Rhino’s Got You Covered: Sammy Davis, Jr., Mel Tormé, Fats Domino, and The Everly Brothers

It’s Wednesday, so it must be time to take another dip into the Rhino catalog and trot out a new quartet of cover songs that you may or may not have heard before. Let’s get started, shall we?

•    Sammy Davis, Jr., “Up, Up and Away” (1968): If this isn’t the greatest thing you’ve heard today, you must be listening to better stuff than we are, because discovering Sammy singing this Fifth Dimension song knocked us flat.

•    Mel Tormé, “Superstition” (1975): To some, the man known as “The Velvet Fog” was just a guy who was revered by Judge Harry Stone on Night Court and not much else, but Mel was a swingin’ guy, as evidenced by his hip cover of a Stevie Wonder song.

•    Fats Domino, “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey” (1969): The Fab Four were well established fans of “The Fat Man,” so it only makes sense that Fats would take a shot at one of their tunes. In fact, he took a shot at a couple of them, but while you might’ve heard his take on “Lady Madonna” at some point, you might not have heard this track from the so-called “White Album.”

•    The Everly Brothers, “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (1967): There’s something mind-blowing about the realization that Don and Phil Everly were hip enough to take a shot at this Procol Harum classic in ’67, when it was still a freshly-minted pop tune, but they sure managed to deliver a credible take on the track.