What, in your mind, is a "cover"?

[DukeCity]

I am not convinced that we are speaking of "common usage" in this case. The music bulletin boards are visited upon by many novices who--understandably--are glossary handicapped. The same boards are also inhabited by posters who pick up the terms and run with them. Outside of these boards, I don't recall hearing the term, cover, misused.

What does "cover" mean? If you think about that you will see how the definition in question came about, and how descriptive it is. Now, having given that some thought, think again. Think about how meaningless it is to call something a cover just because it is not the original recording of a tune--why not just call it another recording of such-and-such tune? Given the illogic followed by some of the posters here, why is Coleman Hawkins' "Body and Soul" not a cover? Why is one recording of the hundreds that exist of "Round Midnight" not a cover? Why are the others covers? Are some of them covers and others not? If so, which are which and how do we delineate one from the other?

Basically, I am asking that this be given some thought.

Actually, your comments have indeed given me pause to think about that term and its usage, both past and current, and I understand your point. It's just that it is difficult to get the toothpaste back in the tube once it's been squeezed out.

As far as "common usage" goes, I'm not basing my experience of the word just on its use on chat boards. I started playing in "cover bands" in the mid-1980's. And working musicians I've been around for the last 20 years have used that term freely in that way.

I get your point, Christiern, and I understand mourning the the loss of that term having a more specific meaning. But I think that day has passed.

Cheers!

Edited October 2, 2007 by DukeCity

[Dan Gould]

I am not convinced that we are speaking of "common usage" in this case. The music bulletin boards are visited upon by many novices who--understandably--are glossary handicapped. The same boards are also inhabited by posters who pick up the terms and run with them. Outside of these boards, I don't recall hearing the term, cover, misused.

Let me get this straight - you think that poor novices come to a bulletin board like this, have never heard the term "cover" and walk away sadly misinformed?

You have got to be kidding me. No rational person in this day and age can be unaware of the modern usage of "cover".

Basically, I am asking that this be given some thought.

There is no thought necessary. You didn't get the memo about how language evolves. We're sorry about that, but feel free to continue to tilt at those windmills.

Back in my day we didn't have people callin' new renditions of songs "covers"! We knew what was meant by that term, and we liked it!

[Alexander]

So, all too many people will describe a somewhat accomplished artist who has passed his or her 50th birthday as a "legend." That, to me, is as ludicrous as it is to refer to any non-premiere recording of a tune as a "cover."

When a term is misused often enough, some (those who give it no real thought) will simply accept it--even if it does not reflect reason. Eventually, the term loses its meaning and becomes a "whatever" kind of phrase. Being under 42 is no excuse for using sloppy language, IMO.

Warren G. Harding, one of the worst presidents in American history and man who's mangling of the english language rivaled even Dubya's (Harding's english was described by Mr. Twain as the aural equivilant of "a hippo struggling in a pool of molasses"), famously described his administration as a "return to normalcy." He meant to say "normality" since "normalcy" was not a word, but people still say "normalcy" today and it is now included in many dictionaries. A laugable instance of linguistic ignorance became the coining of a new word. It is possible, in a hundred years or so, that people might well say "misunderestimated" and mean it.

Chris says that "being under 42 is no excuse for sloppy language," but the fact is that language does change with the passing of time, and it may well be that those of us under 42 are essentially speaking a different language from those over 42. Look, during the 1600s, for instance, the second-singular took a singular conjunction - "You is." "You are," which we use today, would have been wrong in the 1600s. Earlier still, the second-singular pronoun wasn't "you" but "thou."

There are several words in use today, perfectly acceptable words, that were once considered errors or egregious slang by usage authorities in the past. Words like "clever," "fun," "banter," and "prestigious." "Silly" once meant "useless" (as in Coleridge's "silly buckets"). I'm still somewhat annoyed that the word "dork" appears to have lost its original meaning (it was a synonym for "penis"). Today, teachers call their students "dorks" (as a playful form of "nerd" or "geek") who would get fired if they called the same students "pricks" or "peckers." I hear it all the time, and I have to bite my tongue.

[Quincy]

The original meaning has been decimated.

Not unlike decimate.

[Free For All]

And what the hell does "pfargtl" mean?

[RDK]

And what the hell does "pfargtl" mean?

You mean now or back in the 17th century?

[aparxa]

And what the hell does "pfargtl" mean?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pfargtl

A rather good source of information for a non-US kid to understand some US slang, acronym etc...

[aparxa]

And BTW, I always associated to the word cover a song made FOR FUN at end of a show, when the band had already played all their repertoire.

[Christiern]

Sorry Dan, guess I get it all confused with covered WMDs!

For the rest of you, that's a 5-year-old inside joke.

[Joe G]

The original meaning has been decimated.

Not unlike decimate.

Just recently came across that one myself.

And what the hell does "pfargtl" mean?

I'm still puzzling over "A laugable instance of linguistic ignorance..."

Time to have a drink, perhaps?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Time for a history lesson on covers, because this has been going on for a century.

Back in the early days of the record industry, there were what seem to us now some pretty funny things going on. It was an industry hobbled by patents; the big record companies were also manufacturers of gramophones and, to get around the patents, had to design machines and compatible discs, that were different from those of their competitors. The company which appears to have taken eccentricity to its ultimate limits was the French firm, Pathé Frères, which opened up an American branch in 1914. Their records were: vertically cut; designed to revolve at 90 rpm, not 78; designed to be played with a jewelled stylus with a tip 0.005 inches in diameter, not a steel needle; 14” in diameter, not 12” or 10”; and played from the centre outwards towards the rim (and presumably the tone arm fell off the edge a short time after the music finished, damaging the jewelled stylus). (The firm standardised both records and players in the early 1920s.) So you had a load of non-compatible labels knocking around and they all wanted to flog the popular songs to their respective captive audiences. There were two solutions.

The first was to license recordings made by other labels, and there was a good market in this, and release them pseudonymously (because the originating label insisted). As 78s became standardised in the early twenties, the licensing market moved into creating labels for the burgeoning “five and dime” chain stores, which wanted their own labels, on which the hits would be issued. These, once more, were pseudonymous.

The other solution was to record alternative versions of hits. Right through to the forties, and maybe into the fifties, the music publishing companies employed song pluggers, whose job was to get record companies to make as many different recordings of as song as they could. The object here was to sell sheet music, which was where the big money was in those days, and it didn’t matter which version people heard to induce them to buy the music. There was, of course, a big market for sheet music from the Territory Bands. The recordings and the sheet music tended to use “stock” arrangements, so that every version sounded like everyone else’s. The exception was in jazz where, even using stock arrangements, the soloists sounded individual, and the best were inimitable. From the bands’ and singers’ point of view, records were not really where it was at – they, and later the radio plays, helped command higher paying gigs, which is where the real money for the artist was. So the fact that an artist had little choice over what was recorded, and little creative investment in it, wasn’t a big issue – though of course, there were some exceptions in jazz, such as Duke; and Basie managed to get around the stock arrangements issue by using head arrangements. But quite a lot of even their recordings were simply what was put in front of them.

As the Depression eased into post war prosperity, record sales took off and suddenly became important in their own right. And the big band market fell away, as did the sheet music market. Only three record companies emerged from the Depression: Victor; American Record Company (ARC); and Decca. Even in the thirties, indies started up: Varsity; Commodore; Blue Note; and Savoy among them, but wartime shellac rationing halted this development. In 1944, the number of companies doubled. Most of these new companies were involved in recording the various kinds of contemporary black music or country music, or both. These were areas which, with their backs to the wall during the Depression, the majors had sacrificed in order to stay in business, and had never really got back into.

It was in this period that the practice of recording alternative versions became rather dodgy, to say the least. Despite what Chris says, I don’t think that, initially at least, this was a black/white thing. I think it was a record company thing. If we look at the fate of a few of the biggest black hits of the forties, we don’t see a black/white pattern at all.

Louis Jordan’s Decca recording of “G I jive” went to #1 on the R&B (7 weeks) and pop (2 weeks) charts in 1944. But it was a cover of Johnny Mercer’s Capitol recording, which also spent a week at #1 on the R&B chart, but only got to #11 on the pop chart.

“The honeydripper” was a huge R&B hit for Joe Liggins, who wrote the song. His recording, on Exclusive, spent 18 weeks at #1 on the R&B chart in 1945/6. Three other recordings of the song got onto the R&B chart, by: Jimmie Lunceford on Decca (#2); Roosevelt Sykes on Bluebird (#3); and Cab Calloway on Columbia (#3 but about 3 months after the other three hits). Only Lunceford’s and Liggins’ versions made the pop charts, Lunceford’s being the bigger hit.

“Open the door, Richard” was the biggest song of 1947. It was originally recorded by Jack McVea for Black & White. His was one of five versions to reach the R&B charts (#2), and one of seven versions on the pop chart (#3). (My earliest memory is singing along with my mother to this song.) The biggest hit was by Count Basie on Columbia, (#2 R&B, #1 pop). Louis Jordan’s had a hit on Decca (#2 R&B, #6 pop), as did Dusty Fletcher on National (#2 R&B, #3 pop) (Fletcher was the comedian who had popularised the routine on which the song was based); The Three Flames (a black group) also on Columbia (#3 R&B, #1 pop). In addition, the Charioteers (a white group who had done backing vocals on a Frank Sinatra record or two) also n Columbia (#6 pop) and the Pied Pipers, Tommy Dorsey’s vocal group, on Capitol (#8 pop) had pop hits. All of these records hit the charts in early 1947.

Finally, the biggest R&B hit of 1949 was Paul Williams’ “Hucklebuck”, recorded for Savoy. (It’s based on “Now’s the time” and features a great Bebop solo by Phil Guilbeau.) That spent 14 weeks at #1 on the R&B chart and reached exactly nowhere on the pop chart. Two other versions reached the R&B chart that year: by Roy Milton on Specialty (#5); and Lionel Hampton on Decca (with a vocal by Betty Carter) (#12). The two versions that made the pop charts were by Tommy Dorsey (with trumpet solo by Charlie Shavers) on Victor (#5) and Frank Sinatra on Columbia (#10).

While there’s no evidence here (or, I’m sure, if more detailed lists were compiled) of an anti-black bias in recording competing versions, I think we do see a pattern emerging of recordings by white artists being more popular in the pop market and those by black artists being more popular in the R&B market. And that this was a new development. There was no R&B chart before 1942. Pop chart positions prior to 1938 are pretty unreliable, and even less reliable prior to 1935, but there can be little doubt that, during the thirties, there was no real bar to the chart popularity or black artists like Ellington, Armstrong, Waller, Basie, Holiday, Chick Webb and many others. But, during the forties, it’s easy to see a trend of the segregation along race lines of the pop and R&B charts. This seems to me not, or not entirely, to have reflected the will of the white-oriented record industry. In 1951, Johnnie Ray, who had a big R&B hit with his second single “Cry”, was dropped by the black population when it became generally known that he was a white singer, with a style derived from Amos Milburn, but with little credibility in term of black music (in contrast to Johnny Otis, who had oceans of credibility).

It was this segregation of the charts, I think, that gave rise to the most pernicious variant of the cover version; one in which records by black artists were copied, but whitewashed to make them suitable for the obviously more lucrative pop chart. This was particularly prevalent in the fifties. By the late fifties, companies like Atlantic, Specialty, Imperial, Chess and King had learned how to cope with and counter the problem, which they managed with spectacular success; from 30 November 1963 to 23 January 1965, no R&B chart was published by Billboard on the grounds that the R&B and pop charts were too alike.

From around about that time, pop LPs began to be more significant. One of the favourite strategies of record companies in that era was filling out an LP with cover versions of current hits; riding on the coattails of hits, rather than trying to steal sales (though there were and are still quite a few examples of this, particularly where American recordings were covered for foreign markets). The Ventures’ albums, as I recall, were full of ‘em, but they were far from alone. I remember an article in Billboard in the mid-sixties deprecating the practice as being a cheap and uncreative cop-out (except that guessing what were going to be the big hits in six weeks’ time was perceived to be a good game).

Here are few track lists of the Ventures’ LPs, just to amuse us all:

BLP-8037/BST-8037 - The Ventures a Go-Go - Ventures [1965] Satisfaction /Go-Go Slow / Louie Louie /Night Stick /La Bamba /The "In" Crowd //Wooly Bully /A Go-Go Guitar /A Go-Go Dancer/The Swingin' Creeper /Whittier Blvd. /I Like It Like That

BLP-8045/BST-8045 - Go with the Ventures - Ventures [1966] Green Grass/Ginza Lights/These Boots Are Made For Walkin'/Frankie And Johnny/Ad-Venture/Monday Monday//Good Lovin'/Eight Miles High/Escape/Sloop John B/Go/California Dreamin'

LST-8054 - $1,000,000.00 Weekend - Ventures [1967] What Now My Love

/Georgy Girl /Ode To Billie Joe /Sunny /Respect /To Sir With Love /Music To Watch Girls By /Groovin' /Windy /Sealed With A Kiss /Uptight (Everything's Alright) /Yesterday

It is probably from this era that the present day view of cover version originates. It seems to me that this practice, too, faded away, though I don’t know whether it has entirely disappeared.

Subsequently, we got the era of the singer/songwriter, in which, for some reason, it seems that recording new interpretations, however different and unique, of anyone else’s songs was deemed an uncreative cop-out. And the term cover has been applied pejoratively to any such recording. This appears to be a situation that is still continuing, despite the singer/songwriter business having gone away and having been replaced by Rap, manufactured pop artists such as Britney Spears & etc and the remix; a different kind of cover.

Although I knew this history, what I hadn’t realised, until I started writing this, was the extent to which the various practices that can be called covering has changed over the past century or so, in terms of their rationale as well as their artistic impact. Each of these different implementations has had a period in which it was prevalent, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. (And of course, throughout the period songs have been translated from one language to another, thus producing an entirely necessary form of cover recording.)

It’s not clear to me that there is any longer a need for the word cover to be used pejoratively, except in relation to specific historical events and trends.

Sorry this has been so long, but I needed to work this out for myself.

(Is the thread dead yet? Or are you?)

MG

[Aggie87]

Interesting read, thanks MG.

[Alexander]

Interesting read, thanks MG.

Yes, very well done. And I agree that it demonstrates how the practice of "covering" songs has changed over the years, and with it the meaning of the word itself.

My question is this: When did the word cover enter the lexography and what was its first printed use? This is where the OED would come in handy, if they include words like "cover."

[Alexander]

The original meaning has been decimated.

Not unlike decimate.

Just recently came across that one myself.

And what the hell does "pfargtl" mean?

I'm still puzzling over "A laugable instance of linguistic ignorance..."

Time to have a drink, perhaps?

Oops. In my defense, I was at work while I wrote this. I was sitting in the computer lab waiting for one of my students to finish typing a paragraph and I was called away several times. That's why this misspelling got past my keen eye.

[rockefeller center]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version...cal_speculation

[Joe G]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version...cal_speculation

We didn't need this thread at all!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

My question is this: When did the word cover enter the lexography and what was its first printed use? This is where the OED would come in handy, if they include words like "cover."

That was my question, too, but I couldn't answer it so I let it lie. Someone like Allen Lowe, who's investigated widely in early recordings, might be able to say. Not at all clear to me that, under the circs, it would have originated as late as the forties.

MG

[danasgoodstuff]

In principle, I'm a descriptivist (more or less) regarding language, but in practise...my objection to the broader ahistorical use of "cover" is that, intentionally or not, it carries with it negative connotations that I feel are inappropriate outside of the narrower historic use9s) of the term. As far as I'm concerned the most interesting local bands are often cover bands, although not usually of current hits but of blues and/or jazz 'standards'. As far as what other term(s0 to use, I was perhaps too subtle in using and mentioning "version" at the same time in my post above. "rendition" is good, as is "reinterpretation" if that's what it is, or "reinteration" if it's not...I find most "origianls" to be not very original or interesting and have felt that way since the mid '70s, at least. As far as I'm concerned, if a rock band can't do a convincing Chuch Berry, etc. "cover" (in the broad sense), I don't care what else they do.