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I believe the cover history of 'Sock It To Me Santa' is as follows:
Bob Seger and the Last Heard (Cameo Parkway 444) December 1966
Bud Logan (RCA Victor 47-9678) Date unknown, number sequence suggests winter 1968
Lazy Cowgirls (Bomp BMP 137) January 1987
Murphy's Law (on album 'The Best of Times', Relativity Records RELA 1070) 1991
Marshall Crenshaw (on charity album 'A Home for the Holidays') October 1997
In ASCAP, the Marshall Crenshaw version of the song is credited to Dan Honaker, Carl Lagassa, Robert Clark Seger.
The Bob Seger version was used in the film 'Christmas with the Kranks', and IMDB agrees with these credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388419/soundtrack. However, in the list of early singles on the Bob Seger fan site http://www.segerfile.com/singles.html, it's credited to Seger-Honaker-Lagassa-Leone. The same site has an obituary for Dave Leone where it explicitly says he had a credit for this song (http://www.segerfile.com/marchadds.html). Since this is an obituary, I think it would only be mentioned if the writer believed it to be true. Unfortunately I haven't found a picture of the record label.
But the larger problem is mentioned in http://www.segerfile.com/singles.html: when the song was included in a 1994 compilation, the credit had apparently changed to T Keels. In BMI, APRA and HFA the song is credited to T Keels. HFA credits the Bob Seger and the Last Heard version to Keels. T. Keels seems to be Thomas Bailey "Bunky" Keels, a country musician who died in 2004 (http://www.countrymusicnews.ca/news.ihtml?step=2&article_id=807), who played in Jim Reeves' band and on Chubby Checkers 'Lets Twist Again'.
The Bud Logan song is credited to Keels (see pictures below).
I don't have any credits for Lazy Cowgirls or Murphy's Law or, apart from what is mentioned above, definite credits for Bob Seger's version. I have seen the Murphy's Law song described as 'Santa's Got A Brand New Bag', which is a line in the Seger song, so it's probably the same song. This line is obviously 'inspired' by James Brown, which seems to be at odds with Keels' background.
Does anyone know, is this one song with disputed credits, or is it two songs that have somehow become confused? If the credits are disputed, what is the story?
Thanks!
Jon
Last edit: 2006-09-13 00:46:56 UTC by baggish
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Really wild, General!
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