thanks for the topic! it's prompted me to do something i should have done years ago. at least one of the local punk bands used to play a song called pills. the lurkers realeased it as a 45, which i have. these versions were pretty much a thrash race, because that's how songs became punkified.. i heard somewhere way back that the original was by bo diddley (but isn't on any of the bo diddley albums i have). bo diddley's real name was, according to wikipedia, ellas mcdaniel, though i've seen his first name written as elias and his last name as mcdaniels. sometimes his last name is bates. anyway, i finally got round to finding it on youtube. after all these years. looks like the new york dolls also covered it, and that's undoubtedly how the local punk band(s) came across it. so here are the versions by the lurkers. the new york dolls, and bo diddley.
i share your "appreciation" of bloody pat boone. i do have the impression, however, that even his lame versions of many songs benefitted the original artists and writers in a similar way that the uk 60s blues movement my have redelivered blues to the usa mainstream and benefitted, again, the original artists and writers. as for pat boone, moody river and speedy gonzales are both good (well, one is ace, and the other is kind of fun). a year or two back i was pointed at another song by ivory joe hunter. it's called "all night to stop". nick lowe did a version.
i didn't see the nerves. only saw mental block once and it wasn't the original line up, but knew some of them.
Yes, Little Richard said he was miffed when Pat Boone had hits with watered down covers of his songs.But this disappeared when the writers royalties started rolling in.As Richard it was a bonus because the people who bough Boone’s cover wouldn’t have bough his. Very under rated was Ivory Joe Hunter, at least in this country. Solomon Burke was a fan of his and recorded a few of his songs, in the same style. If you listen to Empty Arms by Hunter and then compare to the stuff we were listening to in this country it is like a different world. Elvis was a fan of his. Hunter told the story of when he was appearing in Memphis Elvis invited him to Graceland and they spent the afternoon singing Almost Lost My Mind. Elvis recorded 7 of Ivory Joe’s compositions during his career.
