Reverse Covers

Sometime in the not too distant past, someone posted this video on FaceBook with some laudatory comments (about the song, not necessarily the video).



I wholeheartedly agree. 

I'm not going to say I was ever some kind of Humble Pie aficionado, but this was a great song.  Songs like this are the reason the dial goes up to Eleven.  Songs like this are the reason cars come with a red-line on the tachometer.

And I have no idea what got me thinking in this direction, but it seemed like a fun exercise to imagine that Humble Pie hadn't written it...that they were covering some other artist who first wrote and performed it.

Then, I tried to think, if that was the case, who I might envision having originated the song.

I settled on Robert Johnson.  Somehow, I could really imagine Robert Johnson singing about drugs and 30 days in the hole, in a really stripped down, unaccompanied version.

And now I really want to hear that version.  I bet it would have been great!

The truth is, this little mind game would be a lot more fun if I had Jimmy Fallon's talent for mimicking various singers and I could do a video.  But I don't and that's not gonna happen.

Anyway, I'm inviting you guys to come up with a song (great or otherwise) and imagine that the original is actually a cover of a much earlier version.  Let's hear what you come up with.

There's only one and a half rules.  The "half" rule is that it works better if you assign the origin of the song to an artist who was already dead when the real original was written.  The second rule is: No Frank Sinatra.  He did enough lame covers of contemporary artists when he was alive, so it takes no imagination at all to imagine what he'd do with Lady Gaga's Poker Face.

Have at it kids.