Uncovered - the original version

Drift Away

The LP cover reads: “Bobby Scott plays his original music for A Taste Of Honey produced on Broadway by David Merrick.” The 1960 Broadway version (starring Angela Lansbury) of the 1958 British play was embellished by a musical score written by musician, songwriter, record producer Scott. He won a Grammy for composing the song “A Taste Of Honey,” also co-wrote “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother

Turn Turn Turn

To all the girls I've loved before

Ouch
Mona Lisa

Tom Dooley

Just heard Nicky Thomas's 1970 reggae take on 'Love of the common people' which has always been a Paul Young song (from No Parlez) in my musical timeline. I mean I knew it was a cover, that's all Young does/did but I never bothered to find the original.

And of course it wasn't Nicky Thomas that recorded it originally - it was The Four Preps!



Arrangement really does change a song's feel.

Dang. The Specials' "A Message To You Rudy" is a cover.

Dandy Livingstone wrote and recorded in 1967 as "Rudy, A Message To You". Great song though.

I don't think we did War yet.

Send in Ye Clowns

I learnt something.

The original version of West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys was mixed by Florida's Bobby Orlanda, and was a minor hit in 1984. It was remixed by Stephen Hague and became huge in 1985 (that's the only version I knew).

Here's the original

Original version of Try A Little Tenderness by Bing!

https://youtu.be/JmRiHVmPZB8

The Platters' Harbor Lights was originally recorded 23 years earlier by Frances Langford.

I always assumed Only After Dark from Human League's Travelogue album was an original. Well, no Mick Ronson co-wrote it and recorded it on his debut 1974 album Slaughter on 10th Avenue. From glam rock to synth pop in 5 years. Not really that different - apart from the instrumentation.

Randy Hobbs's 'Slowly But Surely' just came up on random - recorded in 1954 - 50 years before the version I thought was a Holly Golightly original.

Cover:


Original:

Did we do this one?

The original version of 'Video Killed The Radio Star' by Bruce Woolley



Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn were in his backing band (as was Thomas Dolby at one stage).

Horns production and arranging skills soon manifested in the Art Of Noise and Frankie Goes To Hollywood (to name a couple).

Twitter taught me something yesterday.
I knew David Bowie's Sorrow was a cover (all of the Pinups album is covers of songs Bowie loved in the 60s). And I knew that Sorrow was by the Merseys (aka The Merseybeats) because it was listed on the album's liner notes what I did not know until someone tweeted it was that the original recorded version was by The McCoys (of Hang On Sloopy fame).

Of course I love a rabbit hole - I noticed the writers were New Yorkers Feldman, Goldstein and Gottehrer who formed the Strangeloves to jump on the British Beat bandwagon - but because they couldn't do good British accents pretended they were Australian (fair dinkum!).

Gottehrer also wrote 'My Boyfriend's Back' for The Angels before teaming up with the others.

Bowie's is better:
The McCoys

The Merseys

Bowie

So I was listening to some old Canned Heat. There was one song 'Let's Work Together' that sounded melodically/lyrically like Bryan Ferry's 'Let's Stick Together'.

Put on my deerstalker hat. The writer of both is credited as Wilbert Harrison who recorded it originally in 1969 (Canned Heat in 1970 and Bryan Ferry in 1976

So here's the original:

I have holes in my music knowledge. One huge one is 60s/70s soul, which for some reason never made much impression in Australia (bands like the Four Tops and the Temptations had few if any charting singles here - even though everyone knows the songs. It's weird. You would have thought the 10 pound poms would have at least brought their love of 'Northern Soul' with them.

Anyway, I didn't know (UNTIL TODAY) that the Pretenders 'Thin Line Between Love And Hate' was a cover of the Persuaders 1971 original.




The Pretenders cover for reference