HOW AND WHY SONGS GOT COVERED

In this installment we'll look at how and why songs got covered.
Sometimes it was just a great song that would work in all genres, Country, R&B, Pop, Rock,ect, but most of the time it was plain and simple greed. You must remember that Race played a big part in how things were done in the music buisness.
Morris Levy, George Goldner and company controlled and had influence on as many as twenty different record labels, and their only goal was to make as much money as possible on the artist, and the song. It has been said that there were between 500 and 1,000 labels oprating in New York in those days, and each one trying to get their part of the action. At Brill Building, a song writers mecca, songs were being written and passed around on a daily basis. Some songs were stolen and writers credits changed before the song left the building. Every writer had a favorite group that they liked to write for, but if your song was better than mine and I needed a hit, I'd wait to hear the arrangement of your song and while you were recording with your group, I'd be down the hall recording the same song with my group.

There were some artist that made a good living by covering songs, so let's look at how it all works.
When it became clear that Blacks had created a genre of music that would last, the label owners, song writers, and producers started scheming as to how get as much out of a song as possible.

At some labels there were groups on standby just to cover whatever song that had potential. In many cases some songs would be covered while the original was being recorded. In other cases the cover was strictly about race. In the 50's no matter how good a song was some people would not buy it because the singer the was Black. Pat Boone even covered Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti", (It was terrible), because at the time the song was moving up the R&B chart, the rights to the song were being shopped around. LaVerne Baker was one of the most popular singers of her time, but a White singer named Georga Gibbs covered almost every song Baker recorded. It got so bad that when Baker went on the road, she took out a life insurance policy and sent it to Gibbs, with a note saying the policy was so that Gibbs wouldn't starve to death, if something were to happen to Baker.

Johnny Rivers, made a lot of money covering Chuck Berry. The buyers in the south liked Berry's music, but wouldn't buy it because of Berry's color, so Chess Records leased, loan and somtimes sold rights to Berry's songs to be covered by others. In many cases the record labels would have multiple artist on the same label record the same song, to get as much exposure as possible. This was a MOTOWN tactic, that Gordy used over and over again. Sometimes MOTOWN would have hits with two different versions of the same song. Case in piont: Marvin Gaye had recorded "I Heard It Through The Grape Vine" a year before Gladys Knight and The Pips, but MOTOWN wouldn't release it. Gladys and The Pips version was a hit and a little over a year later MOTOWN released Marvin's version and the song was a hit again. Even The Temptations had a version of the song. MOTOWN felt that everyone had their favorite MOTOWN group, so why not have your favorite group sing your favorite song, in many cases it worked. Brenda Holloway made a good living at MOTOWN covering the songs of the female artist at MOTOWN.

Many labels didn't have the financial resources to distribute songs to ensure wide exposure of a song, so once a song was released the label felt they had completed their obligation to the artist, so to get their money back they would shop the songs around to the highest bidder and songs got covered that way.
Sometimes the label would change one word in a song and claim writers credit for the song and have other artist record the song on subsidiary labels,

Some songs got covered many times becaus they were just good songs. Once of the most covered songs of all times is "Gloria". I'm not even going to try and name all the groups that recorded the song. Gloria was one of those songs that had everything a Doo-Wop group wanted in a song. The song was perfect for five part harmony. The song had space for the lead singer to stretch out and and show off. The background had room for everyone to do their thing. The first tenor could make vocal runs up and down the scale and still be inside the harmony. The baritone and second tenor could weave in and out of each other to make the background seem fuller, and last but not least is the bass. The bass could either rumble, and boom, boom, or do some nice blows, ooh's and ahh's with the rest of the background. The song has something for everybobdy! I've heard some great versions of the song but, I haven't heard a really bad version.

It seems that everyone who thought they could sing, covered songs from MOTOWN. Some covers were for race reasons, until young White America started buying MOTOWN and demanding the real thing. In my mind the one artist that made the most out covering MOTOWN songs is James Taylor. Taylor has covered more MOTOWN songs than anybody, he has won grammys covering MOTOWN. In many cases Taylor has been treated as if he created the songs himself. Even Oprah got caught up in the hype, she credited Taylor with creating and writing great songs, only to have to back track and state the fact that most of his music was covers of MOTOWN songs.

One of the greatest covers of all time is the Christmas classic "White Christmas" by The Drifters. The song is a note for note cover of the song as recorded by The Five Royales. It seems that at the time The Five Royales recorded the song, it seemed a little disrespectfull to Irving Berlin, who wrote the song for Bing Crosby, so the song wasn't distributed after release. One year later the climate had changed and there were many version of the song being recorded. The Drifters decided to try their luck. The song had a great intro with Bill Pinkney on bass, and Clyde McPhatter on lead and the usaual tight harmony of The Drifters. The Drifters version became one of the top selling Christmas songs of all times. The song is still a top seller today! Berlin said The Drifters version was not what he had in mind when he wrote the song, but he liked the arrangement.

The cover of one song almost wiped one group off the map. Noland Strong (Smokey's mentor) and his group The Diablos recorded a song called "The Wind", the song didn't get the exposure it should have. A year or so later a group called The Jesters covered the song and it became a hit. The Diablos version was re-released and was some what discredited because Noland Strong sounded so much like Smokey, that some people thought that Strong was a Smokey wanna be, not knowing that Strong came first with his style of singing and the song "The Wind".

Etta James took a country song and covered it almost note for note with an R&B feel, because the song told a great story.

One of readers, Victoria asked about the song "Hearts Of Stone". The song "Hearts Of Stone" was written by Rudy Jackson a member of a Doo-Wop group out of San Bernardino, California. The group was called The Jewels, (No relations to The Jewela of D.C.), this was a male group. The Jewels recorded "Hearts Of Stone" in 1954, for The R&B label. The group later changed their name to The Marbles. The Jewels verison of the song didn't move on the charts.
In 1955 an East Coast group called Otis Williams and The Charms, (not the Otis of The Temptations), covered the song, and moved it up the charts to #1 on the R&B charts and #15 on the pop charts. As the Charms version moved up the charts the Jewels version was foregotten, or ignored by most writers and DJ's.
I couldn't find any written record as to why the song was covered, except it was a great song.

Dr. Nick, the doo-wop doctor suggested that I write about the kiddie groups of doo-wop. These are the groups that came before The Jackson Five.

Please send in your comments and suggestions.
Victoria posted three comments, but ony one came through, if you're out there Victoria, please send them again.
Thanks everybody and I'll talk to you next time.