Copy Editor Joseph Westerfield is a listener of a certain age—one who can still hear after years of rocking out. Here he appreciates some old wine in new bottles.
Covering a song can be risky business in the pop music world—especially when a singer-songwriter is involved. Come too close to the original and you risk being imitative like Leonard Nimoy singing “Proud Mary”; depart too much and you risk sounding like William Shatner singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” But sometimes unlikely musical pairings can yield sublime results.
On her new CD A Long and Winding Road, Maureen McGovern, who has been doing standards for years and is probably best remembered for “The Morning After” covers several brand-name singer-songwriters from the 1960s and 1970s, some of whom are unlikely choices and achieves some entertaining results.
While McGovern never actually sings duets with the singer-composers who make up the bulk of the offerings here, the combination of her voice and their music makes for some interesting alchemy. In fact throughout the CD her voice shows a nice range and richness. Without sounding imitative she can also evoke 1960s icons Judy Collins and Carole King.
With “The Times They Are a-Changin’ ” she successfully mixes her voice with Dylan’s words and seems to channel 1960s Native American folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie. Special mention goes to “MacArthur Park” which gets an unusual treatment—that of being sung by a singer. I’m not sure that has been done before.
Her Lennon and McCartney songs deliver uneven results. “Rocky Raccoon” was never one of my favorite songs. To me, it’s a novelty song, and there is little McGovern can do with it. More successful are “Let It Be” and “Imagine,” which are treated in a more straightforward (and successful) manner.
McGovern closes with “Long and Winding Road,” which with its wall-of-sound effects was always more of a Phil Spector song than Lennon-McCartney song. She goes 180 degrees in the opposite direction, and her very minimalist rendition is a welcome surprise and a pleasant way to end the album.
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