Ten Songs You Might Not Know Are Covers: Piece of My Heart (#1)

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And so another top ten discussion list comes to a close. Thank you all so much for making this so successful! I truly appreciate your comments, and I'm sorry I shocked you. Here's the song most likely to not be recognized as a cover. #1: Piece of My Heart In 1994 someone (Gary Burr, by name) got a wild hair up his butt that it'd be cool to let a new country singer by the name of Faith Hill to cover the classic-beyond-classic song "Piece of My Heart." Hill, at that time a 26-year-old rookie just recording her first album (Take Me As I Am), had never heard the classic rendition by Big Brother and the Holding Company (and Burr, the album's producer, told her to not listen to it until after they'd recorded it). If she had she probably would have said, "Are you out of your freaking MIND? Cover that song???" Let's face it. If you think "Piece of My Heart," you think Janis. That 1968 blues/psychadelic Rock rendition of "Piece of My Heart" released on Big Brother & the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills album is one of the poster songs of classic rock. It's on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of "500 songs that shaped rock and roll" and the Rolling Stone "500 greatest rock songs of all time." And guess what.... Well, if you've been following the series or read the title, you know what. In 1967, a year before "Janis took a piece of her heart" (as that song "Rock and Roll Heaven" said), Erma Franklin, the older sister of someone you may have heard of -- Aretha -- recorded the song. It was a good-sized R&B hit but flopped on the pop chart. And, thanks to the Big Brother & the Holding Company rendition (that's as different as night and day from Franklin's original), not many people remember that it was originally an R&B song. And a very good one, at that. Piece of My Heart Written by Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns Originally recorded by Erma Franklin, 1967 Famously covered by Big Brother & the Holding Company, 1968 Also famously (if inexplicably) covered in country music by Faith Hill, 1994 Here's Erma Franklin's original. Take it!: