Cover Versions

I've always liked a good cover version of a song. Not a copy but an interpretation or tribute. Something that reminds you of the original but is different. One of the best cover songs ever was the Jimi Hendrix version of Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower. There have been many great covers of Dylan songs because they are great songs. In recent years there have been some wonderful songwriter tribute albums that collect cover versions of an artist by many different other artists. I have quite a few of those kinds of albums in my collection.

The concept of an original version of a song and a cover version only really dates back to the mid-20th century and the recording industry's attempts to make a copy of a song to compete with an already hit song. It also started out as a racist attempt to take the music of a black artist and record a whitewashed version for a white audience. This was mainly happening during the 1950's but we have certainly been aware of artist like Little Richard being covered by the likes of Pat Boone. Thankfully that didn't last and over the years the cover song developed in a tribute the original song and artist.

In the early 60's and into the mid 60's when I was beginning to seriously pay attention to popular music and buy records most of the LPs of a group contained a few hit songs and lots of cover songs of pop standards, other people's hits and songs from shows and movies. Even the early Beatles and Stones albums were full of that kind of record company filler. I loved the music of Motown and bought a lot of their singles but most of their albums that I bought throughout the 60's were greatest hits compilations because their regular albums had so much of those cover versions of showtunes and hits from other artists. However, a good band makes all their music sound good.

Over the years I have put together many mixes of cover songs. It has been one of the things I enjoyed with having such an extensive album collection. Some of those cover mixes go back decades but I've done a lot more in recent years. A few years ago I made a series of eight Covers Mega Mixes that run about nine and a half hours each. That's a lot of cover songs.

Now I'm in the process of redoing the cover mixes into my Final Mix Series that run a little over an hour and a half each. I've been enjoying putting these mixes together and I will be posting them to this blog and also to Spotify.

I have about 65 albums in my collection that are various artists tributes to a particular artist.