Rhino’s Got You Covered: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Dan Hicks, Kylie Minogue, and The Farm

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. Let’s get started, shall we?

•    The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, “Mary, Mary” (1966): This is one of those semi-covers that we’re including on a technicality, since Butterfield and his Blues Band were recording a song that was written by someone else – Michael Nesmith – but their version actually came out before the version by The Monkees. Still, close enough, right? (Just go along with it. It’s too late to turn back now, anyway.)

•    Dan Hicks, “You Belong to Me” (1978): Recorded sans his famous backing band, the Hot Licks, this track – popularized in the ‘50s by Patti Page and Jo Stafford – can be found on the so-called “Widescreen Edition” of his IT HAPPENED ONE BITE album. As a sidebar observation, the original songs on this LP supposedly arose from a collaboration with filmmaker Ralph Bakshi on an animated film, but when the film failed to materialize, Warner Brothers took the songs and released them as a Hicks album that featured liner notes explaining Hicks’s alternate plot for the film.

•    Kylie Minogue, “Need You Tonight” (Live at the SSE Hydro) (2015): Given that she once dated Michael Hutchence, you can only imagine the emotion in the audience when Ms. Minogue broke out this classic single from INXS’s KICK album.

•    The Farm, “Shake Some Action” (1994): After being lumped into the “baggy” movement with their SPARTACUS album, a.k.a. the one that featured their hits “Groovy Train” and “All Together Now,” The Farm released LOVE SEE NO COLOUR, which proved to be a profound commercial disappointment. As a result, their next album, HULLABALOO, was definitely a more downbeat affair, but it did include an upbeat, bouncy version of this Flamin’ Groovies track.