Really BAD Covers

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 May 10 - 11:23 AM

Come to think of it, the quilt on my bed is getting really ratty looking. Something must be done about it soon.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 May 10 - 11:26 AM

Real? Or made-up for a game?

~S~

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: GUEST,clontarf83
Date: 10 May 10 - 11:48 AM

I really liked Thin Lizzie's version of whiskey in the jar!!!--ace lead guitar break in there.

The most horrible cover music I recall was Irish Showbands in the 60s covering American C&W songs--too many to mention. Celtic Thunder are giving them a run for their money now, though...some pretty cheezy stuff in there...

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Genie
Date: 10 May 10 - 01:13 PM

How can we forget Pat Boone's cover of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti?"

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: alanabit
Date: 10 May 10 - 02:25 PM

By trying hard - really hard!

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 10 May 10 - 03:21 PM

Lee Marvin's 'Wandering Star' would win hands down.....if it wasn't actually the original.


Naw..... Lee Marvin's 'Wandering Star' was ace!
...... but then again, as Rob Naylor said above, about my views on Jose Feliciano, there's no accounting for taste.

Maybe it's just me that's odd.


DC

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: ruairiobroin
Date: 10 May 10 - 04:06 PM

Jon Otway's version of I Will Survive is so bad it's fab, and he does it in a wonderfully Dylanesque voice
try youtube

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: PoppaGator
Date: 10 May 10 - 05:39 PM

"How can we forget Pat Boone's cover of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti?""

Amen! Especially bad because the release was blantantly calculated to rob Richard of record sales.

I'm not sure, but I believe that several of the recordings that kick-started Pat Boone's career were similarly bland covers of great R&B recordings. The world would have been better off if the only available recordings of each were the original versions.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: beeliner
Date: 10 May 10 - 07:21 PM

When I first heard Pat's recordings of "Ain't That a Shame" and "Tutti Frutti", I had never heard of Fats Domino nor Little Richard.

Pop music was pretty much segregated then, with the exception of a few 'crossover' artists like Nat Cole, Sarah Vaughn, and the Mills Brothers.

I think the record that probably did the most to break that barrier was Chuck Berry's "Maybelline". When it became an R&B hit there were several covers by white performers, all of them horrible, and Berry's original broke through, the rest being rock and roll history.

Then the previously little known (to white listeners) versions of some of Pat's hits became popular retroactively.

Pat and Richard have, of course, been good friends in private life for a long time.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: clueless don
Date: 11 May 10 - 08:35 AM

I actually liked a Pat Boone song that I remember from the old days. It went something like

Since,
I lost my ba-a-by,
I al-al-mo-ost lo-ost my mind

or something like that. Anyone remember it? Of course, if it was a cover, the original was probably better.

Don

---

Pat Boone: I Almost Lost My Mind [link from Joe O]

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Genie
Date: 11 May 10 - 08:04 PM

Yes, Little Richard has for quite some time now credited Pat Boone with helping open the mainstream radio "doors" to his music and that of other black artists - albeit by way of doing a sort of 'sanitized and denatured' cover of songs like Tutti Frutti and Ain't That A Shame.

White artists' covers of black r&b songs like Earth Angel; Roll (Dance) With Me, Henry; Crazy Little Mama, etc., did help popularize the genre and eventually the "race music" itself.

But usually, once you heard the originals, it was hard to get as excited about the covers.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: beeliner
Date: 11 May 10 - 09:20 PM

Since,
I lost my ba-a-by,
I al-al-mo-ost lo-ost my mind

Ivory Joe Hunter, charted #1 R&B in 1950.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: mousethief
Date: 11 May 10 - 09:57 PM

Genie: But usually, once you heard the originals, it was hard to get as excited about the covers.

I agree almost entirely except Sh-Boom, where I like the Crew Cuts version better. Probably because I heard it first and didn't hear the Chords' version until long after.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: GUEST,Andrew Emmet
Date: 11 May 10 - 10:49 PM

What about Mrs. Miller!

Downtown   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw07CDid0JM

Strangers In The Night http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV0MtVWIN8Y

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Genie
Date: 11 May 10 - 11:58 PM

Me too, Mousethief. I fell in love with and still love The Crew Cuts' version of Sh-Boom. (I had a crush on Johnny Perkins, too.) In fact I kind of prefer their version of Earth Angel to the Penguins' too - maybe because I fell in love with it before I ever heard the original.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: GUEST,Mike B.
Date: 12 May 10 - 12:38 AM

Eddie Albert's recording of "Blowin' In The Wind" and Vanna White's of "Turn, Turn, Turn".

Okay, the second one's a joke (not original) and never happened - too bad the first actually did.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: GUEST,Larry
Date: 12 May 10 - 04:58 AM

A couple of years ago at he Cambridge Folk Fest Jimmy Webb had the rare distinction of murdering his own songs.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Genie
Date: 12 May 10 - 04:40 PM

I mean, I absolutely love Patsy Cline and her voice is to die for even when she butchers a song stylistically, but this version of Life's Mountain Railway is so lounge-singer-y that it's laughable. Especially the backup vocal group.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: clueless don
Date: 13 May 10 - 09:04 AM

Thank you, Joe, for that YouTube link! I always liked that song, though I think that as a rule Pat Boone did better with songs like "Love Letters in the Sand".

And thank you beeliner for the information about the original ("Ivory Joe Hunter, charted #1 R&B in 1950".) I hope I'll get a chance to hear it someday.

Don

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 13 May 10 - 09:35 AM

I think this one is baaaad! In more than one sense.

As are these ideas!

But sleeping on the streets seems about the most tasteless. Until you find out that profits go to help the homeless:-)

Cheers

DeG

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 13 May 10 - 01:14 PM

Jeez Mr el Gnomo, how much random web trawling do you have to do to pick up stuff like that? :-)

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: PoppaGator
Date: 13 May 10 - 03:04 PM

Pianist/vocalist Ivory Joe Hunter made a lot of recordings. Two of his best-known and most-often-covered are actually pretty similar, muscially as well as lyrically (to my ear, anyway): "Since I Met You Baby," and "I Almost Lost My Mind." Both great songs.

I just learned from Wikipedia that "Ivory Joe" is NOT a nickname or stage name ~ it's his actual birth name. He was christened "Ivory Joe Hunter." Amazing...

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 13 May 10 - 03:18 PM

Somebody, I think it might have been Jacqueline and Bridie, once made an atrocious recording of The Lish Young Buy a Broom, complete with string orchestra. As if that wasn't bad enough, the strings tried to punctuate the melody with a kind of percussive effect so that it came out in fits and starts. Bom bom bom, bom bom bom etc.

After 4 decades I still wake up screaming at the sound of it.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: PHJim
Date: 13 May 10 - 06:24 PM

What about Bob Dylan's covers of a whole raft of Christmas songs?

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Gurney
Date: 13 May 10 - 09:52 PM

Beyonce singing 'Fever.' Well, most people except Peggy Lee singing it.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: mousethief
Date: 14 May 10 - 02:17 AM

I just learned from Wikipedia that "Ivory Joe" is NOT a nickname or stage name ~ it's his actual birth name. He was christened "Ivory Joe Hunter." Amazing...

Made to be a piano player.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Allen in Oz
Date: 14 May 10 - 04:04 AM

Sandra

Many thanks for reminding us about Norman Gunston...the videos were priceless

Allen

from BMC

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 14 May 10 - 06:46 AM

Just been told by my children that my own covers of The Indelicates' "We Hate The Kids" and Keith Donnelly's "Breakfast Blues" are respectively the worst and second worst renditions of anything they've ever heard!

Though the Donnelly oe was more about the lyrics than the actual execution ("You bring me hard eggs in the morning, I never sausage misery").

So I guess that's my plan to do them at the next High Brooms Tavern Session down the pan.....

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: clueless don
Date: 14 May 10 - 09:28 AM

I just happened to think of the cover of the song "Hooked on a Feeling" - the cover with all of the "oogah chugahs". I thought that was pretty bad - though I suppose it could work as a "party song".

Don

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 May 10 - 10:57 AM

Here is Lonnie Donegan's version of Over the Rainbow.

Brave anyway. Actually I once heard him sing it with just a guitar, and that wasn't at all bad. Unfortunately...

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: mousethief
Date: 14 May 10 - 10:59 AM

I just happened to think of the cover of the song "Hooked on a Feeling" - the cover with all of the "oogah chugahs". I thought that was pretty bad - though I suppose it could work as a "party song".

Yeah I always thought of that one as a novelty song. When I was in junior high school it seemed pretty cool, though. But you gotta wonder WTF inspired them to do that? Really bad acid trip or something.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: GUEST,mayomick
Date: 14 May 10 - 07:03 PM

The best of the bad imo was The Bachelors singing The Sound of Silence - recorded sometime in the sixties. The Bachelors were three very devout Irish Catholic lads - at least that's the way they were marketed at the time. The lads were so holy that they couldn't bring themselves to use the word "womb" which is in one of Paul Simon's verses . They used the line "hiding in my room ,safe within my room" instead of "hiding in my room safe within my womb". I wonder what ever happened to them.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 May 10 - 07:21 PM

Doesn't sound too likely. Any Catholic with worries about using the word "womb" would have serious difficulty ever saying a Hail Mary.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: beeliner
Date: 14 May 10 - 08:18 PM

I just happened to think of the cover of the song "Hooked on a Feeling" - the cover with all of the "oogah chugahs". I thought that was pretty bad - though I suppose it could work as a "party song".

That was by Blue Swede, and there's an 'urban legend' that there's an obscene message hidden in one of the "oogah chucka"s.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: mousethief
Date: 15 May 10 - 12:33 AM

"Hiding in my room, safe within my womb" isn't in "Sounds of Silence" but in "I Am a Rock".

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 15 May 10 - 02:24 AM

Just a clarification on Seasons in the Sun. The version Terry Jacks did was NOT the way Rod McKuen translated it. He sanitized it in order to make it acceptable to "pop" radio--and absolutely butchered it. The Rod McKuen translation is pretty good, actually, and is definitely NOT a maudlin song. Listen to versions by Kingston Trio, Bud Dashiel, or Pearls Before Swine. My vote for worst cover is Terry Jacks doing Seasons in the Sun.

Subject: RE: Really BAD Covers
From: Genie
Date: 15 May 10 - 06:03 PM

And who can forget Cher's rendition of "O Holy Night" - parodied to perfection by Paul Shafer!?