Various Artists - Covered: Bert Berns & Jerry Ragovoy, Volume 2: 1967-1971

Here's the second of two albums in my "Covered" series, focusing on the songwriting of Bert Berns and/or Jerry Ragovoy. As with the first, you probably don't know who these people are, but trust me, they were very talented songwriters, and these albums are full of great music.

I said most everything I needed to say with the first volume. Note that Berns died at the end of 1967. As a result, more of the songs in this album were written by Ragovoy. But there still are some Berns songs, especially in the 1967 to 1968 time frame. For instance, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" was a hit for Solomon Burke in 1963. But I chose a 1967 by Wilson Pickett, because it's a faster version that most later artists imitated, such as the version by the Blues Brothers in 1980.

Generally speaking, I have a rule not to include more than one version of the same song. For instance, the Strangeloves had a hit with Berns' song "I Want Candy" in 1965, and then Bow Wow Wow had a hit with that song in 1982, but I forced myself to pick one. However, I included one song here that I also included in the first volume: "As Long as I Have You." The original version was a minor hit by Garnet Mimms in 1964. Then Led Zeppelin played the song in concert in 1969. Their version was vastly different, and part of a much longer medley. I included that still-unreleased medley version on a Led Zeppelin stray tracks album I've posted here already:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/09/led-zeppelin-born-in-darkness-various.html

For the version I included here, I edited it to remove the other songs in the medley, so it's purely a version of "As Long as I Have You." I think it's an excellent version that's totally Led Zeppelin and very different from the Mimms version. I have no idea why it remains officially unreleased.

"Twenty-Five Miles" seems like the odd one out on this album, because that was a big hit for Motown artist Edwin Starr, and Motown almost always had hits with their own songwriters. It turns out neither Berns nor Ragovoy ever wrote for Motown. However, Berns and Ragovoy wrote a relatively obscure tune called "32 Miles Out of Waycross," and "Twenty-Five Miles" was so similar to that song that Berns and Ragovoy were added to the composer credits.

Ragovoy lived until 2011. However, musical trends changed, and the pop-soul style that both Berns and Ragovoy excelled in lost favor in the early 1970s. Like Berns, Ragovoy was also a successful producer. He continued to produce a fair amount after 1971, but he rarely had a prominently placed new song after that year. 

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (Wilson Pickett)
02 Am I Grooving You (Freddie Scott)
03 What's It Gonna Be (Dusty Springfield)
04 Pata Pata (Miriam Makeba)
05 Goodbye Baby [Baby Goodbye] (Van Morrison)
06 Baby Come On Home (Led Zeppelin)
07 Piece of My Heart (Janis Joplin)
08 Twenty-Five Miles (Edwin Starr)
09 Try [Just a Little Bit Harder] (Janis Joplin)
10 As Long as I Have You (Led Zeppelin)
11 Stop (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Down in the Alley (Ronnie Hawkins)
13 Cry Baby (Janis Joplin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175871/COVERDBERNSRAGVY1967-1971Vlum2_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uyxj48mm

Dang it, I did it again. I must confess that I had such trouble finding any photos of Berns and Ragovoy together that for the first volume in this series, I found a photo of Berns and added Ragovoy's head into it. I did the exact same thing this time. Berns is the one playing the guitar. I believe the other guy in the original photo was producer Jerry Wexler. However, I replaced Wexler's head with Ragovoy's head from another photo. I hope it doesn't look like an abomination. I also hope I won't have to resort to this again. Unfortunately, it's a sign of how underappreciated both Berns and Ragovoy are, that so few photos of them can be found on-line.

UPDATE: On September 26, 2024, I updated the image by running what I made through the AI program Krea AI. I think it got rid of most or all of the problems of the previous version. I also changed the background to just light blue.

Various Artists - Covered: Bert Berns & Jerry Ragovoy, Volume 1: 1961-1967

If you thought I was done with my "Covered" series, don't worry. I'm just getting warmed up! This time, I'm taking a look at two people you may not have ever heard of: Bert Berns and Jerry Ragovoy. But they were just as good as other major songwriters who are a lot more famous. Together or separately, they wrote many all-time classic songs, as you'll see below.

As usual with this series, I don't want to write up an entire essay about the songwriters. Instead, I'll direct you to their Wikipedia pages to learn more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Berns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Ragovoy

But what I do feel the need to write about is who did what. Some songs here, such as the classics "Cry to Me" and "Piece of My Heart" were written by Berns and Rogovoy together, but most were written apart, or with others. Still, I felt the two of them belong together in this compilation because they had such similar musical styles. Most notably, both were white, Jewish guys who were fascinated by soul music.

Of the songs they wrote alone, I would guess that there is a fairly even split here between Berns songs and Ragovoy songs. But Berns is much more famous than Ragovoy. Perhaps that's because he died very young, in 1967, due to persistent health issues, when he was only 38 years old. So he makes for a tragic figure like others who died young. Thus, there have been some documentaries about him, such as "Bang! The Bert Berns Story," but none about Ragovoy. But also, Berns was a much more charismatic figure, an extrovert, while Ragovoy was very low profile. In fact, I had a hard time finding any good photos of a young Ragovoy at all.

Regarding song selection, I could have included many more songs, since both of them were prolific2. But I've limited this to just the hits, as well as non-hits that I think are especially good. I tried to stick to the original hit versions whenever possible, though I've used non-hit versions in a few cases.

I've made two albums of Berns and/or Ragovoy songs. I'll post the second volume immediately after this one. Each one is between 45 and 50 minutes long.

01 A Little Bit of Soap (Jarmels)
02 Cry to Me (Solomon Burke)
03 Twist and Shout (Isley Brothers)
04 Tell Him (Exciters)
05 You'll Never Leave Him (Isley Brothers)
06 He's Just a Playboy (Drifters)
07 As Long as I Have You (Garnet Mimms)
08 I Want Candy (Strangeloves)
09 Hang On Sloopy (McCoys)
10 Here Comes the Night (Them)
11 Time Is on My Side (Rolling Stones)
12 I'll Come Running Over (Lulu)
13 Ain't Nobody Home (Howard Tate)
14 Stay with Me (Lorraine Ellison)
15 Are You Lonely for Me (Freddie Scott)
16 I Can't Wait until I See My Baby's Face (Dusty Springfield)
17 Get It While You Can (Howard Tate)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175874/COVERDBERNSRAGVY1961-1967Vlum1_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xBtkLBrx

I have to admit that I've cheated big time in making the cover art. I couldn't find a single photo of Berns and Ragovoy together. So I took a photo of Berns (on the right) standing with some other guy, and I replaced that other guy's head with Ragovoy's head from some other photo. I hope I haven't offended anyone with this audacity. Ragovoy's head seems unusually large and long, but from all the photos I've seen of him, that's just how he looked. 

Months later, I figured out a way to colorize the photo, so I did so.

UPDATE: On September 26, 2024, I further upgraded the cover art using the program Krea AI. I also reduced the background to just light blue.