There are entries devoted to iconically “cool” covers, such as Hendrix’s take on “All Along the Watchtower” and even Johnny Cash’s “Hurt.” These chapters are informative, but some of the more esoteric selections are even more enjoyable. In both cases, the act of covering another artist’s song provided a unique lens through which to view major sea changes in the history of popular music.Įach of Cover Me’s nineteen chapters have something to recommend them, surprisingly in some cases. Even as the song became one of the first to go legitimately “viral,” the fact that it was erroneously credited to Phish blocked the Gourds from reaping any benefits from their single hit and predicted the eventual downfall of the file sharing model. Padgett uses The Gourds’s cover of “Gin and Juice” to discuss the Napster phenomenon of the late nineties. The section on the Elvis Presley version of “Hound Dog” covers the familiar ground of the whitewashing of music in the Fifties, but moves past sermonizing and offers a nuanced take on the how the song affected Elvis, the original performer, Big Mama Thornton, and even, years later, Public Enemy. The author is most successful in the chapters that move beyond simple stories of rock and roll to focus on larger social and music-industry trends. Padgett, through the lens of the cover song, makes a larger statement about the forces that have shaped the music industry, and society at large, from the Fifties up to today. Cover Me is both an art object and a surprisingly thorough historical text. Padgett intersperses his prose with an amazingly thorough list of interviews, including excellent conversations with Mark Mothersbaugh and Roger Daltrey, and full-page artist photographs.
Each chapter is well researched about the covered song and the artists involved, and delivers a surprising amount of information without seeming too much like homework.
Padgett expands the mission of his blog of the same name to trace the history of the cover, choosing to focusing on twenty interpretations that range from the truly iconic to the historically significant.
Ray Padgett’s Cover Me gives the prestige treatment to the humblest of album afterthoughts and concert crowd pleasers: the cover song.
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