How A Podcast Led Me To The “Cover Me” Book

 The stories behind the Greatest Cover Songs of all time

It all happened one day when I re-listened to a favorite episode from Slate’s Hit Parade podcast with Chris Molanphy. It was a live show on January 26, 2018, and it was about B sides. For those not alive in the vinyl days. B sides were the throwaway songs recorded on the other side of a vinyl single 45. B sides were routinely ignored by music fans who gushed over the A or hit side of the record.

Anyway, Molanphy recorded a live show at The Bell House in Brooklyn, and his episode was about B sides, which ironically became bigger hits than the A-side song. Molanophy’s first song was Hound Dog by Elvis Presley. Molanophy’s fascinating narrative details how Presley released Don’t Be Cruel in 1956 with Hound Dog as the B side. To everyone’s surprise, Hound Dog ended up # 2 on Billboard, right behind Don’t Be Cruel at # 1. Due to the byzantine calculations involved with double-sided hits, it was probable that Hound Dog was the bigger hit.

In the episode, Molanphy mentions with some detail that Hound Dog was a cover by Presley. It was a big hit on the R&B chart for Big Mama Thornton in 1953 and then Philly natives Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in 1955.

Molanphy’s immersive storytelling sent me down the rabbit hole of cover songs. Staggering in the darkness of ignorance about cover songs, I turned to DuckDuckGo for an internet search, and that’s when I found it.

The book – Cover Me: The stories behind the Greatest Cover Songs of all time.

The book is written by Ray Padgett, who founded and has grown the Cover Me blog (since 2007) into the most prominent blog devoted to cover songs on the internet. Padgett has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and the BBC about cover songs and has written for MTV, Vice, and SPIN.

Cover Me doesn’t just take the reader through 19 famous cover songs and their origin stories. Padgett has something more profound, more relevant, and ultimately more satisfying in mind. Each chapter about the 19 cover songs uses the investigation into the genesis of famous cover songs as a framework to tell a larger story of how each music genre and artist has evolved.

For example, Padgett relates how when famed songwriters Mike Stoller and Jerry Lieber wrote Hound Dog and Big Mama Thornton recorded it, the record was a smash hit on the R&B chart. But in the 1950s, there were “race records,” which meant those hit songs on the black charts could never crossover to the country or rock charts which was “white” music.

Presley’s version of Hound Dog was a massive hit, while Thornton’s strong performance sits in the dustbin of musical history. Even though Presley could have done more to credit Big Mama Thornton for her original hit version, the “King” was generally appreciative of the talents of black musicians. Any mistakes Presley made recording or promoting the record were born more out of naivete than racism.

In the book’s first chapter, Padgett explains the multiple theories surrounding the term “cover song.” He explains that in the 1940s, record companies rushed to release a version of a hit song by another singer while the original was still on the charts. Back then, songs were more important than the singers, Padgett tells us.

“Cover songs were copycat recordings done quickly,” Padgett writes. “Creativity was not the goal, just profit.”

By the 1950s, Padgett explains, the performer became as important as the song, and the trend of copycatting songs subsided. Cover songs became a valid musical expression once music lovers cared more about the performer than the song.

In the 1960s, when Lennon-McCartney and Dylan suddenly blossomed as singer-songwriters, singing someone else’s songs appeared creatively bankrupt. So, Padgett details, singers and bands would choose a deliberately obscure song to cover so fans wouldn’t know it wasn’t original.

For instance, I didn’t know that “I Love Rock And Roll” by Joan Jett was a cover of a song by a British band called The Arrows.

The 19 chapters detailing the origin story of famous cover songs are a gold mine of “I never knew that” facts, the fascinating narrative of how the cover artist re-interpreted the original, and the behind-the-scenes tales of how the cover song was recorded.

For example, when Aretha Franklin covered “Respect” from an original by famed songwriter and artist Otis Redding, the song wasn’t simply a smash hit but an anthem for both women and blacks.

In the case of famed guitarist, Jimi Hendrix recording Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower,” the song became a cautionary tale for GIs stationed in Vietnam. It became Hendrix’s only top 40 hit.

In one chapter, Padgett describes how one cover underwent seismic changes when the California band Credence Clearwater Revival spun their Cajun sound around Marvin Gaye’s R&B classic, I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” As Padgett tells it, ‘It was a Frankenstein combination of two different songs: the band playing a swampy cover of the Gaye song, then switches over into an epic instrumental section.”

Over 11 minutes in length, the song was too long to release as a single but received massive airplay nonetheless and was spun by radio DJs in its entirety, which was a rarity in the 1970s.

The cover song with the most twists, turns, and surprises was Midnight Train To Georgia by Gladys Knight And The Pips. The story begins when actress Farah Fawcett answers the phone and speaks to singer/songwriter Jim Weatherly, a flag football teammate of her husband, actor Lee Majors.

Fawcett is in a hurry and has to catch a plane and tells Weatherly she had to catch a “midnight plane to Houston.”

‘I wrote the song in about thirty to forty minutes,” Weatherly explained.

After Weatherly’s song recording died in obscurity, Whitney Houston’s mother Cissy, who had just released her first album in 1970, recorded the song as a follow-up to her freshman recording. Houston had the title changed to Midnight Train to Georgia, which was her native state, and the song was a minor hit on the R&B chart.

In 1973, after the release of the Cissy Houston cover, Weatherly, the song’s composer, sent it to Gladys Knight, who was also a Georgia native. Knight loved the song but wanted to continue the transition of the song’s melodic and lyrical core from country to soul.

When Gladys Knight recorded the vocals, it was decided that at the end of the song, she would do some “scatting,” which are semi-improvised lyric fragments, that was a classic technique in soul music. Knight, ever the polished and prepared professional, struggled with improvisation, so her brother Bubba Knight, who led The Pips, fed her lines through her headset.

Go back and listen to the song and hear Gladys Knight “scatting” at the end. “My world, his world, our world, “ “I’ve got to go…”

Perhaps the most emotionally wrenching chapter is about country legend Johnny Cash recording a 1994 Nine Inch Nails song called “Hurt.”

By 2002, Cash was ill with diabetes and the ravages of years with pills and alcohol. His sight was fading, as was his energy and motivation. Cash’s collaboration with famed producer Rick Rubin revived his sagging career creatively with critically acclaimed albums, but sales were soft, except for his classic hits.

After the album was recorded and released, sales were again lackluster. Then, in 2003 director Mark Romanek convinced Rubin and Cash to make a video of Hurt. With Cash suffering from neurological symptoms, the video spliced shots of Cash in his home with clips from Cash’s career. The result was that the video propelled sales of the album to platinum status, and Johnny Cash had his biggest hit since At San Quentin in 1969.

Sadly, Cash passed away in late 2003. But when listening to Cash’s cover of Hurt, you can hear echoes of Cash's pain throughout his life, either from others or self-imposed, and the physical and emotional strain recording that song placed upon the singer.

For any music fan, this book is a pleasure to read, keep for future reads, and to pass around to other fans with the caveat that “I want this book back.”

Even though the book is about cover songs, what makes it so enjoyable, emotional, and edifying is that each chapter reveals how the artist interprets their song through the lens of their musical vision and the nexus with their fans.

You can find Cover Me on Amazon. The book’s design revels in exciting photographic flourishes and complementary graphic elements that enhance the reading experience.

Ray Padgett is also the author of I’m Your Fan: The Songs Of Leonard Cohen.

After reading this book, you will never listen to cover songs the same way again.