Cover Songs

Tonight, I'm featuring Tom Jones, yeah, that Tom Jones, covering an old John Lee Hooker song.



A cover is a song made popular by one artist performed (or "covered") by another. Tom Jones has made a career of covering other people's work and has done well. He's sung "The Tennessee Waltz" with The Chieftains and "Kiss" with Art of Noise among others.

Cover songs can be interesting. The CD I talked about in my previous posting has something I like to do from time to time when burning a disc, it opens with Steely Dan doing their original version of "King of the World" and ends with the Joe Jackson cover, sort of like book ends.

I actually have three versions of the Jimi Hendrix classic "Little Wing" and none of them are Jimi's version. How did that happen?

Not everyone can pull it off. Michael Bolton's "When a Man Loves a Woman" is a note for note copy of Percy Sledge's original, so who cares, there was no new ground covered. I love Joe Cocker, but his version of the Squeeze song "Tempted" is misguided.

Tom Jones has the knack.

So friends, with no further ado, Enjoy!