By the way,
I think I may possibly have, sort of, well, inadvertently, ripped off Weegee’s post, #21.
Sorry Weegee.
We cool?
You ain’t gonna sue me, right?
The name weegee is not unique either.
I watched the Classic Albums documentary on the recording of the first Doors’ album.
They got bossa nova drums, a rip off of the Ray Charles’ What’d I Say keys, the bassline from Butterfield Blues Band’s version of some other song, and that unites to give us Break On Through To The Other Side.
As Ray Manzareck said, “we steal from everybody”.
And they covered Kurt Weil, Van Morrison’s Gloria, old Willie Dixon blues songs, Mystery Train, Route 66, etc.
It’s called “the great American song book”.
It’s GOOD to be able to put your own unique stamp on these songs AND to be able to bring something new out of it.
The Pink Floyd started out as a cover band too, playing Louie Louie at UFO and then going freeform into what would later become Interstellar Overdrive and then taking it back to Louie Louie.
Hendrix covered contemporary songs like Wild Thing, Gloria, Day Tripper, All Along The Watchtower, Hey Joe, as well as older songs.
I don’t think that Otis Redding was “paying tribute” to the Archies when he covered Sugar Sugar. Nor was he being ironic.
Separate the songs from the personalities that first recorded them.
Many people who “hit” with a song had no ties to the actual writing of the song. This notion of singer/songwriters is pretty short in the history of music. And even Bob Dylan would concede there are a number of artists who sang some of his songs better than he did.