Covers
It was a #1 hit for Arthur Collins in July 1902. Among the artists who have covered the song are Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Patsy Cline, Bobby Darin, Aretha Franklin from Take a Look (1967), Brenda Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Durante, Phish, Danny Barker, Harry Connick Jr, Renee Olstead, Michael Bublé, Sam Cooke, Al Hirt and others. Singer and actress Della Reese recorded the song in 1961, and it entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number #98, and became a part of her performance repertoire. In Britain the Edwardian music hall star Victoria Monks (1884–1927) popularised the song in 1905 and thereafter it became her most demanded and remembered song.
Most commonly it is performed in a truncated version based on the chorus. While the chorus is much more familiar than the verse, some artists continue to perform the verse as well, sometimes as an introduction. Without the lyrics of the seldom heard verse, one doesn't know who Bill Bailey is nor why he isn't home. (An unusual approach is Bobby Darin's version, as he added his own spoken word introduction, as an aside to the mythical Bailey.)
Read more about this topic: Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey
Famous quotes containing the word covers:
“Wishing to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean, which, we are told, covers more than two thirds of the globe, but of which a man who lives a few miles inland may never see any trace, more than of another world, I made a visit to Cape Cod.... But having come so fresh to the sea, I have got but little salted.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What art can paint or gild any object in afterlife with the glow which Nature gives to the first baubles of childhood. St. Peter’s cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed. How the imagination cleaves to the warm glories of that tinsel even now! What entertainments make every day bright and short for the fine freshman!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Here a pretty Baby lies
Sung asleep with Lullabies:
Pray be silent, and not stirre
Th’ easie earth that covers her.”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)