Three great cover songs you may have never heard

For nearly 11 years, I was lucky enough to sing with the local band Natural Disaster in the Joplin/Neosho area of southwest Missouri and all we did was covers.

It was not that none of us could write songs- our group leader Richard Taylor is an excellent songwriter and I could crank out a novelty song every once in a while, but Natural Disaster did not perform those songs. Our play list consisted of covers of rock and country songs from the '50s through the '80s.

We loved the music.

Cover songs get a bad reputation, especially when the covers are a note-for-note recreation of the original, but there are great cover versions that dwarf the original versions.

As good as the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout" was, and it was good, that the world at large that is a Beatles song and a classic.

I enjoy Otis Redding's version of "Respect," but once Aretha Franklin decided to sing that song it was hers forever.

Thanks to YouTube, music fans have been introduced to cover versions of nearly every song ever created and just as in the cases of the Beatles and Aretha Franklin.

Here are three I discovered that resonated with me and a few comments for each of them. I hope you enjoy these selections.

Bridge Over Troubled Water- Roy Orbison

I might as well get over with right at the beginning of this one. I am going to tick off a lot of people.

I never liked the original version of the song. I enjoy Simon and Garfunkel's music, but this one just seemed to last forever.

And to heap even more abuse on those who love the original- Roy Orbison's version is better.

Art Garfunkel's vocal were pure, clear, antiseptic and never had a hint of any real feeling. There is a reason why Paul Simon succeeded after splitting with Garfunkel and Garfunkel faded into obscurity.

Orbison, on the other hand, had one of the great voices of rock history and you can feel his pain when he sings. Though he wrote most of his songs, when he did a cover,  he owned it.

Judge for yourself.
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Positively 4th Street- Johnny Rivers

Johnny Rivers has never received the respect he deserves.

How in the world is this man not in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Rivers had a string of hits that lasted approximately 15 years, a lifetime in pop music and it appears he has been penalized for being great at what he does- he offers fresh interpretations of older songs and he doesn't write his own.

For the most part, it is Rivers' cover version of many songs that we remember. When you think of "Mountain of Love," you don't think of Harold Dorman,  when you think of "Seventh Son," you don't think of Willie Mahon, and when you think of Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu, you don't think of Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns.

Once his versions were released, Johnny Rivers owned those songs.

And he didn't just do it with songs originally done by lesser obscure acts. Rivers' cover of Motown hits "Baby I Need Your Loving" and "The Tracks of My Tears" did not surpass the originals, but they held their own with the Four Tops and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

To give you an idea of how good Rivers is as what he does, he even outdid the master on "Memphis," one of his signature tunes. Who thinks of "Memphis" as a Chuck Berry song?

When the song is played by cover bands, and it is a staple among oldie cover bands and country performers, it is arranged and performed the way Rivers did it.

Rivers' cover of Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street" was not a hit, but it was something even better- it was Dylan's favorite version of the song. He liked Rivers' version better than his own.




Suzi Quatro- Does Your Mother Know?

Fans of the Ron Howard-Henry Winkler Happy Days series in the 1970s and early '80s, may remember Suzi Quatro from her handful of appearances as rock singer Leather Tuscadero.

She had hit, "Stumblin' In," a duet with Chris Norman that reached number four on the Billboard chart in 1978, but that bouncy pop song was not the kind of music she liked to do. Quatro was a rocker and though she never had the success here that was expected for her, she became a superstar in Europe and has been a major influence on many female rock performers for the past four decades.

I stumbled across this performance of Abba's song "Does Your Mother Know?" several months back and loved it.

In this 2014 clip, she is 63 or 64 years old and she is still going strong.