[78-L] covers

[Michael Biel]

From: DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com>
> Was it you or someone else who was taking us to task a few months
> ago for using the term "cover" at all? Insisting that it was a
> racist term since it referred to white versions of black hits. 

I discussed the racial component of the word but also discussed that the
general practice of the record industry in those years was that every
company issued recordings of hit songs by performers of many different
styles to try to capture their part of the market.  The important aspect
of the correct usage of the term is that the recordings be of a song
that is a CURRENT hit to try to cover and capture sales that would
otherwise go to the hit record.  Race is not always a factor, but the
most notorious aspect is when hits by black performers are recorded by
white performers to secure sales and radio plays on stations which would
either not play any black performers or would play black performers only
if there were no white alternative versions available.  It is not "a
racist term" to be banned, it is a word that sometimes describes a
racist act and thus SHOULD be used for those instances.  There is a BIG
difference.  The word itself is not racist.  It should not be banned,
only used correctly.

Here are examples of non-racial uses of the term.  If Perry Como makes a
recording of a current Frank Sinatra hit, that is a cover.  If a white
pop performer like Tony Bennett makes a record of a current Hank
Williams country hit "Cold, Cold Heart", that also is a cover.  If Elvis
Presley makes a record of Carl Perkins' current hit "Blue Suede Shoes"
that is a cover, but if Elvis Presley makes a record of "Blue Moon of
Kentucky" that had been recorded five years earlier by Bill Monroe, or
"Hound Dog" which had been recorded three years earlier by Big Mama
Thornton, those are not covers.  (Indeed, the Elvis records brought the
older records back into prominence.)   If a DJ starts playing Ted Weems'
15 year old record "Heartaches" and the original recording becomes a hit
again and is re-recorded by Weems himself on his new record label to
compete with his old recording, that is also a cover.  If Heartaches had
not become a hit again but he had just re-recorded it, his re-recording
would just be a re-recording.  If his new recording had become a hit and
the old record was re-issued after the new one became a hit, the OLD
re-issue would be a cover!!!   It might also be argued that if the
record companies re-issued Bill Monroe's or Big Mama Thornton's old
recordings when the Elvis versions became a hit, those re-issues might
really be covers of Elvis!  If they had not been out of print but had
just stopped selling for those years, the old recordings starting to
sell again does not put them in the cover category.  Re-issuing would.  
 
> I've asked several collectors and musicians since that discussion
> about the term and none of them had ever heard of it in that context.

Were these people active in the 1950s or have they spent some time
reading the trade press from the 1950s?  If not, they are not
appropriate people to ask because they were not around when the term was
coined and being used correctly.  Cover was a term widely used in the
industry in the 50s but was not used much in the 60s and 70s but started
to be used again in retrospective histories about the 50s in the 80s. 
Then in the 90s I started seeing some rock music writers incorrectly use
the term in Rolling Stone and other places like that because they
thought it was a "cool" word and would make them appear to be "in". 
They had seen it somewhere but had not gotten an explanation of what it
had meant when it was coined in the 50s, so they were unknowingly
misusing it and creating an entirely different meaning for it.    

Unless they were actually IN the record or radio business in the 50s or
have done some research about the 50s using original publications
actually written IN the 50s, they have probably learned the term from
those who have been using it incorrectly.  Perhaps you and they can take
advantage of the on-line Billboard magazines.  There is nothing like
reading the trade press from the actual era.  Not just the popular press
written by those outside the industry for people outside the industry,
but the trade press written by and for people inside the industry. 
Billboard, Record World, Cashbox, Variety, Broadcasting -- THESE are the
things to read.  (When I discuss the technology of the industry, there
are some other trade journals I would add for reference.)  As for books,
I have seen so many crappy books in recent years on these subjects that
I have none I can recommend without some reservations.  Before reading a
book I always check their bibliography and footnotes.  Most of the books
are not any better than their sources although good sources are not a
guarantee of an authoritative book. (I can think of a recent book that
used me and my writings as a source for certain parts that
misinterpreted me and completely screwed up!)     


Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com



 
 Michael Biel wrote:
 
 It's not really a "cover" in the proper sense of the word as it was
 originally defined and still used at the time of that recording. 
 Although the word has been bastardized in recent years, it really only
 refers to alternate versions released at the time of the original hit
 version(s). Something like this done 12 to 15 years after the song was
 a hit is really only another version, not a cover. By your definition,
 anytime another conductor and orchestra records Beethoven's Fifth
 Symphony it is a cover. 
 
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