Monday, November 9, 2009

Stand by me has to be one of the most recognizable, and consequently most covered songs in pop music history. While looking for a good clip to link to, here is a list of some of the artists I found covering this song:
Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Jimi Hendrix (I'm not making this up), Muhammid Ali/Cassius Clay, Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, The Fugees, Pennywise, the Chipmunks.

I would have preferred to link to a clip of Marvin Gaye singing, as the great singer he is, this is the original, however, by Ben E. King. According to Wikipedia, this song was performed 7 million times from 1961 to 2000.

A recent youtube video that has had a lot of attention. Some few persons recorded street musicians in Santa Monica CA and then traveled all over the world recording various other street musicians, adding to the song.

This is a 'mashup' -- a recent youtube phenomenon where users splice two different popular songs together. Some, such as this particular mashup will even splice together the two different music videos. Sean Kingston's 'Beautiful Girls' and Ben E. King's 'Stand By Me'. This is not the best of mashups ever, but some other notable mashups include:
(Note -- this one was my favorite, but copyright took off the original mashup video, now it is anime)
There are endless mashups, especially Rap/Hip-Hop songs, (because they would be easier to mashup) sometimes you will like it more in the new version.

Gypsy Swing Duet
This version of 'All Of Me', is played in a style known as 'Gypsy swing', 'Gypsy Jazz', or 'Jazz manouche'. Typically in Gypsy swing, there is no percussion, just one or more guitars playing chords very percussively.
Despite poor audio quality this is a great rendition of All of Me. The tempo starts at around near where we play in class, but after playing the head, two solos over the chorus, they play in cut time, which means twice as fast. Probably the least impressive part is the high five at the end of tune.

If you thought the above version was rocking, watch the twelve year old Jimmy Rosenberg fly through a solo with the greatest of ease. He is a child prodigy that is related to one of the soloists in the above video. He is older now and still gigs today.