Big Daddy: A Day in the Life (1992)

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Big Daddy: A Day in the Life (1992)

Although it's not hard to find truly awful versions of Beatles' songs -- many are collected by Jim Phelan for his Exotic Beatles series of albums -- and a decent number of rather excellent treatments, there aren't that many which are just plain fun.

Big Daddy are a retro group which made a reputation by taking contempoary songs and recasting them as doo-wop, Fifties rock'n'roll and so on.

Under another guise they appeared as the Bendedrine Monks of Santo Domonico at a time when medieval chants were rather popular. Their contribution was songs like the theme to The Monkees ("hey hey we're the monks" sung as a Gregorian chant) but their most most ambitious and fun outing as Big Daddy was the whole of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper album done in pre-Beatle style.

So With a Little Help From My Friends was a crooned piece like Paul Anka, Getting Better owed a nod to Jerry Lee Lewis, Getting Better was a doo-wop swinger with sax and might have fitted into the Grease soundtrack, Within You Without You was delivered as a cool Beat poem with jazzy flute . . .

This version the Beatles' seminal Day in the Life is rather obvious (Lennon's "oh boy" immediately suggests Buddy Holly) but here it is . . . and stick around for how they deal with crescendo.

It's fun, but sightly twisted. 

For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory use the RSS feed for daily updates, and check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.

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