by Ray Padgett (Music 781.64 Pad)
Ray Padgett, editor of the online
blog www.covermesongs.com,
distills his writings about the hundreds, if not thousands of “cover song”
performances throughout modern musical history, down to 19 of the most
noteworthy covers. What is a “cover song” you ask? It has changed over the
years, but essentially it is when a song that was written and/or performed by
one particular musical artist, is taken by a different musical artist, who
modifies it to fit their own artistic style, and releases a subsequent
recording of their new version.
It is when the later version
achieves even greater renown than the original that a “Cover Song” achieves
true fame. The 19 songs (and their performers) profiled in this book range from
(in time period) from Elvis Presley turning Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog”
into one of his own greatest hits, to Jimi Hendrix putting his own spin on Bob
Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”, to The Talking Heads’ version of the Al
Green hit “Take Me to the River”, to Whitney Houston’s megahit version of Dolly
Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”, and concluding with another Bob Dylan song,
“Make You Feel My Love”, as performed by Adele. Along the way, there’s a
stopover to look at Weird Al Yankovic’s polka medley adaptations of a variety
of recent hit songs.
Each of the 19 is given a full
chapter, going into the history of the original creation of the song by the
original artist, the various other versions that may have been released as
covers, and then the background of how the most famous cover version was
recorded and marketed. I learned a little something about each and every one of
these 19 hits, without feeling like I needed to read an entire book about each
song.
In some ways, I wish a CD
compilation of the songs (both the originals and covers) had been included with
the book, to allow me to listen along, but in today’s music world of being able
to call up audio and video files on demand, it was easy enough to find the
music online to accompany my reading of this fascinating volume. Padgett offers
a very helpful bibliography at the back, listing all of the books, and magazine
and newspaper articles that he references for the songs in each chapter.
Admittedly, limiting himself to
only 19 songs means that the author has merely scratched the surface of the
world of cover songs. But for what it DOES cover, Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All
Time is a very entertaining and information read. And in
encouraged me to visit his blog site, which has a wealth of great information
about the world of cover performances.
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try the online blog Cover Me, created and maintained by Ray Padgett.)
( official www.covermesongs.com
web site )
Recommended
by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service
Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff
Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that
page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog
individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the
reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
Check out this, and all the other great music resources, at the Polley Music Library, located on the 2nd floor of the Bennett Martin Public Library at 14th & "N" St. in downtown Lincoln. You'll find biographies of musicians, books about music history, instructional books, sheet music, CDs, music-related magazines, and much more. Also check out Polley Music Library Picks, the Polley Music Library's e-mail newsletter, and follow them on Facebook!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment