soul remakes of pop/rock songs - C/D

bobby womack's cover of bacharach's close to you (which suffers from a ridiculously long, rambling intro)

Whaddayamean, it's classic! It seems to be about the record company wanting Bobby to get down and be all funky, when he wants to sometimes record songs like, well, "Close to You".

I hated it back then, but I feel like Tina Turner's take on "Help!" works out quite well. Partly because it's so different from the original that it sounds more or less like a new song anyway.

IKE'S "WALK ON BY" IS QUITE POSSIBLY THE BEST SONG EVER MADE BY ANYONE AND YOU ARE A CRAZY PERSON.

are there any good examples of this?

Only hundreds. Isley Brothers anyone?

"Walk On By" is sort of an R&B song to begin with, isn't it? I mean, surely, Burt Bacharach is no R&B writer, but it was written for Dionne Warwick's voice. It wasn't until The Stranglers covered it that it became a rock song.

"Summer Breeze"! (xp)

To name but one

"Whaddayamean, it's classic! It seems to be about the record company wanting Bobby to get down and be all funky, when he wants to sometimes record songs like, well, "Close to You"."

he totally mangles the melody. its a novelty (as in 'look how terrible this is!') piece at best.

Balls. You say mangle I say extemporise.

And by the way (is it on the same album?) I prefer Bobby Womack's "And I Love Her" to the Beatles' version AND Al Green's "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to the Beatles

Yvonne Elliman's I Can't Explain is pretty good (if she counts as soul).

i totally forgot summer breeze.

is dionne warwick really an R&B voice? i love her but i always think of her as more in the same category as nat king cole or sammy davis junior.

I prefer Al Green's "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to the Beatles

*shudders*

ike and tinas version of creedence's proud mary is amazing.

^^^that.

otis' i cant get no satisfaction (especially done live).

Soul remakes = classic, therefore the premise of this thread = dud

wilson picket on "sugar sugar"

Ike + Tina's Come Together is also rad.

Ike & Tina's Honly Tonk Women
Isley Brothers' Lay Lady Lay
Bobby Womack's California Dreaming

Oh, and Stevie Wonder's We Can Work It Out

Dammit, beat me to it. That one's GREAT.

wilson picket on "sugar sugar"
and on "hey jude" too

James Carr's take on the Bee Gee's "To Love Somebody" made me hear how intense that song can be.

Yup. (Was that the one that was originally written for Otis Redding?) Which reminds me to mention Al Green's awesome version of "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart."

rhino did an anthology of this but I can't find the CD. one track I remember was a funky southern soul version of steppenwolf's "magic carpet ride" but can't recall the artist. maybe eddie floyd?

Classic:

"Satisfaction" by Otis Redding
"Born to Be Wild" by Wilcon Pickett
"Here Comes the Sun" by Nina Simone
"Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" by Roberta Flack

All of these versions are better than the originals, in my opinion. I can't think of any soul remake that would suck, so Billy Pilgrim OTM.

The Nina Simone tune is especially great, she gets so much more depth into it than The Beatles.

Now, I usually prefer the original, and certainly "Here Comes The Sun". Steve Harley's version is also better.

I love it when Go-Go bands do this.

the re-arrangments and band of walk on by on hot buttered soul and the aretha one are majestic but the vocals really arent. theyre full of soul vocal cliche (lots of 'dramatic' stammering, lagging ever so slightly behind the beat, adlibbing rearranging the melody when theres no need for it).

thing is, what you describe as cliches here are the reasons i LOVE those tracks you mentioned.

I love it when Go-Go bands do this.

It's like "if you had made this a Go-go record in the first place, we wouldn'ta had to come along and fix it!"

Al Green's awesome version of "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart."

this is one of the best songs ever made.

Go-Go bands? Is that like Trouble Funk doing "Our Lips Are Sealed"?

Anyway, Rotary Connection doing the Stones' "Salt Of The Earth."

Also, Marvin Gaye's version of "Yesterday" (the best version IMO) and Ray Charles doing "Eleanor Rigby."

xpost - so you love cliches.

"Everyone's Gone To The Moon" as done by both Nina Simone and Bobby Womack.

Alex Chilton's "Jumpin' Jack Flash" is a great one of these---it qualifies as soul because it's from before Big Star, just after leaving the Box Tops.

Also, Thelma Houston's "Jumpin' Jack Flash" - as arranged by Jimmy Webb! - is incendiary.

so you love cliches.

i love what you define as cliches. to me they are no more cliches than the deatch-rattle drum patterns of hardcore punk, slow and ponderous stoner rock riffs, or a james brown sample in a hip-hop beat - perhaps common, but not cliched.

the Supremes - Hard Day's Night

I recently heard a soul remake of The Doors' "Light My Fire" in an Au Bon Pain -- aside from putting the "pain" into ABP, it was everything I hate about pop music all rolled into one.

That's because "Light My Fire" isn't pop music.

I love Al Green's "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," but mostly I agree with mr x on this.

Ike & Tina doing "Whole Lotta Love" is kind of a guilty pleasure. :)

Tina Turner doing "Under My Thumb" is quite right too.

Isley Brothers, "Fire and Rain."

half of ike and tinas covers were pretty ho-hum IMO. decent enough but they didbnt exactly do anything all that special with whole lotta love, come together, or get back. they were just typically 'funked up' remakes that didnt really put a new stamp on them or do them all that distinctively. i love ike turner and he and the revue were AMAZING live but all the covers they did were just taking the easy option.

perhaps common, but not cliched.

things that are common in a genre arent necessarily cliche. they only become cliche when theyre not executed in a particularly novel or 'personalised' way. its a typical easy trick to fall back on for soul remakes, the tedency to almost 'oversoul' it.

i guess whether that works or not is in the ear of the beholder. these ears definitely believe isaac's 'walk on by' to be phenomenal!

it is phenomenal, but i still think some of the vocals are a bit corny. its walk on by, theres no need to insert 'you really socked it to me!' in there!

Stevie Wonder's We Can Work It Out

I also love Chaka's version of "We Can Work It Out".

Isley Brothers anyone?
Isleys also nailed the Doobie Bros "Listen To The Music" in a big way (surprising maybe). (3+3 also sports nice versions of "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" and "Sunshine (Go Away Today)". They also smacked "Hello It's Me" on Live It Up.

CLASSIC!

theres no need to insert 'you really socked it to me!' in there!

Hell yeah there is!

Because she really socked it to him, and he doesn't mind saying it!

Classic example of a beautiful remake. The original was all about the delicate, haiku-like self-restraint of pain; the remake explores what it is actually like to feel those emotions.

great list so far!

white soul:
Terry Manning--One after 909; Savoy Truffle
Dan Penn--Lodi

Lee Moses did covers:
Hey Joe
California Dreaming
Day Tripper

Bobby Womack specialized in them:

Something You Got (Chris Kenner)
Fly Me to the Moon
Moonlight in Vermont
California Dreamin'
I Left My Heart in San Francisco

that last one yields on My Prescription, which I think is Womack's best by the way, to Womack's starkest song, "Arkansas State Prison," which makes a great companion for the non-cover "Cummins Prison Farm" by Calvin Leavy.

and Womack did a good "Sweet Caroline."

Swamp Dogg's "Redneck" is a Joe South tune, so I think that qualifies.

Howard Tate does "Girl of the North Country" and "Jemima Surrender" on Howard Tate, '72.

and as far as the original question, are there good examples of people over-souling on these versions, I'd say that almost all soul covers of that kind of pop material fall prey to the malaise. Al Green phrases all around "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and that's great, but sure, you can hear it as Tomming, gotta-gotta-getta kind of shit. But Al does it so well, "I think you...I think you...understand," plus hearing the Hi Rhythm basically deconstruct the song is pretty fantastic just from a musical standpoint. Wilson Pickett I find tedious doing "Hey Jude" even with Duane Allman, and I usually find Otis Redding boring too. So it's the difference between Otis just shucking it out (and he didn't always do this, but I can't barely listen to him doing that stupid version of "Satisfaction" except for the oblique Stax backing, thudding along in that dry fashion they had back then. It's great but vocally, to my ears, a lot of what we're talking about here can sound like shtick.

But the critique of soul music as Uncle Tom is as old as "rock criticism," read Nik Cohn's dismissal of Stax in Rock from the Beginning. Still, I like Bobby Womack doing those songs, because they do make a point about aspiration, specifically black aspiration. He and his wife were on the cover of Jet in the early '70s and the headline was, like, "Bobby Womack--New Wife, New Life" and he was there lounging in this cool white shirt and yellow shorts next to his California pool, and his wife lounged there in her yellow bathing suit, very attractive. That's California Dreaming and I hear some irony in Bobby Womack, but I think he thought it was a kick to do him some Standards, and the poolside women think it's cool too, he's versatile.

Oh, and the Staple Singers doing Slippery People... Wow.

I think you are wading into very dangerous territory there, Edd.

And I think I'm mixing my metaphors.

I read the title of this thread as "soul remakes of prog songs"

You've heard Aretha's take on Topographic Oceans, haven't you?

"I'd say that almost all soul covers of that kind of pop material fall prey to the malaise."

a lot of the covers i have a small problem with come from the 60s when the gruff, shouty, raucous soul-man voice was still ruling. in the 70s, you get better covers of rock/pop songs which are more nuanced, have more dynamics and are less prone to that shtick (simply cos it went out of favour) like the isleys' summer breeze, al green's how can you mend a broken heart, etc which seemed much more natural, probably because they didnt have to use one vocal style for all their material in the 70s. things had moved on.

"It's great but vocally, to my ears, a lot of what we're talking about here can sound like shtick."

right. its automated. just there out of habit, almost, even if its not necessarily in the best interest of the original melody (or doesnt totally succeed in reworking that melody).

as far as womack, i dont care too much if its about 'aspiration' or not - a sucky, mangled, ridiculous cover is a sucky, mangled, ridiculous cover. i think most of these covers were just done to 'broaden' the artist's base or get rock fans to pay them some interest. whether that actually happened or not, im not sure, simply cos so many of the covers didnt work or lacked conviction, often cos the reasons for doing them were often contrived to begin with. and if i want to hear black artists doing 'aspirational' supper-club pop, i have dionne warwick and sammy davis to help me out.

Reverend, I'm curious to hear more about why you think Edd is waging into dangerous territory.

its walk on by, theres no need to insert 'you really socked it to me!' in there!

But he did! That's why he's awesome!!

but sure, you can hear it as Tomming, gotta-gotta-getta kind of shit. But Al does it so well

thing is, also, his singing is really not a million miles away from the way he speaks, which is also a very playful cadence.

I wish Hayes' version of "Walk on By" went on for 2º minutes instead of just 11.

Lou Rawls - She's Gone

Al Green - "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart"

the thing is, those old "standards"--are they really that great to begin with? I'm talking about the Beatles songs these soul artists cover, too.
"California Dreaming" is a genius song, however. I like shtick! And soul begins with Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, both of whom liked to clip on the bowtie and have fun with standards; also remember those James Brown records where he does "That's Life" (great version btw) and all that kind of thing. I do hear it as aspiration, I guess, but that's the critic in me reading stuff into the music I love.

the thing is, those old "standards"--are they really that great to begin with?

Yes, they are. And the Beatles ones in particular. Covering the Beatles automatically means your version will always be inferior to the original though.

http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/B/bookerT_mclf.jpg

Steve Cropper looks like Lemmy in that one.

Covering the Beatles automatically means your version will always be inferior to the original though.

It's Geirbot 3000!

http://www.megomuseum.com/teevee/images/robot.jpg

Has anyone mentioned Al Green's "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" yet?

soul remakes of pop/rock songs - C/D

;-)

Sometimes dud, mostly classic. I always thought Wilson Pickett's version of "Hey Jude" was pretty turgid, but this thread has already provided more than enough examples of covers being done right.

And how can anyone dish on Isaac Hayes' "Walk on By"?!