Covered: Don Covay: 1961-1994

Here's another lesser known songwriter celebrated in my Covered series. This time, it's Don Covay.

Covay was born in South Carolina in 1936, but spent the latter half of his childhood in Washington, D.C. In 1957, he started out as a chauffeur and opening act for Little Richard. He had dreams of being a famous soul singer, but for years he drifted from record label to record label with poor sales.

His first success came into 1961, writing the song "Pony Time." He own version only reached the lower part of the singles charts. But then Chubby Checker covered it later that year and it went all the way to Number One. That established a pattern: while he kept his own solo career going for decades, other singers usually had much more success with his songs. 

In the mid-1965, he was signed to Atlantic Records and associated labels. Atlantic had a relationship with Stax Records, so Covay was able to co-write songs with Steve Cropper and other soul music greats there, like David Porter and Booker T. Jones. For instance, "See-Saw" and "Sookie Sookie" were co-written with Cropper. (I have different versions of both of those songs in my Covered albums for Cropper.) 

Probably Covay's most celebrated song is "Chain of Fools." Aretha Franklin had a big hit with it in 1967, but he'd actually written it about 15 years earlier after seeing a chain gang of prisoners working by the side of a road. Rolling Stone Magazine put it on their list of the top 500 songs of all time. 

He was the instigator being the brief soul supergroup "Soul Clan," consisting of himself, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Ben E. King & Arthur Conley. He wrote the band's one hit single. However, that was just a one-off. After that, his career declined for a few years. But he had a minor revival with a few hits in the early 1970s. I've included one of those as the only song here credited just to him, "I Was Checkin' Out, She Was Checkin' In."

But musical tastes were quickly changing in the late 1970s, with the rise of disco, punk, and new wave. After a few years of declining sales, Covay quit the music business altogether. But he had some later revivals. For instance, in 2000, he put out his first new album in over 20 years, "Adlib," filled with famous guest star appearances. He died of a stroke in 2015 at the age of 78.

I tried when I could to use the original hit versions. But some of these were never hits, just songs that I thought were worthy of inclusion. And I did occasionally avoid the hit versions for various reasons. For instance, I only wanted one song mainly sung by Covay, so I used the Rolling Stones version of "Mercy, Mercy" when in fact Covay had a hit with it in 1964.  

Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Don Covay - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. 

01 Letter Full of Tears (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 There's a Party Goin' On (Wanda Jackson)
03 Pony Time (Chubby Checker)
04 Long Tall Shorty (Kinks)
05 Mercy, Mercy (Rolling Stones)
06 Don't Drive Me Away (Ben E. King)
07 Tonight's the Night (Solomon Burke)
08 I Don't Know What You've Got but It's Got Me (Little Richard)
09 Three Time Loser (Wilson Pickett)
10 Love Bug (Lena Horne)
11 Chain of Fools (Aretha Franklin)
12 See Saw (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
13 Soul Meeting (Soul Clan [Don Covay, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Ben E. King & Arthur Conley])
14 I'm Gonna Take What He's Got (Etta James)
15 Demonstration (Otis Redding)
16 Sookie Sookie (Tina Britt)
17 She Said Yeah (Joe Tex)
18 This Old Town [People in This Town] (Staple Singers)
19 I Was Checkin' Out, She Was Checkin' In (Don Covay)
20 Watch the One Who Brings You the News (Millie Jackson)
21 Thunder (Jimmy Witherspoon)
22 Back to the Streets (Soul Summit)
23 It's Better to Have [And Not Need] (Huey Lewis & the News)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4FVt63Gw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/GPhkEJUzyo26yQd/file

I don't know any details about the cover image, but it looks to date from the early 1960s. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Kolorize program.