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September 10, 2020
Ray Padgett's Playlist for His Book "I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Ray Padgett's I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen is the first 33 1/3 book about a tribute album. Padgett goes further than examining this album of Leonard Cohen covers though, he examines how tribute albums often affect an artist's legacy and expose previously obscure musicians to a greater audience.
In his own words, here is Ray Padgett's Book Notes music playlist for his book I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen:
When I wrote Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time, as comprehensive as I tried to make it, there was one area of the covers universe that went pretty much - ahem - uncovered: Tribute albums.
Stereogum recently called tribute albums "possibly the most universally derided format in pop music," which is not far off. Tribute albums, where a bunch of different musicians all cover the songs of a particular band or writer, are messy and inconsistent and generally all over the place. But they can be great too. I thought they needed a reappraisal.
I decided to write a book about tribute albums through the lens of a single tribute album: 1991's I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, which is, among other things, the reason you know the song "Hallelujah." But, really, the book's about tribute albums in general as much as it is that one. So for my second Book Notes, I pulled out tracks from some other tribute albums I listened to while writing the book.
Katey Red & Big Freedia with Akron/Family - Sally Racket (Traditional cover)
In the 1980s, Hal Willner more or less invented the tribute album. True, in earlier years there had been a couple albums with similar concepts - like the Bee Gees commissioning a bunch of Beatles covers for the Sgt. Pepper's movie soundtrack when they couldn't license the originals - but they didn't spawn any imitators. When Willner got involved, the tribute album as we know it was born. His passion for the format continued right up until his tragic death from Covid-19 this spring - his T. Rex tribute album came out September 4th.
Willner's tribute albums tended to follow his esoteric passions. He produced two albums of Kurt Weill covers, and one where everyone from Elvis Costello to Chuck D played Charles Mingus tunes on Harry Partch's bizarre homemade instruments. On two massive double-disc sets he dubbed Rogue's Gallery, he corralled major stars like Sting and Tom Waits to sing old sea shanties and pirate ballads. One of the best tracks comes from two New Orleans bounce artists, Big Freedia and Katey Red, who turn an old pirate song into a diss track you can twerk to.
Bob Dylan - Things We Said Today (The Beatles cover)
If Hal Willner invented the tribute album, Ralph Sall made it huge. Starting with Deadicated in 1991, the Los Angeles producer had one rule for his tribute albums: Big names only. He wanted to make hits and only picked artists who might make that happen. His albums often take him years and years. But the hard work pays off: 2014's The Art of McCartney features Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, and, in what Sall calls the biggest "get" of his career, Bob Dylan.
Sall generally assigns the song to the artist, but made an exception for Dylan, who picked the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night cut "Things We Said Today." Sall's only completed six tribute albums to date, but likely sold more tribute albums than any other single producer.
Ani DiFranco - Used Cars (Bruce Springsteen cover)
I structured the book as a continuous narrative blending the story of Leonard Cohen covers and the the history of tribute albums. But in between chapters, I wrote little side tangents digging deeper on important or interesting figures. Three such "Interludes" tackle tribute album producers. You've met the first two - Willner representing the dawn of the tribute album in the '80s, Sall representing its cultural dominance in the '90s. The third Interlude pairs two 21st-century tribute album producers, scrappy indie-label owners who churn out terrific tribute albums just under the mainstream radar.
The first is Jim Sampas, who runs the tribute label Reimagine Music. Before going his own way, he put together tribute albums for bigger labels, like 2000's Sub Pop release Badlands: A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. He described to me the rush he got when the postman dropped off a package featuring a new Johnny Cash recording for that album. But the highlight of that album for me, which I rediscovered when my site Cover Me put together our massive Best Bruce Springsteen Covers Ever list, is Ani DiFranco's spare and evocative "Used Cars."
Veruca Salt - Burned (Buffalo Springfield cover)
The other of those two 21st-century tribute album producers is Joe Spadaro. His tribute label is American Laundromat, which has of late expanded beyond just tribute albums (Juliana Hatfield releases everything there now, for instance).
One of Spadaro's finest tribute albums is 2007's Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young For Charity. Like many of the great tribute albums, this one was personal, a project to benefit breast cancer research shortly after his mother's passing. Why Neil Young? One of the first Christmas presents his mother ever gave him was Neil Young’s greatest-hits collection Decade. “We didn’t have a lot of money, so that was a big gift,” he says.
Lykke Li - Silver Springs (Fleetwood Mac cover)
The rest of these tribute albums have less to do with my book specifically, though many of them come up at least in passing. They're just personal favorites - starting with the Lykke Li cover that helped make "Silver Springs" my favorite Fleetwood Mac song. She recorded it for 2012's indie-all-star project Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute To Fleetwood Mac. Music supervisor Randall Poster, who handles all of Wes Anderson's movies, pulled deep from his Rolodex to get the likes of MGMT, Tame Impala, and, as a digital-only bonus track because they weren't yet famous enough for the main disc, Haim.
R.E.M. - Wall of Death (Richard Thompson cover)
R.E.M. deliver one of the high points of I'm Your Fan, covering "First We Take Manhattan." Three years later, they delivered another tribute-album standout on Beat The Retreat: Songs by Richard Thompson. That one falls into the popular tribute album genre of younger bands exposing a lesser-known influence to their audience. Though Richard Thompson had plenty of success in Fairport Convention and solo - calling him a "cult" act might be a stretch - '90s alt-rock listeners were likely not up on Thompson's work. R.E.M., Dinosaur Jr., The Lemonhead's Evan Dando, and more set out to change that.
Ali Eskandarian - Song for Sarajevo (Judy Collins cover)
Judy Collins comes up in my book, but not as a songwriter. Her covers of Leonard Cohen songs - released before Cohen had released his own recordings - put him on the map. Collins is often regarded this way, more a song interpreter than a songwriter. But she has written her own songs over the years, and 2008's Born To the Breed: A Tribute to Judy Collins, which she herself helped organize (that's less rare in the tribute-album world than you might expect), shone a light on them. Leonard himself returned the favor, covering "Since You Asked," but the track that floored me was Iranian-American singer Ali Eskandarian ripping the heart out of her anti-war ballad "Song for Sarajevo." Sadly, despite Eskandarian's pleas for peace, violence would find him; he was shot dead on November 11, 2013 along with two members of Iranian punk band The Yellow Dogs.
Charles Bradley and Menahan Street Band - Cumberland Blues (Grateful Dead cover)
One of the greatest - sorry, grate-est - tributes to come out in recent years is 2016's Day of the Dead. Organized by members of The National along with tribute-album charity Red Hot, it culled Grateful Dead covers from dozens of indie-rock musicians who you'd think would be "too cool" to be Deadheads. One of the standout tracks came from the late Charles Bradley. He himself had gotten his break as a tribute artist of sorts; a co-founder of Daptone Records saw him do a James Brown tribute and signed him to the label.
Jason Isbell - Everywhere with Helicopter (Guided By Voices cover)
I am no Guided By Voices expert - their discography includes, according to Wikipedia, 49 separate albums and EPs. Four new albums in the past two years alone. Such a band is perfect for a tribute album, where a handful of other artists can pull highlights from an intimidting ouvre. Sing For Your Meat: A Tribute to Guided By Voices came out in 2011, before Jason Isbell was a name many people knew (his breakout album Southerneastern was still two years off). His "Everywhere with Helicopter" showed his promise as a performer, if not a songwriter.
Lucinda Williams - You Don't Have Very Far to Go (Merle Haggard cover)
As a huge fan of both Lucinda Williams and Merle Haggard, I couldn't believe I'd never heard this cover until researching for the book. But such is the world of tribute albums - there's always more to discover. My iTunes says I listened to 478 of them while researching the book, and I've still only scratched the surface.
Ray Padgett is the founder of Cover Me, the largest blog devoted to cover songs on the web, and author of Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time (2017). His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, SPIN, The AV Club, Vice, and MOJO, and he's been interviewed as an expert on cover songs by NPR, The Wall Street Journal, SiriusXM, and dozens more. He lives in Burlington, Vermont and also works as a publicist for Shore Fire Media.
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