Now this raised a very interesting point to mind for me.

I was a kid when I bought(? not sure) this, no disrespect to the work at all, as it`s witty, but I know this version because I could not find the Archies original.

Do we all not think that having two versions of a hit song out at a time (although I know this one was slightly later) would be a good thing?

I like the idea a lot, I think that the current publishers are missing something here.

I'm thoroughly in favour of "different" interpretations (see the "boyfriend"... "dance" thread) - I always tried to do completely different treatments of songs - like this and Hooked On A Feeling and Satisfaction.

Admittedly Paloma Blanca was similar (though I felt better) to George Baker's but doing versions of songs that haven't yet been hits is different.

My Shag version of Loop di Love was very different to the J Bastos.

Mart wrote:

Do we all not think that having two versions of a hit song out at a time (although I know this one was slightly later) would be a good thing?

I like the idea a lot, I think that the current publishers are missing something here.

This did used to happen a fair bit in the 50s and 60s. Often songs would become hits in America and the major British labels would then rush to get their version out to compete, sometimes scoring the bigger hit. The worst case was EMI rushing out Cilla Black's version of "You've Lost That Loving Feelin'" to compete against the Righteous Brothers and of course next to the Spector disc, Cilla' version was laughable, yet it did chart and both were in the charts at the same time.

Another disc was "Tell Him"... Billie Davis got the hit on Decca whereas EMI's version by Alma Cogan died a death which is a shame since I prefer Alma's version!

"Tell Laura I Love Her" - big hit for Ray Peterson in the States, but here, it was Ricky Valance's hit. Joe Meek had John Leyton cut a version to compete but what happened there was, Leyton was on the indie Top Rank label and it went bust as they released the Leyton disc. EMI bought out Top Rank and suddenly realised they now had two artistes on their roster (Valance was on Columbia) with the same song, chose to plug the Valance disc much to Meek's fury! You couldn't have 2 EMI acts competing against each other!

There was as you can guess much rivalry between the major labels of that era, EMI, Philips, Decca and Pye so it was not unusual for the labels to compete with each other to try and get the hit version of a particular song at the same time.

Also back in the 60s whenever a new Beatles album came out, you'd get a variety of artistes covering songs off the album in the hope of grabbing a hit... likewise Bob Dylan though in Dylan's case the publishers would often get the songs before release. It happened to JK - he did "Just Like A Woman" but it was Manfred Mann who got the hit.

The publishers also got copies of the famous "Basement Tapes" and there was a frenzy by acts wanting to cover these unreleased Dylan songs. On one such tape was "The Mighty Quinn" which the Manfreds pounced on. Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll got a copy of the same tape and chose another number... "This Wheel's On Fire"!

Another classic tale was The Hollies "He Ain't Heavy". Tony Hicks went round some publishers looking for a song and this particular publisher said he had a song that he didn't think was suitable... Hicks insisted he played it and there was the next Hollies smash.

Song publishing was vastly important during the 50's, 60's and 70's. Is it any wonder then a couple of months or so ago, Clive Davis made a plea for artistes to stop writing their own songs?