I love this joint. In my opinion, Tighten Up was the impetus for a slew of upbeat, happy funk records in the late 60’s like Kool and the Gang’s ‘Chocolate Buttermilk’, Dave Cortez and the Moon People’s ‘Happy Soul’ and the T.S.U. Toronadoes’ ‘Getting the corners’. Perhaps the reverse applies on the latter since the…

VERSION: Nao tem nada nao Forgive us. It was a little cruel to kick off our 2014 covers spotlight with a selection that screams summertime like this one does. February is a particularly disgusting time of year in our wonderful nation. And the beauty and brightness of a Brazilian composition like Marcos Valle’s “Nao tem…

This edition of Version features not only one of the greatest soul songs of all-time, but one of the greatest pop songs of all-time. Ain’t no sunshine was one of the first songs that spurred my addiction to all things soulful. And I wasn’t the only one. Back in the 70’s, the song spawned so…

This right here is a classic. The amount of times this song was sampled in the 80’s and 90’s by hip-hop artists is second only to the amount of times it was covered in the 70’s. Remember – Cecil Holmes had to swagger jack Barry first in order for Alchemist to sample his version for…

One can hardly do justice to Sly Stone’s storied career in one paragraph. So we’re not going to even try. I haven’t bought any Sly records recently. Probably because I bought them all when I first started digging. Sly and the Family Stone was one of the first artists that I ever started to collect…

Version is a brand new segment dedicated to spotlighting the cover song. One of the first times I ever saw the value in digging for covers was the “Get out my life woman” craze of the 90’s. So many versions started with open drums (Lee Dorsey, Solomon Burke, Iron Butterfly), that the song title was…