#954. Lineage of Song: “Peggy Sue”

 

Pealing back the curtain a bit, because the timing won’t at all bear this out. I’ve been compiling these well in advance of posting them. For me, yesterday was 9/7, which 88 years earlier was when Buddy Holly was born.

And while it was a few months ago for me, setting up “Cecilia,” the posted version was a few weeks ago. That one features two different music acts in collaboration. This one is Buddy Holly writing a sequel to his own song (a few minutes ago I posted “That’s All Right, Mama” vaguely referencing a different “follow up;” sometimes I’m very cavalier in these posts). 

I had a mentor when I was a kid who inadvertently encouraged getting into Buddy Holly, which I took for a lifelong commitment, but “Peggy Sue Got Married” (despite eventually inspiring a whole movie) wasn’t really a part of that experience, since it’s absent from the greatest hits collection I took most of my experience with his music from, so it’s surreal to listen to it, now, to think Holly somehow wrote a coda to a life cut far too short. I can probably do some research, but apart from these examples I’m not aware of a ton of outright sequel songs. 

#953. Lineage of Song “Wellerman”

The Longest Johns

Nathan Evans 

The Albany Shantymen

Wellington Sea Chanty Society

Kind of crazy that it took me this long to include “Wellerman” in the Lineage of Song, since it’s basically the song, as sung by Nathan Evans, that got me into this gear all over again. 

#952. Lineage of Song: “Just the Two of Us”

 

Bill Withers

Will Smith

That Will Smith started out in a hip hop act and was for years best known for that increasingly feels like a historical curiosity. In fact the last time he released new music was twenty years ago and even that felt like an afterthought. How he survived the horrible publicity and the act itself of the Oscars slap, too…

#951. Lineage of Song: “Cecilia”

Simon & Garfunkel 

Ace of Base

Here’s one of my personal favorites, and the first (but not last) time Ace of Base shows up in these posts (these particular Swedes ended up having a pretty deep appreciation for the lineage of song). In this one they literally write a whole song about another song, a sequel song, as it were.

#950. Lineage of Song: “Under Pressure”

 

Queen & David Bowie

Vanilla Ice

One of the more egregious and inexplicable lineages brought us the brief popular career of white rapper Vanilla Ice. He at lasted sampled from greatness.

#949. Lineage of Song: “I Got a Woman”

 

Ray Charles

Kanye West

Jamie Foxx turned his starring role in Ray into a gig for a hot minute, which means his spot in “Gold Digger.”

#948. Lineage of Song: “Killing Me Softly”

Don McLean

Lori Lieberman

Roberta Flack

Fugees

When the Fugees exploded on the scene, it was because they settled into music appreciation like few others. That’s the kind of act I appreciate, in any medium.

#947. Lineage of Song: “99 Problems”

Jay-Z

Hugo 

Here’s one of my favorites, actually, not necessarily the original but the remake, which was featured in the credits for another remake, the 2011 version of Fright Night. 

It’s worth noting Hugo was actually recruited by Jay-Z to his label, and that’s how his cover happened. Also, the most infamous version of “99 Problems” is on The Grey Album, the Danger Mouse mashup of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album. Due to legal issues the whole project is tantamount to urban legend, so I haven’t really pursued it, much less heard any of it until after posting this, when it occurred to me to see if YouTube could help. But it turns out as far as this particular track is concerned, it’s almost exactly the Jay-Z version with minor injections of “Helter Skelter.” Which makes me less interested in experiencing the whole album.

#946. Lineage of Song: “Every Breath You Take”

 

The Police

Sean Combs

I include this one because the famous guitar riff running through it was included in the recently disgraced Combs’ tribute to his late friend Notorious B.I.G. (there’s surprisingly a whole recent history of new songs doing that, borrowing wholesale elements from other songs, like Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice Baby” or Train’s “Play That Song”). 

Actually I once again confess that part of this project is shamelessly only to spur me into to watching the results after posting, and doing so led me to revisiting Diddy’s song for the first time since its original release, which revealed that the backing vocals are themselves a riff on the Police song, so it also operates as a cover.

#945. Lineage of Song: “Walk This Way”

 

Aerosmith

Run DMC

This one’s here because it’s such an iconic moment of its time but kind of gets lost in the shuffle. It elevated both acts and foreshadowed what both genres needed to do to push forward. Arguably one of the most important songs in American pop history as a result.

#944. Lineage of Song: “I Shot the Sheriff”

 

Bob Marley

Eric Clapton

The legend as to why this one happened is that Eric Clapton thought Bob Marley deserved more exposure. He did, and he did!

#943. Lineage of Song: “She Said She Said”

Beatles

 

Mark Mulcahy

This one’s really interesting. Mojo, one of those music magazines that attaches CDs to the cover, underwent a whole project of compiling Beatles cover albums for their most famous releases about a fifteen years back. Since I never subscribed to Mojo it was a constant treasure hunt checking the shelves for a new release. “She Said She Said” is from Revolver, and the Mark Mulcahy cover is how I fell in love with the song (the whole cover album is great), since it’s otherwise one of the more obscure Beatles tracks.

I don’t know, and since internet coverage is sadly never really complete it’s been tough trying to verify over the years, if I got the whole collection (as far as I could tell there was only one other, from just before I first saw the project’s results), so here’s the albums Mojo covered: Revolver (as Revolver Reloaded), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (since most of my collection is in binders and the disc itself isn’t labeled I don’t have titles for this or the next one), Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album (as No. 0000001 and No. 0000002), Abbey Road (as Abbey Road Now!), and Let It Be (as Let It Be Revisited).

#942. Lineage of Song: “Viva la Vida”

 

Coldplay

Weezer

“Viva la Vida,” full of strings and chiming bells, gave new dimensions to Coldplay, and was embraced as a major new addition to rock lore, which led to a cover version by Weezer included as a bonus track on its Hurley album just a few years after its release. (And yes, Weezer named its album after the character from Lost, which is why he appears on the cover.)

#941. Lineage of Song “Seven Nation Army”

White Stripes

Oak Ridge Boys

C. W. Stoneking

Living Colour

Audioslave

Flaming Lips

KT Tunstall

Metallica

Maroon 5

Kind of went all out with this one. “Seven Nation Army” might be considered the last hurrah of the rock era. It was hailed instantly as a classic. Jack White and Meg White (not siblings but exes) were the epitome of the garage band, the last innovation of the rock formula. Fans have been decrying the death of rock ‘n’ roll since at least Nirvana lost Kurt Cobain, and while there are still significant acts with hit songs (Imagine Dragons are the leading contenders), there’s minimal mainstream awareness compared to rock’s heyday, when it was inescapable. Jack White continues as a solo artist these days, and has also transformed into the last historian, still actively pursuing his passion for the form and music in general. 

#940. Lineage of Song: “Minnie the Moocher”

 

Cab Calloway was one of the classic artists to show up populating the Blues Brothers music landscape. He’s included here mostly because it’s him performing the same song in two different eras, and at least for my dad, who loves him in the movie, when I got him a CD of vintage Calloway, was utterly indifferent. Sometimes artists age to perfection, having performed the same material for years. That was my dad’s opinion, anyway.

#939. Lineage of Song “Theme from M*A*S*H”

As a kid who grew up with a dad who loved M*A*S*H, listening to the instrumental theme song was just a fact of life. It was years, decades, before I finally saw the movie (both were based on a book by Richard Hooker, which I read a few years ago), and found out the theme song had lyrics! The film’s director, Robert Altman, contracted the job of writing the lyrics to his son, who subsequently, as the legend goes, raked in perpetual piles of cash when the song played weekly and then forever in syndication, thanks to the 

#938. Lineage of Song: “Theme from Rawhide”

 

In Blues Brothers, the boys are challenged to play Country/Western music, an archaic term at this point (my parents always used it, too), but historically relevant. Western was basically traditional American folk, the original pop music (“Oh My Darling, Clementine;” “Home on the Range,” “Oh! Susanna”), part and parcel with the genre being a longtime staple in film and television, the classic cowboy way. So they didn’t do a Country song, of course, but a Western, the theme to the classic TV show. Today, like cowboy movies, Western doesn’t really exist in the pop culture, and Country is associated most with Southern living. Probably the cowboy hats the guys invariably wear are a relic of the Country/Western days.

#937. Lineage of Song: “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”

 

Blues Brothers

Solomon Burke

Wilson Pickett

Rolling Stones

Here we enter Blue Brothers territory. John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd first portrayed Jake and Elwood Blues on Saturday Night Live before filming the movie (which also happens to share the basic plot of most Muppets movies), although “the Good Ol’ Blues Brothers Boys Band” plays a lot more actual blues music in Blue Brothers 2000 (and a lot more played around them).

Bit of housekeeping this edition…As of this one Blogger isn’t just letting me watch the videos in the post. Not sure if it’s just me. But they still populate once I go to YouTube itself to play them. 

#936. Lineage of Song: “With a Little Help from My Friends”

 

Joe Cocker

John Belushi

I’m including the Belushi version because I love that it exists, it’s Belushi doing a straight version of Cocker, from the first season of Saturday Night Live, which for those who’ve never seen it, it’s amazing how little time the original cast really had; it was originally much more a spotlight for the celebrity host. Belushi, and Chevy Chase’s Weekend Update, was pretty much the exception. That’s exactly why things played out the way they did. Belushi and Chase were the breakout stars for a reason. But to be fair, they had a little help from their friends. So to speak…

#935. Lineage of Song: “Respect”

 

Otis Redding

One of the most famous songs originating with one artist but ending up owned by another is undoubtedly “Respect.”