Joan Osborne - Under the Covers, Volume 1 (1991-1992)

Here's another musician I've never posted about before. I really like Joan Osborne, and I plan on posting a lot of her stuff.

Unfortunately, she's another one like Norah Jones or Maria McKee or Sheryl Crow, who are great singers but merely good songwriters. The problem with people like that is they generally fill their albums with original songs, when they shine better matching their great voices with great songs.

Luckily, Osborne hasn't entirely fallen into that trap, in that she's released entire albums of cover versions. But still, she's done lots of music that's never shown up on any of her albums, and I plan on focusing on that.

A few years ago, someone named George posted a bootleg compilation called "Under the Covers." It collected dozens of Osborne's cover versions from the early years of her career in one place. I liked that bootleg, and I'm naming this album in tribute to it. However, there were two problems with that compilation, in my opinion. First off, and the biggest one, was that the sound quality was a mixed bag, with most of the songs coming from audience bootlegs instead of soundboards. The second was a lack of sourcing for most of the songs, with no info on where or when the performance came from.

To fix these things, I made by own version, pretty much starting from scratch. Osborne spent a few years playing clubs before she hit the big time with her excellent album "Relish" and her hit single "One of Us." During those early club years, she played a wide variety of cover songs. Luckily, it turns out that her singing was so excellent that many soundboard recordings were made, despite the fact that she was a relative unknown at the time.

So I've managed to make three albums of her cover versions from the 1990s. This is the first one. My main issue was sound quality. With maybe only a couple of exceptions, I stuck to soundboard recordings for all three albums. The only covers I didn't include that sounded good enough were the few that she put on studio albums at the time, such as her covers of "Help Me" and "The Man in the Long Black Coat" off of "Relish."

She can really wail. She's like a throwback to another era, when there were lots of singers like Etta James and Aretha Franklin bursting with soul. She brings it here.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Use Me (Joan Osborne)
02 I Just Want to Make Love to You (Joan Osborne)
03 Damn Your Eyes (Joan Osborne)
04 Let's Stay Together (Joan Osborne)
05 Oh Darling (Joan Osborne)
06 I Shall Be Released (Joan Osborne)
07 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Joan Osborne)
08 When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (Joan Osborne & Warren Haynes)
09 Killing Floor (Joan Osborne)
10 Me and Bobby McGee (Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847028/JoanO_1991-1992_UndrCovrsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover is based on a photo of Osborne singing at The Wetlands, a New York City club, in 1992.