Heart & Soul - Cocker, Joe (CD 2005)

Seemingly a zillion years ago (1969 to be exact), Joe Cocker's first album made a splash with an amped-up, long, and soulful cover of the Beatles "With a little help from my friends" (from the then-recent "Sergeant Pepper's"). It included some other impressively intense (soulful) covers, including two Bob Dylan songs (Just like a woman, I shall be released), the Animals' "[Please] Don't let me be misunderstood," and Dello's "Do I still figure in your life" (which I had never heard before).

I bought the album (on vinyl) and thought of Cocker as a British version of "blue-eyed soul" (that is soulful singing by whites) who did interesting covers of Dylan and Lennon/McCartney songs. (And showed up at Woodstock.) Over subsequent decades, I heard Cocker's raspy (not quite Dylanesque) attempts to sing hits by black artists, such as Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross." I was unimpressed, and regarded Cocker as a one-hit wonder (the album, not just the single "With a little help from my friends").

I picked up Cocker's 2005 "Heart and Soul" to hear what he sounds like (more or less) now. The answer, vocally, is the same. He can still bring something to Lennon/McCartney songs (Lennon's "Jealous Guy" and McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed." He also does well with the Leiber/Stoller "I Keep Forgettin'" though adding the "g" that was dropped in the other recordings of it I've heard. I have no idea who first recorded it; it is one of the less compelling renditions of Leiber/Stoller songs in "Smokey Joe's Cafe" (a short version sung by Pattie Darcy Jones instead of the cast's female powerhouse B. J. Crosby). Cocker's cover of U2's "One [love]" is OK (but not worth repeating with a live "bonus track" IMO).

The other tracks are bland. The succession of songs sung memorably by black singers is how I imagine Lawrence Welk might have presented them with a raspy-voiced singer. Cocker rushes where angels fear to tread!

I guess that as long as he pays royalties to the estate of Marvin Gaye, Joe Cocker can perform "What's Going On," but having heard Cocker's cover once, I don't ever want to hear it again. Ditto for "Chain of Fools." It is not going to make anyone forget Aretha Franklin's version (even though it is far from being my favorite of her hit songs).

Even more indefensible is taking on "I, Who Have Nothing." This is a very intense, anguished song, written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, a hit long ago for Ben E. King. I think that I first heard the Impressions' version. Sylvester sang his heart out in a disco version

I thought that Joe Cocker was a white singer with some soul, but his cover of "I Who Have Nothing" (usually a very intense, agonized song) has as much soul (and considerably less voice) than if Paris Hilton had done it. His cover of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going on" and Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools" are travesties. The problem is not that someone else wrote that them, but that he brings nothing to real soul songs, though he marginally increases the soulfulness of Lennon and McCartney songs (more than marginally, once upon a time in "With a Little Help from My Friends." It has also been soulfully recorded by the Drifters, Luther Vandross, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, the Chambers Brothers, Drifters, and Shirley Bassey. My favorite--and the most ardent--is Victor Trent Cook singing his heart out in "Smokey Joe's Cafe." Cocker's bland rendition is the blandest (worst) I have heard (blue-eyed soullessness?).

I'd have thought that Cocker might manage Screamin' Jay Hawkins's "I Put a Spell on You," but I was wrong. It is a bearable slow cover of a great soul song (starting with growling a cappella singing, to which bluesey piano and strings are added, and eventually an electric guitar riff), but lacks the intensity of the original. I wouldn't have thought I'd ever hear so a meandering take on Screamin' Jay Hawkins's signature song! (The good thing is that it led me to download a Hawkins recording of it.)

I think that Cocker should stick to interpreting Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney songs. He may intend to pay tribute (rather than rip-off) real soul music, but the results are unsatisfying and IMO gratuitous.

The other so-so tracks are bland renditions of James Taylor's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely" (that sounds like he is trying to imitate Taylor, a peculiar ambition), Paul Anka's (or someone earlier's) "Everybody Hurts," (better covered by R.E.M.), an old standard that Madonna repopularized, Love Don't Live Here Anymore," and one I don't recognize: "Every Kind of People." (Plortentz says it was made famous during the late 1970s by Robert Palmer.)

The problem (, Paul,) is not that Cocker doesn't write his own songs, but that he has nothing to add (and indeed detracts) from songs when he attempts to cross "the color bar." The superiority of others' renditions is great. I hope that there is not a Gresham's Law in which the mediocre eclipses the better, and can hope that anyone confronted with Cocker's covers of soul songs will seek out better ones.

2006, Stephen O. Murray