There Will Not Be Dancing in the Street: Or Why Bands Need to Stop Trying to Cover the Un-Coverable by elana levin
Some songs are un-coverable. Bands generally understand not to cover Bohemian Rhapsody. But a heady combination of genuine love, hubris, the need to fill out an album, or an attempt to make people dance has led many a rock group to attempt to cover “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas. I can understand why. The song is a show stopper.
Released in 1964, the song was written by quintessential Motown writers Marvin Gaye, William "Mickey" Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter. The lead vocals are sung by Martha Reeves and she is supported by an army of Motown Records’ greatest talents (the credits are long).
An essential component here is Motown’s informal backing band, The Funk Brothers. It’s nigh impossible to be as tight AND as funky as the Funk Brothers. It was basically just them and Booker T. and the MGs in contention.
According to the database Second Hand Songs DITS has been covered 150 times! While I haven't listened to all 150 covers, I HAVE heard many versions recorded for wide release by some of the greatest luminaries of rock and roll.
Having done so, I’m here to ask everyone to stop trying to cover “Dancing in the Streets,” and I ain't too proud to beg.
What follows is a list of beloved artists who have tried their best–and an explanation of why each failed.
David Bowie/Mick Jagger
Two of the coolest rock stars in the history of the world. The two artists I listen to more than all others. This cover of DITS is corny. You’d hope the infamous MTV video would be campy enough to save the song and yet in it my boys seem old and square despite the fact that both would release plenty of cool music after this embarrassing team up. They also manage to have zero sexual chemistry here which is especially disappointing considering <gestures gay-ly>.
The Rolling Stones made their early career on knowing who to cover. Chuck Berry, Slim Harpo, Howlin’ Wolf/Willie Dixon–Blues or first generation rock and roll songs. That’s the music they played while learning their instruments. This era of Motown developed in parallel to the Stones, but their shared influences just aren’t baked into their bones in the same way. My preferred Stones Motown covers (Hitch Hike and Can I Get a Witness; both originated by Marvin Gaye) work because they translate more easily into the Stones’ rough edged rawkus style.
I adore Jagger as a singer but he can’t sing DITS. He’s having fun improvising but not doing a great job of it. His simplified melody verse off key and no one in the studio bothered to correct him. The backing arrangement is full of 80s gloss but because it is far less groovy than the original, it sets Jagger up to fail because you need a sweeter and more precise vocal stye to carry Martha Reeves complex vocal line.
Yet Bowie (the more traditionally adept singer of the two and with a sweeter sound) comes off schmaltzy on this. Bowie can do a great vocal harmony—just listen to Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life album. But here his harmony just serves to incriminate Bowie as an accessory in this failed effort.
Bowie himself is a master of great covers including the entire Pin-Ups album he released at the height of Ziggy Stardust Mania. His prior album featured a jaw (and pants) dropping cover of the Stones’ “Let's Spend the Night Together.” I know DITS was recorded for broadcasting specifically at Live Aid but imagine how much cooler Bowie and Mick blending their versions of Let’s Spend the Night Together would have been! I can only dream.
The Kinks
Another favorite band of mine and one of the hardest rocking groups of 1964. Their cover is limp. It’s lifeless. Band leader Ray Davies himself called his own cover “colorless”.
For a rush-recorded sophomore album Kinda Kinks is shockingly good despite poor production values, but this cover is its weakest link. The Kinks at least get the groove right but Ray’s vocals are too thin. The key change is wise, but this simplified version of the lead vocal loses too much of the beauty of the original composition. There are pitchy moments and the band’s sparse sound doesn’t bring anything fresh.
Conversely, the first song on that album, Look for Me Baby, is VERY Motown influenced and is VERY good. In their own composition they took Motown inspiration and transformed it into something that played to their strengths. Here, Davies understands how to use his quirky vocals to their best effect.
The Grateful Dead
The cover of DITS on Terrapin Station takes the song in a new direction. Unfortunately the direction they chose for the album is disco. While disco is wonderful, The Dead are really bad at disco. I feel embarrassed listening to it. Bassist Phil Lesh is off into space, but not in a good way. Vocals have always been the Dead’s biggest weakness so it’s no surprise that Motown, which relies so heavily on excellent singing, doesn't fit into what the band can do.
Conceptually, maybe a disco cover of DITS could work? But definitely not the Dead doing a disco cover of Motown. The Dead’s country and folk covers are beautiful. They got me into Country in the first place. But more than anything else, the Dead can’t cover Motown because the Dead aren’t funky.
No one could do what The Funk Brothers could do. You can be a precision skilled instrumentalist and still not get there.
Take for example…
The Mamas & The Papas
Here are some top tier vocalists backed by one of the other greatest assemblages of instrumentalists of all time, The Wrecking Crew. Cass Elliot’s lead vocal is a show stopper as always, simultaneously powerful and sweet. None of these technically skilled professionals' work add up to a good cover of DITS.
There’s a high C note Reeves hits on the word ‘all’ from the lyric “all you need is music” that comes out of nowhere to create aural excitement. Cass Elliot slides into that note instead of hammering it. Elliot CAN sing that note—she even has complicated mythology around hitting that note. But it's a hard note to dig out of left field and without it the vocal line loses something.
The orchestration feels corny and that jokey outro is embarrassing. The band never catches the right groove. Which is wild because the original verse bass line is ONE NOTE. The Wrecking Crew’s version is several notes. One note worked better.
Van Halen
The closest to acceptable version of this song performed by a white person is by my boys Van Halen. David Lee Roth began his musical career singing in an R&B group yet this is the most unique take on the song so far. Michael Anthony’s backing vocals are super precise, which is a band trademark. But the sound is like a combination of Gary Numan and Halen with Dave giving the full Diamond Dave treatment. It’s a pleasant enough oddity. But it can’t hold a candle to the dumbstruck feeling of hearing the original with fresh ears.
Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s great dystopian graphic novel V for Vendetta recognizes the song’s power. When V, the antihero of the story, liberates Evie the protagonist and introduces her to pre-genocide music for the first time in her life the song he plays is Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street”:
Of all the songs in the world, Moore and Lloyd chose it for a reason. The richness of William "Mickey" Stevenson’s production with those opening horns are a siren call to a party for all. The song was utilized so much at civil rights marches that singer Martha Reeves herself was accused by white media of trying to start a riot.
Motown Records assembled the greatest studio band the world has ever seen. As music history podcaster Andrew Hickey (whose podcast A History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs is essential listening for any fan of the Xness brackets) put it “It is very hard to cover Motown well... Motown is so much about the sound and the record. But in general Martha and the Vandelas are so much about the groove.” Their rhythm section is key; here in the persons of James Jamerson on bass guitar and Marvin Gaye on drums.
Motown had the most thoughtful and rich production levels, and such outstanding talent that it made so much other music feel thin. The most consistently successful Motown covers I’ve heard were produced by Trojan Records, the legendary Jamaican Ska and Reggae label. The rhythms and orchestration and even Jamaican accents of the performers doing Ska and Reggae covers all bring something fresh to the music while the sound is rich and full enough to do the originals justice.
I have one more reason the song gets covered so much. It is fun to sing. I know because I sing it too. It’s a great vocal line that gives a singer plenty to do. I might not sing this around the house as much as I do some Motown songs that fit me better—and I’d never deign to sing it for an audience. But anyone living with me is gonna have to deal with me singing along sometimes. Probably dancing too.
Elana Levin podcasts at the intersection of comics, geek culture and politics as Graphic Policy Radio and Deep Space Dive: a Star Trek Deep Space Nine Podcast. Elana has written about comics and politics for sites including The Daily Beast, Wired Magazine, Graphic Policy and Comics Beat. Elana is also a singer, and sometimes Alice Cooper impersonator. Elana tweets @Elana_Brooklyn and teaches digital strategy for progressive campaigns and nonprofits.
Special thanks to Andrew Hickey for his time and for his podcast A History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs and to my brother, composer/producer David Rafael Levin for his musicology help.