Elvis covering songs

[elvispresley3]

Do ye guys ever think that the amount of songs elvis covered tarnished his reputation as an artist?I mean here.....

(http://www.secondhandsongs.com/artist/103)

some of the songs he actually covered suprised me.Ones like"Fool such as I" and "Such a night",and hank snow's version of fool such as I is pretty much the same as elvis' 6 years later.These are just two from a pretty big list.I mean I knew some were covered but I think the quanity of them surprised me.Does this ever play on anyone's mind?I know you'll say that Elvis made most of these songs his own but that doesnt take away from the fact that they were covers.

[drjohncarpenter]

Do ye guys ever think that the amount of songs elvis covered tarnished his reputation as an artist?

Not in the least.

Elvis Presley came up in an era where singer and songwriter were almost always separate roles. Anyone who fails to recognize that needs to take some popular culture classes.

At his best many of these songs were reborn. There are scores of examples where Elvis blows away the original recording.

Here are just a few examples ->

That's All Right
Baby, Let's Play House
Tiger Man (live, 6.27.68)
Long Black Limousine
Suspicious Minds

[likethebike]

I agree it doesn't his reputation in the slightest. Many of Elvis' remakes were absolutely radical. That doesn't mean that the ones that weren't radical changes represented any kind of compromised integrity. Many tracks languish until the right performer comes along.

This is what intrepretive artists do, express themselves through the PERFORMANCE of a piece rather than through composition. Even when the pieces are original this is the essence of the art. It is very hard to get quality material. Some of the worst material that Elvis ever got was specifically written for him.

Many, many artists have recorded just as many cover versions. You could go to see Frank Sinatra or other members of the Rat Pack in the 1960s and be lucky a few hits the artists originally made famous. Nearly all of Ray Charles' big hits from the 1960s were covers. Great singers are attracted to great songs and expressing themselves with them.

Fans that have come up in the past 30 years have a different view of cover versions and it's really kind of a distorted view. In Elvis' day, an artist was expected to come up with three albums per year and maybe even some singles. Even writing artists used covers to fill out that type of commitment. Also in the past 30 years or so, there's been arbitrary standard for rating pop greatness that places a great premium on artists writing their own songs as opposed to interpreting material. Some artists today see it as an insult to record a cover or fans few it as a compromise, mostly because of their own lack of imagination. An ironic sad result of all this is that there are less good songs to cover even for artists who do covers.

You would be amazed how many hit recordings that most think are originals are actually cover versions.

Think:

"Louie Louie" Kingsmen hit, original Richard Berry

"Over and Over" Dave Clark Five ht, original Bobby Day

"I Love Rock and Roll" Joan Jett and the Blackhearts hit, original the Arrows (never heard of them either).

"Got My Mind Set on You" George Harrison hit, original James Ray

"Bette Davis Eyes" Kim Carnes hit, original Jackie DeShannon

"It's All Over Now" the Rolling Stones hit, original the Valentinos ( aka Womack Brothers)

"Time is on My Side" the Rolling Stones hit, original Irma Thomas

"Without You" Nilsson hit, original Badfinger

"Respect" Aretha Franklin hit, original Otis Redding

"Go Now" Moody Blues hit, original Bessie Banks

"That's What Friends Are For" Dionne Warwick and friends hit, Rod Stewart original

I could go on for pages.

In some cases like Linda Ronstadt's "It's So Easy" the hit remake actually made the flop original by Buddy Holly famous.

In some cases like Ronstadt's "You're No Good" or The Beatles "Twist And Shout" where people know it's a remake, they may not be aware that the famous record that people believe to be the original was in itself a remake. While Betty Everett had a mid- sized hit with "You're No Good", the song was originally waxed by Dee Dee Warwick, Dionne's sister. And while the Beatles were trying on the Isley Brothers when they did "Twist and Shout", the Isleys were beat to the punch with the tune by the unknown Top Notes.

[ekenee]

The one thing that comes to mind is 3 Little Richard tunes in one album. He should have spread those out a bit if he was determined to record them. I suppose finding quality rock n roll songs in the genre's infancy was a difficult task, so he recorded songs for his fans, with his unique style.

And back then covering songs was quite common.
Just look at the catalogs of Pat Boone, Bill Haley, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Connie Francis, Buddy Holly, and many more.
And many times in the 50's you had the same song in the top 40 by 2 different artists.

This was usually because white artists recorded songs for the white fans that wouldn't buy the same song by the black artist. It was a different time. Being an "artist" wasn't thing until the singer song writers came about in the mid-60's such as the British groups and especially the folk artists.

But the competition for good songs was fierce as evidenced by Terry Stafford beating Elvis to the charts with "Suspicion", and J. Dowell's version of "Wooden Heart" stealing one from Elvis. As well as the race to get "memphis Tenn" out.

In closing, Elvis used what he had to the best of his ability to make up for his lack of song writing. Rather than being a song writer, he was a song stylist, 2nd to none, as the cd title says. And in that sense, he was truely an artist. All you have to do is check out his vocal's for "Such a night", "There's always me", "Something Blue", or "Reconsider Baby", and you can plainly see he was an artist. He took a song and interpreted it, and felt it, as if he wrote it, which was his unique way of touching his audience.
And boy did he succeed.

[likethebike]

I don't worry a lot about the Richard tunes. They were for Elvis' fans. The LP market was really out of the reach of 90 percent of rock and roll fans and those songs were played much more rarely. They were eventually broken up onto EPs which was basically a dead market except for Elvis' EPs.

[elvispresley3]

Thanks guys,great replies.To be honest,It wasn't really I who was criticising Elvis about covering songs,I just wanted some well structured arguments for the next time my buddies decide to get philosophical!

Some real good points about the race to record songs and points about other bands having big hits with other peoples' songs.

[ColinB]

Covering songs already done by other artists is no crime.

What is despicable is rushing out a 'cover' of a potential single hit, in order to rob the original artist of their rightful chart position.

Something Elvis never did.

Although it did happen in the UK, but without Elvis' consent [and probably without his knowledge].

[iamhekev]

BRIDGE from the orig,TTWII...is just 2nd to none (cd title there me thinks )

[Suspicious Minds]

Didn't Elvis cover songs a year after the original release?

[ColinB]

Didn't Elvis cover songs a year after the original release?

Yes, always after the original had finished its chart run.

[colonel snow]

there are about 480 songs recorded before Elvis made his version; it's possible that he even never heard the versions on this site:

http://www.geocities.com/davidneale/elvis/ElvLinks.html


colonel snow

[drjohncarpenter]

Didn't Elvis cover songs a year after the original release?

Yes, always after the original had finished its chart run.

"Blue Suede Shoes" is a prime example of this pattern ...

[ColinB]

Didn't Elvis cover songs a year after the original release?

Yes, always after the original had finished its chart run.

"Blue Suede Shoes" is a prime example of this pattern ...

Actually, that was the UK exception to which I referred earlier.

Steve Sholes agreed with Sam Phillips that, if Elvis covered the song, they wouldn't put it out as an Elvis single to rival the Carl Perkin's original.

They did put it out as an EP track [and much later as a single].

But in the UK, HMV rushed the Elvis version out immediately following Elvis' debut single [HBH].

The two versions vied with each other for chart positions at the same time, with Perkins peaking at 10 & Elvis at 9.

This situation was never to be repeated.

[TkoTzer]

Covering of songs goes on even to this day and many of them turn into hits again. A couple of examples that come to mind are Uncle Cracker covering Dobie Gray's Drift Away and Guns n Roses Live and Let Dies (Paul McCartney). There is no shame. I think even Elvis would wish he had been more of a writer. Songwriting is where Beatle fans argue they are better than Elvis. Personally, I love both and could care less where the songs came from.

[KiwiAlan]

A problem is that the definition of "cover" has changed over the years.

During the 50's it took two distinct forms.

The prime factor being song publishers...as it is now.

The first technique was the so-called stealing of black music. Radio was much more segemented in those days with black music barely registering on white radio. So being financial motivated to maximise royalties the same song would be recorded by as many artists in as many genres as possible. This was the only way to get a black song played on the more lucrative white radio. In other words without this "stealing" most of the music we moved to would never have become known. If Pat Boone"s Tutti Frutti was more popular than Little Richard...then that was purely down to the greater number of white radio stations.

The second factor being that followers of a particular artist had a genuine desire to hear "their" artists treatments of the established versions. I for one was thrilled to see Elvis covering Little Richard/Bill Haley with Rip It Up.. It was not in any way in those days to consider a cover version as being something wrong.

On a side note this board generally derides Sam Katzman who produced those gems Harum Scaum and Kissing Cousins. But consider this Sam Katzman was probably the person who spread black music to the world more than any other person.Simply by having the courage to include black artists in Rock Around The Clock as with the Platters and Little Richard followed of course by Don't Knock The rock. It was this movie that turned me onto Little Richard, untill then Pat boone had dominated. I never knew The Platters were black.

Sam Katzman should be in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

[likethebike]

That's an interesting argument about Katzman Kiwi.

The cover industry though wasn't race specific in the 1950s. Many white artists on smaller labels also saw their releases erased by pop covers on major labels (or in the case of Marty Robbins' "Singing the Blues" his own label) and there were many black on black cover versions as well including the Drifters covering the Colts' "Adorable", Otis Williams and the Charms doing the Jewels "Hearts of Stone" (which was itself then covered by I believe the McGuire Sisters) and Clyde McPhatter's knock off of "Long Lonely Nights." In the late 1940s and early 1950s the act was relatively benign. As the pop music indury made its money on primarily sheet music sales and airplay the goal was to get a hit song covered by as many artists as possible. Since there was little crossover in tastes a version of a song like "The Tennessee Waltz" would be made for the pop, country and R&B markets. The practice gained its bad reputation when the industry started making its money primarily through record sales and white mainstream teenagers started enjoying R&B and to a lesser extent country and most of all their offspring rock n' roll creating a new larger market. This opened up otherwise unavailable opportunities for artists to reach beyond their base. Pat Boone's covers were a bad thing because they denied black performers the exposure in the pop market.

I think in the end though that is what doomed the cover industry. The market amongst young record buyers was not for the compositions but for the performance style of rock n' roll. This was something that Pat Boone and others could not replicate. And it's actually probably why he switched back to strictly ballad singing. No one by late 1957 wanted to hear him do a rock n' roll song. Even genuine rock n' roll performers like Ricky Nelson were making their name primarily on original compositions and keeping the R&B covers for albums because record buyers by now knew the originals and artists like Nelson knew the limitations of their talents.

By the way, I asked this on the off-topic board recently but did not get an answer: Was Haley's "Rip it up" actually the first recorded. His record and Richard's were released very close together. I just wonder if they might have recorded the song simultaneously or Haley might have beaten Richard to the punch. Two things make me ask. One is that Haley sings the song in Don't Knock the Rock a movie in which Little Richard appeared. It seems hard for me to believe that Richard would be alright with Haley singing his new single and that Haley would deny Richard the chance to plug it. (Of course by the time the movie appeared, both versions had left the charts.) Also, John Maralsco in "Writing for the King" told Ken Sharp that the song had actually been around a year before (having been written for Elvis but rejected by Sam Phillips) before Richard's record. I don't have Haley session dates, so I haven't been able to find out. It may have been a producer's suggestion but if it's a lost mini-chapter in R&R history I'd like to know.

[KiwiAlan]

Bill Haley recorded Rip It Up on 12 July 1956.

Little Richard had it on the charts June 1956, on June 30 it was number 17.

Considering a two week lag time on Billboard dates it would appear that Little Richards version was making waves from the middle of June.

As Haley only recorded one other song that July (Teenagers Mother) it can be readily assumed that he was ripping off Little Richard in the worst possible way!.

So it is truly amazing that Little Richard rolled over for Rock Don't Knock The Rock.

[ColinB]

Bill Haley recorded Rip It Up on 12 July 1956.

Little Richard had it on the charts June 1956, on June 30 it was number 17.

Considering a two week lag time on Billboard dates it would appear that Little Richards version was making waves from the middle of June.

As Haley only recorded one other song that July (Teenagers Mother) it can be readily assumed that he was ripping off Little Richard in the worst possible way!.

So it is truly amazing that Little Richard rolled over for Rock Don't Knock The Rock.

Well, I reckon to appear in a mainstream film was an offer too good to turn down for a black performer in 1956 !

He didn't actually appear with Haley in any scenes, did he ?

Probably never even met him !

[likethebike]

Thanks for that Kiwi. Maybe considering what happened with the Boone songs, Richard basically considered the tune lost after Haley recorded it. Things were already changing in the US though as Richard's version beat Haley's on the charts. I wonder if it would have made Top Ten were it not for the competition of Haley's version.

[The Purple Gang]

He didn't actually appear with Haley in any scenes, did he ?

Probably never even met him !

Can't remember offhand if they were actually in the same scenes (although I think they might have been) but they certainly met. Go to this link for a photo of them together.
http://www.tonis-records.de/BH_MP3.htm
There's also one from the same time when they are facing each other and looking out at the camera - Richard waving his hands and Haley snapping his fingers.

[KiwiAlan]

That photo is fake!

There is no way that Little Richard was taller than Bill Haley!