And we return to the songs in my collection from the Rolling Stone Top 500 list.
1. Little Wing – Stevie Ray Vaughan (#357, orig. Jimi Hendrix)
2. Nowhere To Run – Martha and The Vandellas (#358)
3. Got My Mojo Working – Asylum Street Spankers (#359, orig. Muddy Waters)
4. Highway 61 Revisited – Johnny Winter (#363, orig. Bob Dylan)
5. Unchained Melody – Elvis Presley/The Manhattan Transfer/U2 (#365, orig. The Righteous Brothers)
6. White Room – The Bobs (#367, orig. Cream)
7. Personal Jesus – Johnny Cash (#368, orig. Depeche Mode)
8. The Wind Cries Mary – The Bobs (#370, orig. Jimi Hendrix)
9. Hit The Road, Jack – Ray Charles (#377)
10. Pride (In The Name Of Love) – U2 (#378)
Quite the interesting list this week, with seven covers and only three originals. Two appearances from U2, who continue to get jobbed in the rankings – “Pride” barely cracks the top 400? Really? Two appearances from the a capella group The Bobs, whose covers of classic rock songs are uniformly awesome and in some cases, like their rendition of the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”, completely unexpected. Speaking of a capella groups, that Manhattan Transfer version of “Unchained Melody” is a killer. It’s one of those songs where you have to listen closely to realize that it is what it is. I couldn’t find a YouTube video of them doing it, but I found this video of a group called Minstrels of Hope that covered their cover:
See what I mean? The U2 and Elvis versions are much more like what you’d normally expect. Moving on, the Spankers recorded “Got My Mojo Workin'” no fewer than five times; it’s on just about all of their live albums. They switched arrangements along the way, going from the driving up-tempo song they had originally to a slowed-down number with kind of a doo-wop backup chorus. And finally, if you don’t have a copy of Johnny Cash’s “American IV- The Man Comes Around”, I have no idea what you’re waiting for.
Entire song list report: Started with “That’s Someone You Never Forget”, by Elvis Presley. Finished with “The Three Fine Daughters of Farmer Brown”, by Eddie From Ohio. That would be the live version, from their “Portable EFO Show” CD; the studio version preceded it. This was song #5451, for a very large 171 tunes this week. I have less than a thousand songs to go to reach the end, then it’s back to the beginning to pick up the newer songs that I missed the first time around.