Dot Records Cover to Cover...Hit Upon Hit

In the mid-1950s, as rock & roll was getting launched, it was a common practice for white artists to cover R&B and rock records (usually by black musicians) in tamer versions that were targeted for the pop market. For a couple of years this succeeded in tallying wider sales than the gutsier originals. was one of the most active practitioners of this sly art, although this methodology died out around 1957, when the real rock & roll article had conquered the pop market. This has 30 singles of "covers" issued from 1954-57, including seven alone by , and others by artists like , , and even and 's brother, . "Far from locking out the original R&B versions," claims in the liner notes, "which weren't likely to garner much airplay on pop stations anyway, 's clearly enunciated and immaculately balanced interpretations helped to prepare the way for the eventual acceptance of black rock & roll by the white media in those fast-changing musical times." Well, that's a highly debatable contention that could be argued well into the 21st century. What is clear from this compilation is that these cover versions, now forgotten but usually more popular than the originals at the time of their release, are audibly inferior to the real deal. They are not as ghastly as some historians have made them out to be, although tracks like 's whitewashed 's stiff reading of 's are pretty horrid. Most of the performances on this disc would be more accurately characterized as drab rather than awful, with little or no grasp of the spirit motivating the original performers and songwriters, and by extension little or no grasp of rock & roll as a whole. If you'd rather hear these than the originals, you need to have your head examined. A lot of these discs have been hard to find (or hear on oldies radio) since the 1950s, though, so this does perform a valuable archival service for serious rock & roll historians. Not all of these were successful hits or even copies of black artists, by the way, as was the case with (famous for ) and his hopeless attempt to outdo with ~ Richie Unterberger