Rhino’s Got You Covered: Bernard Cribbins, Roger Daltrey, Shampoo, and Jennifer Love Hewitt
It’s Wednesday, so it must be time to take another dip into the Rhino catalog and trot out a new quartet of cover songs that you may or may not have heard before. Let’s get started, shall we?
• Bernard Cribbins, “When I’m Sixty-Four” (1967): This Beatles cover was released as a standalone single by Cribbins in 1967, but what’s more interesting is the man who recorded it. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, then there’s a good chance you’re not British, since Cribbins is a legend in the UK, and understandably so: in addition to a recording career in the early ‘60s that provided him with two top-10 UK singles (“Hole in the Ground” and “Right Said Fred”), his film work includes the original 1967 Casino Royale, The Railway Children, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, and on the small screen, he narrated The Wombles and made a hysterical appearance on Fawlty Towers as the persnickety hotel guest who Basil (John Cleese) mistakes for a critic. Oh, right, and he also appeared as one of the Doctor’s companions in the 1966 film Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. and then returned to the Who-niverse in 2007 when he turned up as Wilfred Mott, Donna Noble’s grandfather. In truth, “legend” hardly does Cribbins justice.
• Roger Daltrey, “Somebody Told Me” (1984): When the Who broke up after touring behind their 1982 album IT’S HARD, Daltrey was the first member to release a solo album, and he went in a different sonic direction for PARTING SHOULD BE PAINLESS, recording a Bryan Ferry tune which was reportedly an outtake from Roxy Music’s AVALON (“Going Strong”) as well this Eurythmics song from their SWEET DREAMS (ARE MADE OF THIS) album.
• Shampoo, “Cars” (1995): This female duo from the UK released their Gary Numan cover as one of the B-sides of their single “Girl Power,” a.k.a. the title track from their second studio album. It would be another half-decade before Carolyn Askew and Jacqueline Blake reemerged with a third album, by which point their inability to secure a record deal led them to release it online, and that’s tremendously disappointing, since Pete Wiggs, Bob Stanley, and Ian Catt – all of Saint Etienne fame – were all over the thing.
• Jennifer Love Hewitt, “I Always Was Your Girl” (1996): We’ll start this write-up with a piece of trivia that we stumbled upon while putting this together – when she was 12, Hewitt was one of the backup singers on Martika’s “Toy Soldiers” – and we’ll add that Hewitt’s 1995 Atlantic Records debut, LET’S GO BANG, also featured a cover: Bread’s “Baby I’m-a Want You.” But we’re putting the real focus on this Everything But the Girl cover from her second album, a self-titled endeavor from 1996. Yes, Hewitt also covers the Bee Gees’ “Our Love (Don’t Throw It All Away),” but selecting a tune from EBTG’s IDLEWILD? That’s downright startling, and in the best possible way.
