“La Bamba” was a top 40 hit for Ritchie Valens and a #1 hit for Los Lobos in 1987. Their version was featured in the film La Bamba about Valens. The earliest known recording is from 1939.

Los Lobos is my favorite current band. I have seen them seven times and they always put on a great show. I don’t think they want to be identified strictly with “La Bamba” and sometimes they don’t play it. I don’t think they have ever tried just to be popular. They followed up “La Bamba” with an album of folk songs in Spanish which certainly didn’t build on the success of La Bamba. In 1993, I saw them at Hammerjack’s in Baltimore. It was a beautiful old industrial building with exposed brick interior walls that mostly had heavy metal bands. Los Lobos opened with five songs in Spanish which took guts on their part.

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“That’s All It Took” covered by Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris on his 1973 album GP was originally recorded by George Jones and Gene Pitney.

It’s so ironic that this Chuck Willis song was released right before he died. “What Am I Living For” was the B-side of “Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes” which I just posted about. It became the more popular of the two songs and appears to have many more covers. Taj Mahal, in three fine 1990s albums kept the memory of records by artists like Fats Domino Chuck Willis and T-Bone Walker alive. I like the Percy Sledge version, too. Sledge is mostly remembered for his first and biggest hit “When a Man Loves a Woman” but he made many other excellent records and was a great singer.

There are country and R&B covers which is true for many songs.

“Bend Me, Shape Me” is best known as a 1967 single by the American Breed. I didn’t know until today that it was a 1966 album track by the Outsiders who had a hit with “Time Won’t Let Me”. The version by the Models may be the first one.

New Orleans singer-songwriter-guitarist Earl King recorded his “Those Lonely, Lonely Nights” in 1955. Johnny “Guitar” Watson covered it in 1955, too. I knew it first from the version on 1972’s Dr. John’s Gumbo, a great album of New Orleans covers by musicians who now lived in Los Angeles. I saw Earl King live twice and he was excellent.

“Eleanor Rigby” is a Beatles song from 1966.

“Mack the Knife” was written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill for their 1928 play The Threepenny Opera. It was a very unlikely pop hit in 1959 for Bobby Darin. The original performer was Lotte Lenya who was Brecht’s wife.

“Truck Drivin’ Man” is a country song recorded and written by Terry Fell in 1954. There are lots of covers including a loud alt-country version by Uncle Tupelo from 1993. It’s a bonus cut on the expanded version of their album Anodyne. It was originally on the promo-only The Long Cut + Five Live EP. It was recorded at the Vic in Chicago.

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“Love’s Gonna Live Here” is a 1963 Buck Owens single. Try the Kieran Kane cover from 1995. It was covered by an impressive group of country artists including Merle Haggard, George Jones, and Waylon Jennings.

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