I don't mind cover versions, but I do get pissed off with cover versions of cover versions; when a performer borrows not just the song, but the arrangement, phrasing and instrumentation of a 'definitive' performance. 'Over the Rainbow' is a good example. Judy Garland's performance was etched into the collective consciousness to such an extent that few other people dared attempt it; when they did, it had to be a carbon copy (see Rufus Wainwright for ar ecent example). If anybody had the balls to follow another route, he or she could be guaranteed a pack of feral copycats: so Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's take suffers the indignity of a frontal assault from Cliff Richard; Eva Cassidy gets the Leona Lewis treatment, and a trickledown effect into every karaoke booth on the planet. (An aside, but is there a rule that you have to be safely dead before your version is fair game?)
Fast forward to David McAlmont at the Festival Hall Ballroom on Saturday night. (Yes, I'm on one of my midnight flits to the London fleshpots.) He's doing a selection of songs by Harold Arlen, who's something of a forgotten man in the context of the Great American Songbook, especially when set alongside the Holy Trinity of Porter, Gershwin and Berlin. It's only when you hear his songs all in a row that you realise how good he was: 'Get Happy'; 'It's Only a Paper Moon'; 'Stormy Weather'; 'That Old Black Magic'; 'The Man That Got Away'; 'One For My Baby' as well as the songs for The Wizard of Oz.
And it's in this context that McAlmont finds something new about the song, albeit something that's been staring us in the face for nearly 70 years. Arlen, the son of a Buffalo cantor, had a deep understanding of African-American music; not just the jazz beloved of his songwriting contemporaries, but the sounds of an older, rougher tradition. With his extraordinary range, falsetto swooping down into basso growls, McAlmont could use 'Rainbow' as a showcase for his virtuosity, but he keeps himself in check, and unearths the truth: it's a blues song, as raw and yearning and bitter as anything created by a blind man with a crappy guitar.
Keep an eye out for the cover of the cover at a karaoke night near you.
7 comments:
It's kind of rainbow related: have you heard that reggae version of the children's TV show theme music. I have no idea who did it.
Yes, karaoke, another essential Japanese contribution to world culture. Whatever would we do without them.
McAlmont has always sounded a bit overwrought for my tastes.
I'll be torturing songs at karaoke this Friday!
Any requests?
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There are a rare few cover versions of note in 'popular' music.
What would your top 5 be?
Not sure, Billy. But I do know that the band that recorded the original included the bloke who plays Wellington in Sharpe. Unless that's a Smash aliens myth.
He's calmed down, Garfer. Just him and a piano. He's real.
Good meme, Rimshot: OTTOMH, 'Top of the World' by Shonen Knife; 'Money' by the Flying Lizards; 'Day Tripper' by Otis Redding; 'It's My Party' by Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin; 'Space Oddity' by the Langley Schools Music Project.
>>There are a rare few cover versions of note in 'popular' music.<<
Ooh, I could quite happily list a hundred cover versions of note in popular music, but Lambchop's version of 'This Corrosion' is still the greatest ever, in my opinion.
There was a round on songs with the word rainbow in the title on Mike Read's Pop Quiz on Saturday.
I'm trying to gear myself up to doing a post on Mike Read's Pop Quiz, but I'm not sure that I'm up to conveying how preposterous it is.
Patroclus: I'm currently in a cottage in the Lake District, and on the basis of the CD collection, the owners seem to be big Lambchop fans, which is fine by me.
Is it the quiz that's preposterous, Betty, or the host.
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