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BAD COVER VERSION 049: HE HAD A RIFLE … O WHAT A RIFLE …
Some songs get covered more than others for a variety of reasons, but usually it comes down to the quality of the song itself, which in turn comes down to the songwriter. And when you start talking about songwriters whose songs tend to get covered a lot, a lot of the usual names come up, from the DIY ethic of Lennon/McCartney, Mick/Keef, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, etc, to the for-hire pros like Lieber/Stoller, Bacharach/Sager, everyone in the Brill Building, etc.
By contrast, Sonny Bono doesn’t come up a lot.
You can see why. Most people know him as the comic-relief half of Sonny And Cher. But he wrote songs too, to include their biggest hit, “I Got You Babe”. And at least one of his songs ended up being covered quite a lot: “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”.
He wrote it for Cher, of course, who recorded it in 1966, and it was her biggest hit of that decade. Nancy Sinatra recorded her own version the same year, replacing the orchestral drama of Cher’s version with a haunted, melancholy take backed with Billy Strange on tremolo guitar, and if you’ve seen Part Two of Kill Bill – or at least bought the soundtrack – you’ve already heard it.
And if not, you can hear it right now.
And thanks mainly to Kill Bill, more people have arguably heard the Sinatra version than the original Cher version. Which must annoy Cher.
Or perhaps not.
Anyway, even Raquel Welch did her own version – with some added gun pr0n innuendo.
Like so.
The Nancy Sinatra version is far better, of course. But who’s going to argue with Raquel Welch dancing in an ultra-short trenchcoat while three men in black point their big wooden rifles at her?
FUN FACT: There's even a Chinese version of this song. Betty Chung sang it. It is funky.
Point and shoot,
This is dF
By contrast, Sonny Bono doesn’t come up a lot.
You can see why. Most people know him as the comic-relief half of Sonny And Cher. But he wrote songs too, to include their biggest hit, “I Got You Babe”. And at least one of his songs ended up being covered quite a lot: “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”.
He wrote it for Cher, of course, who recorded it in 1966, and it was her biggest hit of that decade. Nancy Sinatra recorded her own version the same year, replacing the orchestral drama of Cher’s version with a haunted, melancholy take backed with Billy Strange on tremolo guitar, and if you’ve seen Part Two of Kill Bill – or at least bought the soundtrack – you’ve already heard it.
And if not, you can hear it right now.
And thanks mainly to Kill Bill, more people have arguably heard the Sinatra version than the original Cher version. Which must annoy Cher.
Or perhaps not.
Anyway, even Raquel Welch did her own version – with some added gun pr0n innuendo.
Like so.
The Nancy Sinatra version is far better, of course. But who’s going to argue with Raquel Welch dancing in an ultra-short trenchcoat while three men in black point their big wooden rifles at her?
FUN FACT: There's even a Chinese version of this song. Betty Chung sang it. It is funky.
Point and shoot,
This is dF