitar solo at the end, but none of the bombastic detail which made the Buggles” synth-fiesta a huge hit. The Buggles version is sometimes considered a bit naff, which does great injustice to a catchy song which does everything that is required of a very great pop song. The video of the Buggles version was the first ever to be played by MTV. But the Woolley version is all but forgotten.
Also covered by: Ben Folds Five, The Presidents of the United States of America, Erasure, Jimmy Pops, Rocket K, The Feeling
Best version: The Buggles single is one of my favourite singles of the 1970s”¦

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James ‘Ironhead’ Baker & Group – Black Betty.mp3
Ram Jam – Black Betty.mp3
My latest greatest chum RH sent me this me. Black Betty is an old African-American folk song favoured by labour gangs. The recording here is the oldest in existence, preceding that by Lead Belly, who often is credited with writing it, by six years. Indeed, it probably dates back to the 19th century. This is a 1933 field recording made by the musicologists John and Alan Lomax in 1933 of the convict James “Ironhead” Baker and backing band of prisoners at Central State Farm in Texas. The Ram Jam version wasn”t even the first rockified adaptation. In 1976, a year before the Ram Jam hit, it was recorded by an outfit called Starstruck, which included future Ram Jam member Bill Bartlett.

Civil right groups boycotted the song because it was thought it insulted black women. Anthropologists are undecided what exactly a “Black Betty”, perhaps a rifle, or a bottle of whiskey, or a whip (as Lead Belly claimed), or a penitentiary transfer wagon, or indeed a prostitute. In the Ram Jam lyrics Betty clearly is a woman, probably of African-American heritage (from Birmingham, Alabama). But it”s difficult to see how they are offensive.
Also covered by: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (going back to the song”s roots as an a cappella blues), Mina, Tom Jones, Spiderbait (#1 in Australia in 2004, non-antipodean fact fans) a.o.
Best version: Oh, I bet ole” Ironhead would have loved to kick ass with the song as Ram Jam did.

More Originals

Is this series bringing everybody down? Well, it’s a series, and we must get through it, with all the discipline that is absent in matters of love. Today, we deal with regret (we must still do heartbreak and ““ the one I’m really looking forward to ““ bitterness). Regret can come before or after bitterness, and often they coincide, but both emotions manifest themselves after a love has ended. Music has done better capturing bitterness than regret. Indeed, regret seems to be a bit of a stepchild in the canon of love songs, its rejection symbolised by Edith Piaf’s determined defiance.

Abba – One Of Us.mp3
My friend Tom the Sub-Editor once said that Kris Kristofferson has an eloquent song for every emotion. I would say that Abba do as well. “One Of Us” (from Abba’s final album, 1981’s The Visitors) is terribly sad and a little pathetic, in the real sense of the word. The protagonist was in what seems to have been a pretty good relationship but evidently felt cornered: “You were, I felt, robbing me of my rightful chances. My picture clear, everything seemed so easy, and so I dealt you the blow: one of us had to go.” So she dumped the guy only to discover later that she had made a huge mistake. And it is in her regret, self-inflicted though it was, that we begin to feel for her: “One of us is crying, one of us is lying in her lonely bed. Staring at the ceiling, wishing she was somewhere else instead.” Our compassion is tempered a little by her unceasing selfishness. Nowhere in the song does she wonder whether her dumping the guy caused him any pain.

John Mayer – Comfortable.mp3
Mayer is a bit of a hit-and-miss artist. When he stinks, he really does. But occasionally he hits the sweet spot. This is one of these occasions when the melody succeeds in scoring the lyrical sentiment. In “Comfortable” Mayer is in a relationship with a trophy beauty who has little warmth or culture, but has found the approval of his friends. Yet he yearns for an ex who might have been less of a looker, but evidently had lots of warmth and “knew Miles from Coltrane”. Where the beauty is boring and well-mannered, the ex was fun. More importantly, “our love was comfortable, and so broken in”. Seems like the grass was no greener on the other side (if you’ll forgive the lazy cliché). Mayer thinks so too when he sings in the final line: “She’s perfect, so flawless. I’m not impressed”¦I want you back.”

Ryan Adams – Somehow, Someday.mp3
Ryan tells a similar story: he had a good thing going, let it slip away, wants her back. His problem likely was a reluctance to commit (“I wish that you and I had those kids, maybe bought us that home”). Let’s hope that she has not moved on to a man more open to having those kids and real estate purchases, because Ryan plans to let her know, with imperfect grammar, that “there ain’t no way I’ll ever stop from lovin’ you now”. But Ryan better get cracking, because procrastination will not win him the girl back: “and I’m gonna try and show you somehow. Somehow, oh someday. Someday. Someday.” Tell her now, Ryan, tell her before some other dude gets her committed. Now. Not “someday”. Hurry!

Bill LaBounty – Livin’ It Up.mp3
This glorious slice of 1982 West Coast softrock (which featured in the Middle Of The Road series) initially suggests a steady recovery from a break-up: “I finally got my life together, scraped my heart up off the floor. My attitude is so much better, and I hardly ever cry the way I did before.” Oh what the hell, Bill is going to show her that he’s actually doing damn fine. He is living it up, “right from the women to the wine, livin’ out all those fantasies I never did get to.” Oh yes, he got himself “a new persona”, a whole new Bill. And, even as he tells her more of his partying ways and livin’ out all these fantasies he never got to do, he admits to being unhappy, because “it don’t seem living without you”.

Wilco – Hate It Here.mp3
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy regards this as his joke song, seeing as he is happily married and wouldn’t know how to use a washing machine. Given that, his vocals suggest some studious method acting, because our man is dying. The wife is gone, so he keeps himself busy doing household chores, worrying what his mind will do when he no longer has these diversions (“What am I gonna do when I run out of shirts to fold? What am I gonna do when I run out of lawn to mow?”). He checks for messages from her, no luck, feebly phones the mother-in-law, dead-end. This song might have fitted just as well in the breaking-up post, or the forthcoming heartbreak one. I’ll stick it in here, because the reference to all the mundane household chores might suggest that the relationship crashed because of a lack of effort on his part (not necessarily in the arena of housekeeping).

Bob Evans – Rocks In My Head.mp3
Australian folk-pop troubadour Bob Evans (whose real name is Kevin Mitchell) is employing better timing than the other fools in this post: he expresses regret before he knows it is over (” I can’t go on if I don’t know that you’re on my side”). He has screwed things up, and is asking for another chance by admitting that he was an idiot: “Worse than all the worst things that I’ve done are the things that I said. I nearly lost you there; I must have rocks in my head.” Great save there, Bob.