I’m not the world’s biggest country fan. But if I had to pick one guy it would be Johnny Cash. He wrote good stuff, he was a collaborator with Dylan and he was open-minded enough later in life to record songs by bands like Nine … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions – Ring of Fire
My One Song/Three Versions posts are about nothing more than showing the creative ways other artists can take a song and give it a different spin. These versions may never replace the original in your estimation. But give them credit for trying. Wikipedia: “This Must … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions – This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
The song “Killing Floor” was written by Chester Burnett, aka Howlin’ Wolf. I wrote about Wolf in my review of Peter Guralnick’s Sam Phillips book. There was no artist that Phillips loved more than the Wolf. So, killing floor. What does it mean? Well According … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions – Killing Floor
From time to time I like to feature a tune and see how other artists represent it. Today it’s Simon and Garfunkel’s “America.” Stephen Holden, in reviewing Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits in 1972, wrote, “‘America’…was Simon’s next major step forward. It is three and a half … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions – America
Midnight Cowboy is a great, somewhat dated movie and is, to date, the only X-rated movie ever to win best picture. (The stuff it got an X for in 1969 you can now see on cable TV any day of the week. X has since … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions
In late 1967, The Who released their third studio album The Who Sell Out, an album I profiled a while back. At that time I noted that “This album was not a smash success, certainly not as much as the band and especially Townshend wanted. … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions – I Can See For Miles
By late 1967, Bob Dylan had pretty much outgrown his “protest period.” In fact, he’d gone from folk/protest to electric back to folk/rock and country-rock. The album John Wesley Harding comes in between Blonde on Blonde and Nashville Skyline. (Discounting a greatest hits album.) According … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions – All Along the Watchtower
The Music Enthusiast likes to mix it up a little, throw down a song’s original, and then a couple of (hopefully) radically different versions. We’ll call this one the international edition for reasons which we shall see. Wikipedia: “The Four Seasons are an American rock band … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions – Beggin’
One of the things I really like about music is how you can take a song everyone’s familiar with, shake it up a little, change the tempo, change the instrumentation, harmonies, arrangement, etc., and voila! A brand new song. So I periodically like to list … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions – The Ballad of John and Yoko
Wikipedia: “‘Me and Bobby McGee” is a song written by American singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson and originally performed by Roger Miller. Fred Foster shares the writing credit, as Kristofferson intended. (Foster heard someone say what sounded like “Me and Bobby McGee” and called Kristofferson with the … Continue reading One Song/Three Versions – Me and Bobby McGee
Music Enthusiast - At the junction of rock, blues, R&B, jazz, pop,and soul 