Don Covay
Unherd
1,880 Posts
Who rides?
He doesn't seem to have ever had a thread. I know he had some hits, wrote "Chain Of Fools" and others, and I seem to remember him being mentioned in the Bowman Stax book.
I have a couple of his lps somewhere, but my collection is in disarray at the moment, and off hand I don't remember them grabbing me, kinda uneven if memory serves. Popsike's got some relatively big numbers for dude. Am I missing any essential albums or singles? Knowledge me.
He doesn't seem to have ever had a thread. I know he had some hits, wrote "Chain Of Fools" and others, and I seem to remember him being mentioned in the Bowman Stax book.
I have a couple of his lps somewhere, but my collection is in disarray at the moment, and off hand I don't remember them grabbing me, kinda uneven if memory serves. Popsike's got some relatively big numbers for dude. Am I missing any essential albums or singles? Knowledge me.
Comments
His late 60's/early 70's stuff has it's moments, but not quite the same charm as those mid 60's sides.
SeeSAw is a great LP.
I Ride.
I loved this record when I was a kid, and I still love it now. At one point, some people actually believed this was the Stones incognito, the same way others later thought Klaatu were The Beatles.
Dont sleep on his "rock" LP either:
Also out there: his earlier singles from the late fifties and early sixties, credited to "Pretty Boy." I'm partial to the wild Little Richard-styled black rock of "Bip Bop Bip" and "Rockin' The Mule In Kansas."
I see his Mercury sides have been mentioned in passing, but really he had more than just a couple of good 45's. The Super Dude I album is solid, and Hot Blood comes dead close. There was also a later compilation from the eighties, Checkin' In With Don Covay, which compiled songs from the two Mercury albums plus a few stray singles. When I want a Covay fix, I find myself going back to the Mercury sides as a first choice. On some of those Atlantic songs, he is "oversouling" really hard, and just generally hamming it up where he shouldn't be. The prime example is "Homemade Love" from the House Of Blue Lights LP - song starts out decently, but midway through he switches gears into a version of "Drown In My Own Tears." He's trying to take it to church, and the song loses it's thread altogether. There were a lot of isolated moments like that during the Atlantic years, but by the time he got to Mercury, he had that all under control. "I Was Checkin' Out, She Was Checkin' In" (on Mercury) is one of the finest cheatin' soul songs ever, in my mind.
In between there was an iffy 1972 album on Janus, Different Strokes From Different Folks. Not a wall-to-wall classic, but it has its' moments. If you score it cheap, look out for "Ain't Nothing A Young Girl Can Do" (but show me where an older woman is), "Where There's A WIll, There's A Way" and "Standing In The Grits Line." This was later reissued in the UK on the Topline label as Sweet Thang.
Don't start me talkin', I'll tell everything I know. Covay was indeed one of the greats.
Have a good jog on me, Non, I fucked up!!!
Johnny JENKINS. Yeah, you right.
also, Large Pro's loop of that guitar for Akinyele's 'I Luh Huh' is superb.
the whole album that's from, Super Dude, is definitely worth picking up for $15-20 IMO.
just picked up this lp a few weeks ago.
Still trying to get into it.