Origins:song periods-songs in various styles

Subject: Origins: song periods
From: thosp
Date: 29 Jun 06 - 10:32 PM

I hope i can get some help from you guys ----- one of the teachers at my school is asking for some songs that have been recorded in styles
from blues -- R&B --rock -- hip hop etc. same song in various styles

thanks

thosp

Subject: RE: Origins: song periods
From: SharonA
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 09:32 PM

There must be plenty, but offhand I can only think of one: "Layla" which Eric Clapton originally recorded as a rock song and, a couple of decades later, revamped as a bluesy version which he performed for the MTV "Unplugged" series.

Subject: RE: Origins: song periods
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 09:34 PM

'House of the Rising Sun' started off as a folky ballad ~ try Woody Guthrie collections... it got rocked up when the Animals got hold of it in 1964.

LTS

Subject: RE: Origins: song periods
From: SharonA
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 09:45 PM

This thread title is confusing. Perhaps a kindly MudElf can modify it to one that will generate the responses thosp needs for his assignment.

Subject: RE: Origins: song periods
From: thosp
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 09:59 PM

thanks SharonA ---
i was thinking maybe a Muddy Waters song or one of Elvis' covers
anyway if a MudElf cna help that would be great

thosp

Subject: RE: Origins: song periods
From: SharonA
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 10:16 PM

What about reggae versions of songs?

Subject: RE: Origins: song periods
From: Roughyed
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 03:59 PM

A band called Frijid Pink did a heavy metal version of House of the Rising Sun in the 1970s but it might take some tracking down. How about the original Crossroads by Robert Johnson compared with the Cream version? Dirty Old Town started as a jazz song before becoming folk and then whatever you would call the Pogues version. Dylan's Hard Rains Gonna Fall rocked up by Roxy Music. Half of Led Zeppelins back catalogue started off as blues. Any help?

Subject: RE: Origins: song periods
From: thosp
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 10:45 PM

thanks SharonA & Roughyed

Casey (the teacher) S' project is to follow a few songs from
blues 30's 40's or earlier to R&B - doo wop 50's --rock 60's
whatever 70's 80's hip hop 90's --showing transions of the same
song through generations -- if possible ---

thanks

thosp

Subject: RE: Origins: song periods
From: thosp
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 10:48 PM

ps -- haven't been able to get to modern times! there's the rub


i have no idea from the 80' to hip -hop

thosp

Subject: RE: Origins:song periods-songs in various styles
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 01:16 AM

How about "Blue Moon"? It was a pop song, then a doo-wop classic.

Subject: RE: Origins:song periods-songs in various styles
From: van lingle
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 07:27 AM

Elvis transformed a few to rockabilly:
"That's All Right Mama" an R&B number by Arthur Crudup
"Hound Dog" R&B by Big Mama Thornton
"Blue Moon of Kentucky" bluegrass by Bill Monroe
Van Morrison with Them did a rave up version of Big Joe Williams blues number "Baby Please Don't Go".

Subject: RE: Origins:song periods-songs in various styles
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 10:41 AM

I was just in a used book store that had a book of Stephen Foster songs for sale. (I didn't buy it.) In the introduction, the editor mentioned that in the 1940's, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair was all over the radio in many forms - ballad, instrumental, fox trot, big band.

There was some kind of conflict going on over copyrights, and since Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair was public domain, they went wild playing it.

thosp, there is a good chance that you could find that very book in your library. I've seen it before.

Subject: RE: Origins:song periods-songs in various styles
From: Genie
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 03:12 PM

Ray Charles did a, well, Ray Charles version of "Swanee River."   Very r&b-soul-bluesy.

UB40 did a reggae version of "Can't Help Falling In Love With You" (in which he unforgiveably changed the words "Like a river flows surely to the sea" to "Like a river flows gently to the sea" thus totally missing the point of that lyric line but I digress).

"Summertime" from Porgy & Bess was an operatic aria but has been performed and recorded in just about every genre and every era's style.

Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was a slow ballad when he and Art Garfunkel sang it. Both Gladys Knight and Clay Aiken recorded it as a powerful, more rhythmic, more up-tempo Gospel-style song. Johnny Cash's version sounds little like the original. It sounds like, well, it sounds like a Johnny Cash song.   Many other versions are out there too.

Subject: RE: Origins:song periods-songs in various styles
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 10:12 AM

So give us a copy of your paper when you finish it - should be interesting reading, then...

Subject: RE: Origins:song periods-songs in various styles
From: Genie
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 10:46 AM

Yeah, please do. :)

Another example I saw on PBS.   I think it was the Bob Dylan: No Direction Home film (but it might have been the Sixties documentary).   They played a ca. 1 min. clip of Dylan's "Blowing In The Wind" being done in about 17 VERY different styles from a s-l-o-w bluesy Gospel choir to Trini Lopez-style rock to bluegrass to your almost semi-classical style choir piece. Too many genres to name (plus I have a terrible time stuffing the whole panorama of music into neat genre categories).

Couple more.   Ewan McColl's folk ballad "The First Time (Ever I Saw Your Face)" was tune-modified, tempo-slowed, and drastically genre-modified by Roberta Flack.
And the 1970's ballad "Killing Me Softly With His Song" was remade in the late 1990s or early 2000s by a sort of urban r&b group in a hip-hop style.