Rhino’s Got You Covered: Donny Hathaway, Cornershop, Doug Kershaw, and Phil Collins

It’s Wednesday, so it must be time to take another dip into the Rhino catalog and trot out a new quartet of cover songs that you may or may not have heard before. Since our last installment, the world celebrated what would’ve been John Lennon’s 80th birthday, so we thought we’d offer up four tunes that were predominantly penned by the late Mr. Lennon, even though three of them still bear a Lennon/McCartney songwriting credit.

Let’s get started, shall we?

•    Donny Hathaway, “Jealous Guy” (1972): Although this song first saw official release as a John Lennon solo tune, it started life as a Beatles song, one which can be found among the band’s so-called Escher Demos under the title “Child of Nature.” Hathaway’s version, on the other hand, is taken from his 1972 live album, an LP which bears an extremely appropriate title: LIVE.

•    Cornershop, “Norwegian Wood – This Bird Has Flown” (1997): Given that the Beatles’ version of this song was the band’s first use of the sitar, it’s no surprise that Cornershop, who successfully managed to fuse Indian music with pop, rock, and indie dance music, would take their own shot at recording the tune. They definitely kick it up an Indian notch, though: vocalist Tjinder Singh croons the tune in Punjabi!

•    Doug Kershaw, “I’m a Loser” (1977): As a singer, songwriter, and renowned fiddle player, the Louisana-born Kershaw wouldn’t necessarily seem on the surface to be someone who’d be covering the Beatles, but he’s a guy who’ll surprise you. (He’s also done covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Fats Domino, and others.)

•    Phil Collins, “Tomorrow Never Knows” (1981): For many years, you had to be a real Phil fan to even know that he’d covered this tune from REVOLVER, since the song spent a long time as an unlisted track on the FACE VALUE album. Recorded in the wake of Lennon’s murder only a few months before the album’s release, you can hear Collins gently signing “Over the Rainbow” as the song ends, which is so sad that we’re getting a little misty just thinking about it.