Cover Wars: Ain’t No Sunshine Edition
People like to discount Wikipedia for being a source of misinformation, but I’ll tell ‘ya, a quick read of the page for Ain’t No Sunshine nets you some pretty damn good factoids on this 1971 Bill Withers classic. 1) Produced by Booker T. 2) Donald “Duck” Dunn plays the bass 3) Withers was working at a factory making toilet seats when he wrote the song. Okay, #3 they claim to have a source for from Rolling Stone but the link is broken, but I *want* to believe them. I’m sure it’s true. Anyway, literally hundreds of people have covered Ain’t No Sunshine, a search of allmusic.com brings you 1,456 results. What we’ve got below is 10 renditions we think are worth a listen.
The Contestants:
This same Buddy Guy album (Bring ‘Em In) appeared two weeks ago in the I Put A Spell On You Cover Wars. Carlos Santana joined Guy on that cover while Tracy Chapman joins him on this one. This cover features an early key change, multiple vocalists, horns – the whole nine yards.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/buddysunshine.mp3]READ ON for the audio and video of nine more Ain’t No Sunshine covers…