HEY JOE
“Hey Joe” is an American popular song from the 1960s that has become a rock standard and has been performed in many musical styles by hundreds of different artists. “Hey Joe” tells the story of a man who is on the run and planning to head to Mexico after shooting his unfaithful wife. The song was registered for copyright in the U.S. in 1962 by Billy Roberts; however, diverse credits and claims have led to confusion about the song’s authorship. The earliest known commercial recording of the song is by the Los Angeles garage band The Leaves. The best-known version is The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1966 recording. (More from Wikipedia)
Now, on their website, Sundazed Records insists of the Stillroven that “their pedal-to-the-metal, frenetic version of ‘Hey Joe’ [is] still THE definitive version as far as we’re concerned”. That’s a pretty strong statement considering that “Hey Joe” was one of the most recorded songs of the 1960’s. Better-known covers include those by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Deep Purple (on their debut album, Shades of Deep Purple, they even claimed to be the songwriter!), Johnny Rivers, the Byrds, the Music Machine, and the Leaves.
So, if you want to test that claim, here is the Stillroven on YouTube (audio only) performing “Hey Joe”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-0zMnkCYOE .
(September 2012)
* * *
Songwriting credits were not handled so scrupulously back then anyway, and those practices continued at least through the end of the 1960’s. I have already mentioned in previous posts that Buffy Sainte-Marie showed her own name as the songwriter of “You’re Going to Need Somebody on Your Bond” on her debut album It’s My Way!; and that Deep Purple claimed to be the writer of “Hey Joe” on their 1968 debut album, Shades of Deep Purple (the musical bridge before the song was their work, but “Hey Joe” had already been a hit song several times by then).
(February 2015)
