Most music followers agree: George Harrison was under-appreciated as a songwriter throughout his time with the Beatles. Between 1962 and 1970, the Fab 4 launched just a little over 200 songs, solely a small fraction of which have been penned by Harrison.
It will not be till the latter portion of the band’s tenure and into the early years of Harrison’s solo profession that his expertise earned extra recognition — 1970’s All Issues Should Go, for instance, was one of many best-selling albums of the ’70s and is persistently cited at this time as a landmark singer-songwriter launch. Or you’ll be able to have a look at it this fashion: two of the most-streamed Beatles songs ever have been written by Harrison, “Right here Comes the Solar” and “One thing.”
Showing on 1969’s Abbey Highway, “One thing” was Harrison’s very first A-side Beatles single — seven years after the band started releasing music. It was a No. 1 hit within the U.S., in addition to No. 4 within the U.Ok., and nearly instantly, fellow musicians acknowledged its power and beginning overlaying the track each stay and on their very own data.
“I notice that the signal of a superb track is when it has a number of cowl variations,” Harrison would say in The Beatles Anthology. We agree. Under, in no explicit order, are the ten Finest Covers of ‘One thing’ by George Harrison.
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra did “One thing” his approach. He began performing the track stay at his live shows not lengthy after the track was launched, and in addition included it on his 1972 album Frank Sinatra’s Best Hits, Vol. 2. “It is the most effective love songs I consider to be written in 50 or 100 years,” Sinatra stated simply earlier than performing the present on the Live performance for Americas within the Dominican Republic in 1982, “and it by no means says ‘I really like you’ within the track, nevertheless it actually is among the best.” The singer was in his mid 60s then — in comparison with Harrison, who was 26 when he laid down the unique demos of the track — lending it a kind of wisened tone.
Joe Cocker
If there’s one one who may be thought-about the king of Beatles covers, it might be Joe Cocker, who put his personal soulful spin on a variety of their songs over time. Harrison truly supplied “One thing” to Cocker first earlier than recording his personal model. Cocker’s rendition got here out the month after the Beatles’ did, on his second album Joe Cocker! (That album additionally contained covers of Bob Dylan’s “Expensive Landlord,” Leonard Cohen’s “Chicken on a Wire” and one other Beatles track from the identical album as “One thing,” “She Got here in By way of the Toilet Window.”)
Booker T. and the M.G.’s
Booker T. Jones of Booker T. & the M.G.’s was 1000’s of miles away from the Beatles when Abbey Highway was launched. It stopped him in his tracks. “I used to be in California after I heard Abbey Highway, and I believed it was extremely brave of the Beatles to drop their format and transfer out musically like they did,” he maintain the A.V. Membership in 2009. “To push the restrict like that and reinvent themselves after they had no must [do] that. They have been the highest band on the earth however they nonetheless reinvented themselves. The music was simply unimaginable so I felt I wanted to pay tribute to it.” Pay tribute he did within the type of his personal cowl of “One thing.” It appeared on the 1970 album McLemore Avenue, the quilt of which confirmed the band strolling single file throughout a avenue just like the Beatles on Abbey Highway.
Elvis Presley
It is doable that with out Elvis Presley, there might not have been the Beatles. Like quite a few budding musicians, Presley was a big affect on Harrison and his bandmates. “It had an unimaginable affect on me simply because I might by no means heard something prefer it,” Harrison as soon as recalled. “I imply, coming from Liverpool, we clearly — we did not actually hear the very early Solar Data. The primary document I can bear in mind listening to was most likely the large hit by the point it bought throughout the Atlantic. It was ‘Heartbreak Resort’ – ‘Heartburn Motel’ as Elvis referred to as it.” Issues got here full circle when Presley carried out “One thing” on his 1973 Aloha From Hawaii TV particular, seen beneath. A 1970 model was additionally included on Presley’s 1995 field set, Stroll a Mile in My Footwear: The Important ’70s Masters.
James Brown
“The very best one I ever heard was [from] James Brown and he did it in 1972,” Harrison defined in a 1988 interview with MuchMusic (through Far Out Journal), “however he did [it] solely because the B-side of a re-recorded model of ‘Suppose,’ which is a really outdated track of his. So it was solely on the B-side. I despatched him a postcard and stated: ‘It’s best to make it the A-side, it is a killer! It is actually good.”
Shirley Bassey
“I recorded ‘One thing’ after I had seen Peggy Lee carry out the track on The Ed Sullivan Present within the States,” Shirley Bassey advised Report Mirror in July of 1970, a couple of month earlier than she launched an album that not solely included her cowl of “One thing,” however was named after it. (Each the track and LP have been High 5 hits within the U.Ok.) “I believed it was a ‘communication track.’ I’ve all the time admired the Beatles’ work anyway — at the very least till they went just a little unusual — and I feel this George Harrison track is simply stunning.”
Smokey Robinson
In a 1974 interview with Sounds, Harrison was requested about which up to date artists he preferred. “Smokey Robinson,” he replied. “I am head over heels in love with Smokey Robinson.” In fact, Harrison’s love of Robinson may very well be traced again a few years — the Beatles had recorded the Miracles’ “You Actually Bought a Maintain on Me” again in 1963 for his or her second British album, With the Beatles, that includes each Harrison and John Lennon singing the lead concord vocal. (Harrison and Robinson would later turn out to be buddies after they each lived in Los Angeles.)
Ray Charles
Generally a success arrives within the lap of a songwriter thanks partly to their pondering of another person. Within the case of “One thing,” Harrison had one explicit singer in thoughts when he sat down on the piano, the instrument on which he wrote the track. “It has most likely bought a variety of 5 notes, which inserts most singers’ wants greatest,” he defined in The Beatles Anthology. “Once I wrote it, in my thoughts I heard Ray Charles singing it, and he did do it some years later.”
It turned out that Charles’ model wasn’t Harrison’s favourite. “Because it occurred, the track ended up with over 150 cowl variations,” he stated in a 1979 joint interview with none apart from Michael Jackson. “However when Ray Charles did it, I used to be actually upset. It was a bit corny, the best way he did it.” Nonetheless, there’s one thing charming in regards to the soul Charles put into this recording.
Sarah Vaughan
This one is a little more on the market than the others, nevertheless it would not be unreasonable to assume Harrison would admire an association departure just like the one offered in Sarah Vaughan’s cowl of “One thing.” Vaughan’s model appeared on her 1981 album Songs of the Beatles, and he or she was accompanied on the monitor by the Brazilian singer and musician Marcos Valle. David Paich, David Hungate, and each Jeff and Steve Porcaro of Toto additionally seem on the album.
Norah Jones
Norah Jones has a very particular connection to Harrison. Her father, the Indian sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar, was certainly one of Harrison’s musical idols. Over time she’s coated a variety of Beatles (and solo Harrison) songs, and is a good friend of Harrison’s solely son, Dhani, however her 2014 cowl of “One thing” is particularly memorable with Jones’ velvety vocal.
Honorable Point out: Paul McCartney
Frankly we’d be remiss if we did not at the very least give an honorable point out to Harrison’s personal Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney. For years now, McCartney has been paying tribute to his late good friend with stay covers of “One thing” that includes the ukulele, certainly one of Harrison’s favourite devices. “Generally in case you’d go ‘spherical to George’s home, after you’d have dinner, the ukuleles would come out,” McCartney stated when he launched the track on the 2002 Live performance for George, held on the one yr anniversary of Harrison’s passing. “And one time not so way back, we have been taking part in and I stated, ‘There is a track I do on the ukulele.’ I performed it for him—[I’ll] play it for you now. It is a tribute to our stunning good friend.”
The Finest Track From Each George Harrison Album
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Gallery Credit score: Nick DeRiso
