A Cup Of Joe

Joe Cocker, OBE, passed away today. The cause seems to have been lung cancer, if you think that matters. For a guy who was known almost exclusively for covering other musicians’ songs, his departure leaves a remarkable void. I suspect he was best known for this cover of a Beatles song at the Woodstock music festival:

I was always a big fan of “The Letter.” It was orginally done by a sixties white-boy soul band from Memphis called the Box Tops. But again, you almost certainly know it better from Joe Cocker:

He enjoyed a massive renaissance when this cover of a Randy Newman song was used in the sex drama 9½ Weeks:

Maybe you knew this was originally a Ray Charles song, maybe not, but you surely knew that Joe just plain owned it:

He and Jennifer Warnes won a Grammy for this memorable duet:

And I’d be remiss not to include the song that was used to advertise the weekly Creature Feature on the local TV station when I was a kid, which was how first I learned about what a remarkable voice the man possessed:

RIP, Sir Joe.

Image source: wikimedia commons (detail)

Burt Likko is the pseudonym of an attorney in Southern California. His interests include Constitutional law with a special interest in law relating to the concept of separation of church and state, cooking, good wine, and bad science fiction movies. Follow his sporadic Tweets at @burtlikko, and his Flipboard at Burt Likko.