So I want it understood from the beginning that I know some of you do know that these songs are covers. The title of this piece should probably be “Ten songs – some of which some of you don’t know are covers.” But that doesn’t really flow sweetly off the tongue, does it? Doesn’t really make the kind of forceful statement you might want in a title. So accuracy be damned. I just wanted you to know that before I go any further.
With that out of the way, here are songs that you didn’t know were covers. I don’t need to tell you what a cover is, do I? I didn’t think so. But just in case you decide to forward this to someone not as musically literate as you, I’ll do it anyway. A cover is song that was originally recorded by someone else.
There have been approximately seven hundred billion covers in music history. In the early days of rock & roll, most bands did lots of covers until they got big enough to stick to their own original material. The Beatles did covers. The Stones did covers. Ten of the thirteen tracks on Bob Dylan’s first album were songs that had already been recorded by others.
10 covers you know by heart but might not know who the original artist was
That’s OK, because lots of people have gotten healthy by recording covers of Dylan’s originals. You probably already know that Dylan wrote and recorded “All Along the Watchtower” before Jimi Hendrix, and that he wrote and recorded “Forever Young” before Rod Stewart, and that he wrote and recorded “Mr. Tambourine Man” before the Byrds. I could go on. I won’t. Dylan’s too easy.
If you fancy yourself a musicologist, you may also know that Laura Nyro recorded “Eli’s Coming” before Three Dog Night took it into the Billboard Top Ten. Or that Laura Nyro recorded “And When I Die” two years before Blood, Sweat and Tears took that that song all the way to number 2. And you might even know that Laura Nyro recorded “Wedding Bell Blues” three years before the Fifth Dimension had a number 1 smash with it.
Come to think of it, maybe you don’t need to be a musicologist. Maybe you just need to be good friends with Laura Nyro. If she lets you cover one of her songs, you’ll probably have a hit.
But I didn’t come here to talk about Laura Nyro. I came here to talk about ten other songs – all of which I guarantee you didn’t know were covers. And eclectic sampling of hits, starting, as most things do, at the beginning, based on the best-known cover’s year of release.
TIME IS ON MY SIDE/IT’S ALL OVER NOW – The Rolling Stones, 1964
Right off the bat, you get a twofer. Before Mick and Keith developed into one of the greatest songwriting teams in rock & roll, they launched their band by covering mostly black, mostly American artists. Their first three albums are chockful of these songs. These are the two big ones. They had their first major hit with a different cover – Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.” But Buddy Holly was white and well-known to the general public, so most people knew “Not Fade Away” was a cover.
Most people did not know that “It’s All Over Now,” the Stones first number 1 hit in the UK, had originally been recorded by American R&B singer Bobby Womack, who wrote the song with his sister-in-law Shirley. Bobby and his brother Cecil’s band The Valentinos scored a minor hit with the song a few months before Mick and Keith heard it and decided to do their own version. The Valentinos version is a sprightly little tune on which Bobby offers a surprisingly understated vocal. It has a great vibe, but it lacks the raw power of the Stones take.
That same year, Mick and Keith heard Irma Thomas’ gospel-fueled “Time is on My Side,” which was just beginning to gain some traction on the charts. Thomas has expressed disappointment that the Stones' cover, which was their first top-ten hit in the US, put a lid on her own version. But Thomas’ version wasn’t the original either.
American jazz trombonist Kai Winding put out the first recording a year earlier. Winding had a backing trio – the Gospelaires – singing the chorus, and then his horn took on what we all know as the verse. It’s a pretty cool version, and it gets an extra special place in music history due to the identity of that background trio.
I should admit that I’ve never been able to ascertain whether Cissy Houston and her nieces Dee Dee and Dionne Warwick sang on the Winding recording, but they were all members of the group. I could go on to talk about how Dee Dee did the original recording of the Linda Ronstadt hit “You’re No Good,” but I won’t get bogged down. I could also talk about Cissy’s daughter, but she’s coming toward the end of this piece.
Instead, I’ll just move along …
I’M SO GLAD – Cream, 1966
They came from the Yardbirds and Manfred Mann and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. They formed the first supergroup in rock history. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker barely lasted as Cream for three years and three and a half albums, but their impact on rock and blues is monumental.
The American release of their first album, Fresh Cream, had their first hit – “I Feel Free.” Hiding toward the end of side two, was their hard blues-rock take on “I’m So Glad.” It had Clapton’s insistent riff and Bruce’s equally insistent vocals, and it starts off rather restrained before bursting into an anthemic statement of – well, being glad.
If you know and love the Cream song, you owe it to yourself to give a listen to the original, recorded more than thirty years earlier by a man from Mississippi who accompanied himself on guitar. Skip James went up to Wisconsin to record some songs in 1931. They didn’t really take off and he kind of faded from view.
But those songs reveal an artist who is only rivaled by the great Robert Johnson as a master of delta blues. James was rediscovered late in life and rerecorded a lot of his originals in the mid-1960s, which is how Cream found “I’m So Glad.” I won’t attempt to describe James’ version. I’ll fail. Just listen. And if you like it, listen to the rest of James' limited but magnificent output.
MY WAY – Frank Sinatra, 1969
If you cannot forgive Paul Anka for the sideburns and for “Having My Baby,” (and trust me, I know how hard that is), there are a couple of things for which he deserves a lot of credit. For one thing, he was instrumental in launching the careers of Steve Goodman and John Prine (more on him to come), and for another thing, he had the brilliant idea to take a modest French tune about a failed love affair and turn it into a signature Frank Sinatra song.
Anka heard the Jacques Revaux tune “Comme d’habitude” and was instantly taken by the melody. The original lyrics, written by singer Claude Francois, were about a romantic break-up along the lines of Paul McCartney’s “For No One.”
But when he first heard it, Anka didn’t care about the lyrics. They were in French after all. He just thought this could be a hit if he could write a bold statement of individuality and get Old Blues Eyes to record it. Both things came true, and “My Way” became Sinatra’s last single to crack the top thirty on the American charts.
ME AND BOBBY MCGEE – Janis Joplin, 1971
OK, maybe you know that Kris Kristofferson wrote and recorded “Me and Bobby McGee” before Janis’ earth-shattering version. But did you know that Kristofferson’s version was also a cover? He may have penned the song, but Roger Miller, Kenny Rogers, and Gordon Lightfoot all did their own versions before Kristofferson got around to it. Lightfoot’s was probably the most commercially successful (and probably also the worst) of those early recordings.
Then Janis got ahold of it and it was as if none of those earlier versions even existed. She recorded it just a few days before she died and it struck a nerve with the public. She begins quietly, accompanying herself on guitar. John Gill adds a few electric guitar flourishes. Gradually, the rest of the Full Tilt Boogie Band joins in and Janis grows bolder and bolder in her delivery. By the end, it explodes into one the greatest vocal performances in the long canon of pop music.
DRIFT AWAY – Dobie Gray, 1973
Dobie Gray had a decent hit with “The ‘In’ Crowd“ in 1965. Then he mostly toiled in obscurity until 1973, when he recorded his biggest hit, ranked by Billboard as the 17th biggest hit of the year. When you hear Gray’s weary but joyful paean to the power of music, it’s hard to imagine it in anyone else’s voice. But the song, written by Mentor Williams, was initially recorded by John Henry Kurtz a year before. Kurtz has a decent voice, but his version is a rather lumbering affair, with none of the soul that oozed out of every second of Gray’s performance.
Plenty of other artists would cover “Drift Away,” but none could match Dobie. Uncle Kracker did the best version in 2002, in part because he was wise enough to use Dobie as a guest vocalist.
ANGEL FROM MONTGOMERY – Bonnie Raitt, 1974
Bonnie Raitt first recorded “Angel From Montgomery” for her Streetlights album in 1974. She was 25. She recorded her most recent version for a tribute album to the song’s writer, John Prine, after his death in 2021. She was 72. The song was the same, but the singer had changed.
The opening lines – “I am an old woman – Named after my mother” – took on a deeper meaning when sung by the older voice. Raitt was a critical darling from early on but she didn’t really have any hits until the early ‘90s. Streetlights didn’t sell very well, but “Angel From Montgomery” became her first signature song.
Prine had recorded it three years earlier on his debut album. Like Raitt, he was in his mid-20s when he wrote and sang it. That first album – with its sensitive portraits of those beaten down by life (“Sam Stone,” “Hello In There,” in addition to “Angel…”) established him as one of the best songwriters in the country, a title he held right up until his death. It’s hard to think of a better example of a brilliant songwriter finding the perfect voice to sing one of his best songs.
I LOVE ROCK ‘N ROLL – Joan Jett, 1982
Joan Jett’s first and only number-one record hit the top spot just as Spring was dawning in 1982, and it remained there almost until the Summer came. By this point, Jett had survived her years working with the Runaways under Kim Fowley and had recently put together the Blackhearts, drawn from the LA rock and punk scene. A year earlier, recording under just her name, Bad Reputation had come out. She credited the Blackhearts on the follow-up and the band exploded.
“I Love Rock ‘n Roll” was originally recorded by a minor British glam band called the Arrows in 1975. Their version sounds like a proficient college band. The drums and guitar are there, but there’s not all that much fire in the delivery.
Joan Jett can’t do anything without fire. The drums are bolder – the guitar is deeper – and her voice – her voice tells you she is not screwing around here. This boy was definitely going to be “with me – yeah, me.” The transgressiveness of switching genders, so that the underage target in question was a boy instead of a girl, only added to the swagger. Today, that song wouldn’t be released until you changed the age from seventeen to eighteen.
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU – Whitney Houston, 1992
Country fans know full well that Dolly Parton wrote and recorded “I Will Always Love You” as a farewell to her mentor and singing partner Porter Wagoner in 1974. Then she recorded it again for the movie soundtrack of “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” in 1982. Both versions are tender. The original is almost fragile with its spoken third verse. It is a truly beautiful song.
But that’s not the song the world knows. The world knows Whitney Houston’s version from a different movie soundtrack – “The Bodyguard” – ten years after Dolly’s second recording. Whitney, whose mom Cissy appeared earlier in this list as part of the Gospelaires, begins just as tenderly as Dolly. In fact, she begins a cappella. Then the orchestration sneaks in. She stays restrained.
That orchestration does her no favors, but as awesome rock critic Tom Breihan observes in his magnificent compendium of number-one songs, Whitney’s voice simply overwhelms the mediocrity of the arrangement. By the time she reaches the finale, she is singing with a raw power that few pop singers have ever matched. It hit number 1 around Thanksgiving of 1992. It was still number-one after Valentine's Day, 1993.
IT'S ALL COMING BACK TO ME NOW – Celine Dion, 1996
As singer and songwriter go, Celine Dion and Jim Steinman were a perfect match. Dion’s tone and delivery could wrench maximum emotion out of a Beyond Burger label. Steinman wrote epic, hyper-dramatic story songs. He had already found an ideal male voice in Michael Lee Aday, who was better known to the world as Meat Loaf. Their collaborative album Bat Out of Hell took off in 1977.
Steinman had another big epic song called “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” and Meat Loaf wanted it. But Steinman thought it needed a female vocalist. So he put together a group of female singers called Pandora’s Box. With Elaine Caswell singing lead, they recorded the first version of the song in 1989.
Steinman tinkered with the arrangement a little bit for Dion, but it’s mainly her voice that puts the song over. Caswell had a very good blues-tinged voice. But this song needed the operatic grandeur that Dion gave it.
You could stand that voice up against an epic arrangement and it would never get lost. It wasn’t Dion’s first number one in the US, nor would it be her last. She basically dominated the charts for the entire decade of the 1990s. Another of her monster hits, 1996’s “All By Myself,” was also a cover, but I figure more people at least know about Eric Carmen’s original of that song, so I’m going with “It’s All Coming Back…”
1985 – Bowling for Soup, 2004
I’ve only been writing these things for about a month so I don’t know if I have any regular readers. But I always wanted to write this: Regular readers will know I always try to include BFS in whatever I write. I mean, I’m about the biggest Dollyrots fan there is, and the Dollyrots are big BFS fans, so it figures.
“1985,” which laments how time has gotten away from Gen Xers, is Bowling For Soup’s best-known song. It has all the hallmarks of a Jarret Reddick tune, with its catchy pop-punk vibe, witty lyrics, and pop culture references. But he co-wrote this one with Mitch Allan, frontman of the band SR-71. They recorded a slightly less energetic version of the song just a couple of months before BFS did it. BFS added crisper “Woo hoo hoos” at the beginning and a fuller guitar attack. The song went from OK to genius.
One of the odd lyrical quirks in the chorus points out how the singer wants to return to 1985, the time of “Springsteen, Madonna – way before Nirvana.” Twenty years later Madonna is in the midst of a hugely successful tour. Springsteen just got nominated for a Golden Globe. And Nirvana…? Well, we all know what happened there. Time and perspective are funny things. Sometimes you don’t what something is when you’re living in the middle of it. Just like sometimes you don’t know that a current song will become a much bigger hit when some other artist records a cover, thus rendering the original largely forgotten.
By the way, Laura Nyro eventually did her own album of covers. It’s pretty good.