Song 316: This week the playlist is once again a good place to find The Letter, this time by Joe Cocker, written by Wayne Carson Thompson. About a year after last week’s track had its run on the charts, a 3rd version of the same song showed up on the airwaves and started climbing up to the Top Ten. Over the preceding months, rock radio stations had given a lot of air time to recordings from the Woodstock festival, with Joe Cocker featured prominently in that mix, so this guy I had never heard of before came into focus quite strongly, and then his rocking new single naturally caught my attention, as it did many others. At the point in my career where I sought to forge an original personal musical identity, Joe’s hit provided me with a 45-rpm example of a musician taking a well-known composition and giving it his own personal spin. JC, along with The Arbors and The Box Tops, had shown how one song could be recorded and performed in 3 very different and yet equally-compelling ways. Some may not find all 3 versions as captivating, but I do like them all, and I can’t think of any other rock anthem that appeared in 3 quite distinct models within the space of 3 years and spent so much time on the radio waves and the charts. I hope the songwriter received a sizable wad of cash for his efforts, or at least enough to buy a ticket for an aer-o-plane.
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