dEFROG ON 45 #77: DON’T TRUST YR SOUL TO NO BACKWOODS SOUTHERN LAWYER

Looking back on this list, it seems that a lot of the songs I liked as a kid (circa early-mid 70s) were ballads – not as in soppy love songs with an electric guitar solo, but as in songs that told stories.

But only one of them was made into a film.

"Vicki Lawrence The night the lights went out in Georgia 1973" (Watch on YouTube)

Well, sort of. The film’s story has almost nothing to do with the song, which is of course about a jealous husband who becomes a victim of crooked Southern justice.

Which apparently is why Cher turned it down (or rather, Sonny Bono turned it down for her over concerns it might annoy her Southern fan base). In fact, according to legend, none of the singers it was shopped to had much interest, nor did the music label people who didn’t know how to pigeonhole it into a format. Even the guy who wrote it – Bobby Russell (a.k.a. Mr Vicki Lawrence at the time) – didn’t think it was all that great a song anyway. So Vicki went and recorded the damn thing herself.

Back story!

Anyway, listening to it now, I think it holds up pretty well. But then I like a good story about crooked Southern justice.

FUN FACT: Because Top 40 DJs in the 70s rarely bothered to tell you who performed the songs you just heard, it wasn’t until I got a copy of the 45 that I realized the singer was the same woman who played Mama on the Carol Burnett Show.

Supper's waiting at home and I gotta get to it,

This is dF

BAD COVER VERSION #63: ARE YOU SURE THIS IS HOW IT GOES?

Re: “dEFROG On 45 #77”, in which I noted that the film version of “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia” bore no real resemblance to the story told in the song on which it was allegedly based:

The film used a different version of the song, sung by Tanya Tucker, with the lyrics almost completely rewritten to fit the movie’s storyline.

"Tanya Tucker-The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia" (Watch on YouTube)

The music is pretty much the same (albeit with a more countrified arrangement) – just the words are different.

Which got me to thinking: how often does that happen, where someone does a cover song but with totally different lyrics?

I know it happens in the case of songs translated into other languages, where the lyrics don't translate well so they just write all new ones. And certainly there are cases where artists drop certain lines or change select words (often in the name of either FCC guidelines or gender correction, though sometimes the latter can effectively change the whole meaning and point of the song).

But I’m having trouble thinking of other examples of total rewrites (apart from Weird Al parodies, which don’t count). Probably the closest example is Peggy Lee’s version of Little Willie John’s “Fever”, where she kept the first couple of verses then added her own lyrics for the rest of the song.

And I guess maybe certain Led Zeppelin songs might count, depending on who you ask.

Otherwise, I’m drawing a blank. Maybe you lot have some ideas.

Meanwhile, there’s at least one other cover version of the song – Reba McIntire had a hit single with it in the early 90s. While she kept the original lyrics intact, she did make this odd music video to go with it that basically changes the story where the brother not only knows who killed Andy, but deliberately pled guilty to protect the shooter.

Which isn’t nearly as good.

Anyway, it’s one of those videos I always liked to keep in mind whenever music censorship groups complained that rock music videos should be censored because they had too much sex and violence in them. Somehow Reba McIntire never came up in that discussion – cos she’s not rock, so it’s okay?

Do the twist,

This is dF