Defining Definitive Recordings

During a discussion about a Halloween mix I made this year, I said to my music buddy Dalton Fleming that I had wanted to include Creedence Clearwater Revival's version of "I Put a Spell on You" on the disc (with apologies to Screamin' Jay Hawkins), but I couldn't because I didn't want to use more than one song per artist, and I had already used CCR's "Bad Moon Rising." If I only could have found a suitable cover of "Bad Moon Rising," I said. He raised the point that you hear CCR songs covered by every bar band in the history of bars and bands, but relatively few recorded covers. That really got me thinking about why that's the case. After much head-scratching, I think that it's because most of CCR's well-known originals are so definitive that they render cover versions all but pointless.

If I may be allowed a brief digression, let me just say that if you aren't acquainted with a music fan in your workplace, hunt high and low to find one. I'm fortunate enough to have a few in D.C. and one in Japan � aka HW's own Stacy Chandler. It really helps when trying to sort out these questions, and the voices in my head don't always provide me with an alternate point of view. Plus, English is the voices' second language.

Thanks for your patience. Now, back to CCR.

All Music Guide (allmusic.com) lists 79 versions of "Bad Moon Rising," the majority of them by CCR or John Fogerty, the band's chief songwriter. Most of those entries are the same versions popping up on multiple compilations/anthologies. There are a few big names that appear in the list of those who have covered the song, such as Bo Diddley and Emmylou Harris, but none of the names reminded me of a great, lost version that didn't come up in my conversation with Dalton.

The best reason I can come up with for the shortage of covers is that some songs are done so well that even other artists see no point in recording them again. It's only a theory, and it certainly doesn't hold up in all cases. Two classic songs by The Band � "Up on Cripple Creek" and "The Weight" � illustrate this nicely. Steeped in the mythical America that made The Band one of the archetypical Americana bands (much more on that down the road), "Up on Cripple Creek" generates only 44 hits on AMG, the vast majority of them versions by The Band. Still, there's no evidence that other artists were scared of taking on The Band's recorded legacy. One could argue that "The Weight" is one of the finest songs ever written, but that hasn't stopped a multitude of artists from covering it (187 versions listed on AMG).

So, then, what makes a song definitive? In the most literal sense, of course, there's no such thing. One fan's "definitive" is another's "substandard," so it's largely subjective. There always will be someone who prefers The Grateful Dead's "Not Fade Away" to Buddy Holly's original or maybe even Jack Black's "Let's Get It On" to the original version by Marvin Gaye. After about a week of thinking on it (and becoming increasingly frustrated by those pesky Portuguese-speaking voices in my head), I haven't come up with much except that there is some combination of artist/arrangement/star power/fairy dust that come together to create a version of a song that stands above all others. Sadly, even if someone had come up with this exact formula, given it a name, and given us a way to quantify how awesome a song is, Limp Bizkit probably still would have insisted on testing my will to live with their cover of The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes." Maybe I someday will come up with that formula, but for now I can say only this for sure: An artist need not have written a song to perform a version that could be considered definitive. Here are five examples, listed chronologically, where one could argue that the artists performing the cover versions made the songs their own:

"Blue Moon of Kentucky," Elvis Presley (1954) � At the expense of alienating/enraging regular HickoryWind readers, I have to give the edge to the Elvi. And I'd like to point out that my daughter's middle name is Rosine, a tip of the Stetson to the Father of Bluegrass. Monroe's melancholy waltz is an undisputed classic of the genre, but Elvis � whether knowingly or unwittingly � remade the song into something altogether remarkable. Despite popular thought/mythology, it's about as hard to determine who created rock 'n' roll as it is to ascertain who was the first guy to discover fire. Nonetheless, Elvis' 45 of "That's All Right," with "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the flipside, crystallized the art form and allowed consumers to hold in their hands (and place on their turntables) the ammunition that sparked a cultural revolution.

"Respect," Aretha Franklin (1967) � Written by Otis Redding, who was himself no slouch as a singer, "Respect" was a No. 5 R&B hit in 1965. Redding's famous reaction to Franklin's cover, "That girl stole that song from me," was prophetic. I'd venture a guess that only about 10 percent of casual music fans know that Redding composed the song and had a hit with it. About 90 percent of even casual fans are likely to know that Franklin took it to No. 1. She stole it, and she didn't give it back. Unfortunately, that won't stop some hack from butchering it on "American Idol."

"All Along the Watchtower," Jimi Hendrix (1968) � Bob Dylan kind of suffers the same fate as Bill Monroe on this one. There certainly was nothing wrong with his acoustic original, from the country-tinged album "John Wesley Harding." Once Hendrix got his hands on it, though, he transformed it into an electric tour de force with an urgency and edginess that impressed even Dylan, who began performing the song in a style more akin to Hendrix's remake.

"Thing Called Love," Bonnie Raitt (1989) � John Hiatt always has been an artist's songwriter, respected by other writers and attracting a fairly large following but falling short of superstardom himself. Raitt is a fan, and this cover was the centerpiece of her comeback album, "Nick of Time," which netted an armload of Grammys that year. It's pretty safe to say that Hiatt is a Raitt fan, too, as are future generations of Hiatts, who won't have to worry about paying for college.

"Hurt," Johnny Cash (2003) � The closer of Nine Inch Nails' 1994 album, "The Downward Spiral," "Hurt" perfectly sums up that disc's dissertation on pain and regret. In Cash's hands, it was a perfect summation to a life spent being larger than life as The Man in Black. The at-times harrowing music video of the lion in winter sealed the deal. Trent Reznor, you never had a chance, and you've been a good sport for admitting as much.