Category: Music Opinion and Commentary

Mondegreen Mondays

randydafoe14 Comments
“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly

This song is the mondegreen to beat all mondegreens. You may have already heard the story as “In the Garden of Eden” were indeed the original intended lyrics. There are a few versions of how this came about but here for me is the most credible. When sharing the song for the first time with his band mates, Doug Ingle had apparently drank a gallon (just over 4 litres) of wine, so the the lead singers words were so slurred the drummer Ron Bushy wrote down his interpretation “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”. But for the misheard lyrics would this song be such a huge part of Rock and Roll history?

‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ was the second Album Iron Butterfly released in 1968. While this was not at first a single release, as the 17-plus-minute title track took up an entire side of the LP, which hit #4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. So while the song “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” did chart #30 as a single (edited down to under 3 minutes) it was the only reason the Album reached #4 on the Billboard chart. Thus making it and Iron Butterfly one-hit wonders in addition to its mondegreen status

Now, you can read in Wikipedia and other places that it sold a reported eight million copies within its first year of release which would have made it (in 1969) the biggest-selling album in history. Apparently, it would go on to worldwide sales of over 30 million copies by 1993. These numbers are at best wild conjecture. However, if you go to the Wiki page listing the best-selling albums of all time, Iron Butterfly is nowhere to be seen as the list ranges from 11 to 40 plus million.

A little monde-misdirection if you ask me! So it’s for things like this I am always leery of making Wikipedia or any other place my sole source of information.

Songfacts.org says it sold over 4 million copies making it, at the time (1968) the best selling album from Atlantic Records to date. To be very quickly surpassed by Led Zeppelin in 1969.

According to Bestsellingalbums.org, these are the total sales figures.

Country Album Sales Certification / source
Australia IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA 70,000 1x Platinum
France IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA 100,000 1x Gold
Germany IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA 500,000 1x Platinum
United Kingdom IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA 60,000 1x Silver
United States IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA 4,000,000 4x Platinum

Yet if we look at the year 1968 on the same site we see this:

IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA, IRON BUTTERFLY Sales: 30,000,000, Rank in 1968 : 1, Rank in 1960’s: 2, Overall rank : 33. So a bit of a contradiction.

These numbers don’t show Canada and many other markets but by any evidence I have seen even generously we can approach 5 million at best. That said the song was covered with some success by The Incredible Bongo Band in 1969 with an instrumental. This caused a very slight resurgence in Iron Butterfly’s album sales. Curently there are 41 versions of the song according to Secondhandsongs.com.

For more on music you can check out Lines by Leon.

Mondegreen Mondays

randydafoe11 Comments
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles

When I came across this misheard lyric of “I get high” in place of the actual line of “I can’t hide” it’s not one I have run across before. Maybe I can see it, sort of but apparently this one is not uncommon.

“Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” by AC/DC

“Dirty Deeds and the Thunder Chief”? I can see it but again I am a bit skeptical.

“Jet Airliner” by The Steve Miller Band

Here we have “Big old Jed had a light on” in place of “Oh, oh, big ol’ jet airliner, Don’t carry me too far away”. Sounds like a retroactive creation but hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Or in this next one “the Sheriff”.

“I Shot the Sheriff” by Bob Marley

During the course of the song we have several “I shot the Sheriff” lines and some of the misheard lyrics I ran across were “I shop for Sherry” or “I stopped to share it”.

For more on music you can check out Lines by Leon.

Jukebox Songs

randydafoe18 Comments
“A1 On the Jukebox” by Dave Edmunds from his 1978 Album Tracks on Wax 4

There are actually hundreds of songs with “Jukebox” in the title and probably hundreds more that give it a mention. It has pretty much gone the way of the Dodo bird but people are still singing about it. The thing was invented by Louis Glass and William S. Arnold in 1889 but it was when the player-piano maker, Justus P. Seeburg got the idea in 1928 to bring the coin operation, the speaker and rotating turntables together when the Jukebox really took off. Apparently Juke Box and Jukebox are both acceptable spellings.

Today I am really only interested in the Jukebox titled songs, I found a list compiled by Gert J. Almind that has 492 titles on it! Obviously a tremendous amount of research, I mean when I sat down to make a list I could only think of eight songs.

While looking at the list I can see different era’s and genre, but the overwhelming majority are Country Songs. I’d guess you are with me in thinking this makes sense. Country + booze is a pretty common theme and there are studies to back that up. In 2018 there was a Towards Data Science study that found 40% of the Top 40 Country songs from 2013-2017 mentioned alcohol.

So now I am thinking of an equation that looks like this, Country + booze + bars + nostalgia = jukebox songs.

I can’t think of anyone who ticks more of the boxes than Johnny Paycheck, he has at least two songs “Jukebox Charlie” and “The Meanest Jukebox in Town”.

I admit my search was not exhaustive but here are a couple of early Jukebox songs, Ray Whitley used the tune of Wabash Cannonball to make “Jukebox Cannonball” in 1946.

“Juke Box Blues” by June Carter, released in 1953.

How about an instrumental? The Ray Anthony Orchestra with “Juke Box Special” (1955)

That’s six songs so only another 486 to go! There are a lot of great Rock and Roll songs, Jump Blues likes the Jukebox as well.

Ok a couple more cause this one is irresistible “June Box Annie” by Kitty Kallen (1950)

Rory Gallagher feels a bit different about “Juke Box Annie”

Update: John from The Sound of One Hand Typing and quite the music expert sent me this song, “Juke Box Saturday Night” from 1944, two years before “Juke Box Cannon Ball”.

You were waiting so patiently for “Juke Box Hero” by Foreigner in 1981

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

No. 2 “Louie, Louie”

randydafoe19 Comments

“Louie, Louie” by The Kingsmen is a cult cover song if ever there was one, controversial for the silliest of reasons, the somewhat unintelligible lyrics got it banned at many ‘puritan’ Radio Stations. And investigated by the FBI, though that claim is a tad over blown. That did not stop it from climbing the charts in 1963, yet somewhat ironically a ‘banned’ song was to be stopped at #2, by ‘The Singing Nun’ with “Dominique“. “The Devils Music” indeed! If ever there was a convergence …(A book by Randall J Stephens)

The Kingsmen were the third band to cover the song and the only one I could find that charted it, that’s when all the hype started. It was written and first released by Richard Berry in 1957. And there’s more of a story there as well.

I am sure many of you have read about “Louie, Louie” as the story is widely available ad nauseum. I do however want to talk about claims about the cover versions. I have (as some of you have as well) seen several numbers about the total cover versions out there. Wikipedia says up to 2,000 but the references supplied were articles that quoted numbers without any supporting facts at all. I guess that is my issue, we know there are a lot of versions of the song but I have seen some pretty wild claims in publications that should know better. I’m no journalist but at least I do a little research.

If someone can provide me some empirical date to support any such claims, please do pass it along and I’ll eat or maybe just ‘garble’ my words!

One reference I found to 5,000 versions quoted it as “FACT”, this led me to some sources (I downloaded the available pdf’s) with one that barley listed a hundred versions. There was another one that attempted to give every song with “Louie” in the title, seemingly from every country/language it could find and that was barely maybe a few hundred let alone 5,000. I’ve seen plenty of references to bar bands, live in concert versions and marching bands doing the song, but unless they are recorded and released, these are not “covers”.

There are some songs/artists that have their own sort of ‘committed group’ that researches covers and some are at least plausible, JoniMitchell.com has one for example and it is quite credible. But I have not found one such source for “Louie Louie” except for my go to of Secondhandsongs.com. They list 190 versions that have been documented and over a dozen more listed as “unverified” that they are still investigating. Do I think there are likely more than that? Yes I do. I don’t know what the number is and from what I have seen, some people just like to make one up.

Blogs-head Revisited

randydafoe17 Comments

Periodically I will be running some updated reposts of older blog entries from the original Mostly Music Covers. Before my now two years with WordPress, I was at blogger.com for some time and did a number of in-depth posts. My good friend Max from PowerPop has been poking around in my back catalogue. He was just reading my recent post on “Tutti Frutti” and we had a bit of an exchange, and then went down the wittle wit-chard wabbit hole!

He is helping me with a lesson on how to reformat and repost these old relics. While they are available in WordPress, some of the ones Max has highlighted to me as repost worthy have been ‘hidden’ amongst several hundred posts. Many did not travel well between platforms and need a bit of work.

My apologies to my small but mighty list of long time subscribers that were with me back then but you may have some Deja vu!

If you don’t like these old reposts you can pass them by and then blame me for any unwanted messages to your inbox! So, from time to time I will be sending some through, in the meanwhile I will also carry on with my songs stuck at No. 2 series and other assorted goodies. I will be working on my annual update of The Most Cover Songs and Artists as well. For the reposts, up first is Little Richard Revisited.

A big thanks to Max and PowerPop for the support. If you don’t already follow PowerPop then I suggest you check it out. As a musician himself, Max has vast knowledge and so many great stories, like the one he just told me about Pat Boone and his father! We share a lot of taste in music and he finds some real gems to talk about.

As always, thanks for reading.

Music Mondays at lines by Leon