An instance when a cover of a song way beat the original...
Burt Bacharach and Hal David, a top songwriting team in 1965, were commissioned to write music for the soundtrack of a Woody Allen film, What's New Pussycat?; the title song went on to be a big hit for Tom Jones, but another song for the film did not make a mark; the Manfred Mann band was brought into a studio by Bacharach and were to record a song Bacharach thought was going to be a hit; the session was long and laborious due to Bacharach, a perfectionist extreme, insisting on many retakes until he thought it was perfect; the song was released as a Manfred Mann single and died the death; it never even reached the Top 100 on the Billboard Charts, only hitting #124; Bacharach tried to blame Manfred Mann for the flop, but that was a hard sell since Bacharach had full control over the session and the musicians; here is the Burt Bacharach version of the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWKa6uyhFJU
When the film came out, a local Los Angeles rock group went a theater and watched the film; the group's leader, Arthur Lee, was fascinated by the song; his band went to a recording studio and decided to record a version of the song from the film; however, they only had their memories of the song from the single hearing to go on and fashioned a 'make do' version; they even had to guess at the chords because they weren't sure of the exact ones ; the song was released on a single locally, became a local radio hit (I heard it on KRLA-AM) and, later a modest national hit, reaching #52 on the Billboard charts, pretty respectable considering the stiff competition in the mid-60s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7SFpxWpcOw
Bacharach was not a little bit miffed at the success of Love's version and complained they had "ruined' his song by altering the chords and changing the tempo and arrangement; I think he was more steamed that his carefully crafted version fizzled and another version by a bunch of proto-punk rock musicians beat out his effort...
...I guess the telling fact is Bachrach's version is very little remembered, but Love's My Little Red Book has gone on to be an early LA rock classic...
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