This episode of Single Song Sunday features the classic "Funny How Time Slips Away", a song so good that - judging by the versions I have heard - nobody apart from Mel Gibson has been able to bugger it up completely (although I am happy to be corrected).
Written by Willie Nelson, it was first recorded by Billy Walker in 1961 and was a mid-ranking country hit for him. The first version to hit the pop charts was by Jimmy Elledge later that year, while Willie himself only got round to releasing it in 1962. Over the next 15-20 years anyone who was anyone had a go at it, as did a fair number of people who weren't anyone at all.
Here is a small selection. I can particularly recommend the Dorothy Moore version - possibly my favourite if I had to choose - Junior Parker's blues workout, and Lea Laven's seminal Finnish rendition from 1976. There seems to be a surprisingly small number of reggae versions, so Dobby Dobson fills the mandatory slot mainly due to lack if competition rather than the intrinsic merits of his effort.
"Funny How Time Slips Away" - Jimmy Elledge
"Funny How Time Slips Away" - Willie Nelson
"Funny How Time Slips Away" - Elvis Presley
"Funny How Time Slips Away" - Al Green
"Funny How Time Slips Away" - Joe Tex
"Funny How Time Slips Away" - Arthur Alexander
"Funny How Time Slips Away" - Dorothy Moore
"Funny How Time Slips Away" - Junior Parker
"Funny How Time Slips Away" - Dobby Dobson
"Ei Se Mitään (Funny How Time Slips Away)" - Lea Laven
I have a version by Green on Red which I will happily share with you if you don't already have it
ReplyDeleteThat would be very kind of you, Chic. I had heard tell there was such a thing but have never heard it
ReplyDeleteI'm on the case
ReplyDeleteThere some great covers here Ernie. Of course Joe Tex's version is good, Not even the plinky-plonky piano on George Jones's cover can stop it being good, his delivery is, as usuak, excellent, But for me it's the Al Green Lyle Lovett, quite magnificent.
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