I’m really looking at covers that are more famous than the original as opposed to being better. Many covers are done in a completely different style, aimed at a different audience and so are not really comparable.
We must start with poor Bob Dylan, as high up in the top ten more famous covers, has to be the Jimi Hendrix version of ‘All along the watchtower’. It was on Dylan’s 1967 album 'John Wesley Harding.' It’s a good version but more famous and so more popular is the Hendrix cover. Likewise another Bob Dylan song ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ his album version is over 5 minutes long with 4 verses and a very popular Dylan song. But less than a month after it’s release, The Byrds had released their single version of it. Using only one of the verses and at less than three minutes long, it shot to number 1 on the charts and to the uninitiated, it is a Byrds’ song.
Now I didn’t know this, like I suspect many others didn’t. ‘Blinded by the light’ by Manfred Mann is a cover of a Bruce Springsteen song. I was in my mid teens when the Manfred Mann version was released in 1976 and new little or nothing of Bruce Springsteen. His original was his debut single and taken from his 1973 debut album ‘Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.’. It never charted as the world was yet to really get into Springsteen.
‘I heard it through the grapevine’ was originally recorded and released as a single by Gladys knight and the Pips. The Marvin Gaye version was recorded at the same time but only put on his album as Motown didn’t want both versions in the chart at the same time. The Radio stations kept playing the Marvin Gaye version from his album so it was then released as a single and the rest as they say is history! In the UK, the Gladys Knight version failed to make the Top 40, as did a very creditable 1979 version by The Slits, which I very much like!.
'I Love Rock 'N Roll' by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, to many in the UK, is the only song of hers that they know, but it was written and originally recorded in 1975 by The Arrows but had no impact on the charts. Apparently Joan Jett really liked the song on it’s original release, so decided to resurrect it in 1982, making it the title track of her album and sending it to the top of the US charts and number 4 in the UK. I would imagine, inspired by Joan Jett, Britney Spears released a version of her own in the early noughties.
Louie Louie, Motorhead’s Debut single is not the most famous version, nor is Richard Berry’s original. There have been dozens, and I mean dozens of versions of this song, the most famous version surely has to be by The Kingsmen. I know it from the Soundtrack to the Quadrophenia film as well as the Otis Day and the Knights version from the film National Lampoon's Animal House.
The opening track of Roger Daltrey's first solo album 'Daltrey' is 'One Man Band', it was also released as a single in 1973 which failed to chart in the UK. Co-written by David Courtney and Leo Sayer. In late 1973 Leo Sayer decided to embark on a solo career himself, and released 'One Man Band' as his second single. It was the second of seven straight top ten hits, bringing his version to the public eye, which Daltrey had not done. Ironically the eighth hit 'Thunder in my heart' only reached number 22, but when it was re-mixed and re-issued by DJ Meck in 2006, it went to Number 1, something Leo Sayer had previously not achieved.
I must include, as I have a 7" copy of the original (Not 1965 issue, but a re-issue), but I still very much enjoy the famous cover version (I have a 7" copy of that too), 'Tainted Love'. Soft Cell took it to number 1, so the wider world could enjoy what Northern Soulers had been enjoying for many years!
Again, the only version of 'Without You' that I knew of, was the Harry Nilsson version. I had no idea that it was a Badfinger song. I think I should have been aware, as one of my best friends during my late teenage years I'm sure, had seen Badfinger and had a 'No Dice' poster on his wall. Badfinger wrote 'Without You' for their second album, 'No Dice', back in 1970. The following year, Harry Nilsson recorded the most famous version of the song for his best album 'Nilsson Schmilsson', taking it to No. 1 for five weeks. It has been recorded by the best part of 200 artists and Mariah Carey had a huge hit with it in 1994. As the only other artist to chart with it I still feel that Nilsson's version is the most famous and certainly more famous than the original. In 1972 the writers Ham and Evans won an Ivor Novello Award for the song.
Funnily enough, Nilsson was himself a talented singer/songwriter but all his hits were covers of other peoples work, his other famous hit 'Everybody's Talkin'', is also a cover, originally written and recorded by Fred Neil. Initially it struggled, but after being used in the soundtrack of the film 'Midnight Cowboy' it was re-released and became a million seller.
So far I have merely scratched the surface. Every time I listen to the radio or pick up an album I spot a song that is a cover, either more famous than the original or the original that someone else has made more famous. I will be returning to this again.