All songs tracing back to an earlier recording than the most reliable one, represented from the first version released to the latest cover, that’s The Originals, musical resource database since 1982. No limit, no nonsense, no mercy. Next time your kids take ersatz for genuine, here’s what you hold up against them.
It’s the sheer size that matters, 18.000 titles and counting.
Artist: Tom Waits
Author: Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan
Label: ANTI
Year: 2011
On Bad As Me, his highest rated album US (top 10). Second Voice: Keith Richards.
Covers:
Willie Nelson [opening track LP Last Leaf On The Tree, along with House Where Nobody Lives from Waits' Mule Variations ('13), and a Keef track (see: Robbed Blind)]
02-10-2024
Fred Astaire, Nanette Fabray, Jack Buchanan & Cyd Charisse
1953
This ongoing search for the origins of all popular songs imaginable has been bundled in books over the years, four in Dutch, all sold out. Now here's a first edition in English, and the good thing is: you don't need those old versions, for all information still standing and relevant from former editions is encapsulated into this new volume, like Russian babooshka puppets.
The Originals - Prequel of the Hits holds everything, no less. Pure content. Details the lifespan of some 12.000 music titles, all traced back to their earliest manifestation, predating hit version(s) and other relevant covers.
The book is available at www.epo.be.
In February 1982 a two hour radio show was first aired from Brussels, with nothing but the original versions of hits of the day. Made for a change for Soft Cell's Tainted Love, Capt. Sensible's Happy Talk, Fun Boy Three & Bananarama's It Ain't What You Do and Sting's Spread A Little Happiness. Instead of sifting through average early eighties TOTP regulars, in came the mid sixties, late forties, thirties and even twenties, linking a Northern soul classic to a Rodgers & Hammerstein composition, a Jimmie Lunceford theme song and a West End showtune from musical Mr. Cinders.
That was only the beginning. Soon as The Originals' own bag o' goodies ran out, audience participation filled it up again and never stopped doing so. 582 separate The Originals radio shows followed, and counting.
If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)
