walking upstream…
Vanilla Fudge
photo: unknown author · public domain ↗Vanilla Fudge
Formed on Long Island in 1966 out of a blue-eyed soul cover band called the Pigeons, Vanilla Fudge took contemporary pop and Motown songs and slowed them down into churning, psychedelic-heavy epics built on Mark Stein's Hammond organ and Carmine Appice's thunderous drumming. Their radical, nearly-seven-minute rework of the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On" became an unlikely Top 10 hit in 1967 and effectively invented the heavy-rock cover version as its own art form. Never as commercially dominant as the bands they helped inspire, Vanilla Fudge's organ-and-volume blueprint fed directly into the sound of early hard rock and proto-metal.
the sound in question
1967
You Keep Me Hangin' OnVanilla Fudge
walk the tributaries ↓
The Supremes1960s · Soul / Pop / R&B
Vanilla Fudge's signature song is, in effect, a direct answer to the Supremes: Mark Stein has described hearing the Motown original on the radio outside a discotheque and thinking, "we ought to slow it down... the lyrics would be more soulful" — that single idea, dragging a bright three-minute pop song into a seven-minute psychedelic dirge, became the band's entire identity.
listen: upstream & here
1966
You Keep Me Hangin' OnThe Supremes
1967
You Keep Me Hangin' OnVanilla Fudge
listen forPlay the Supremes' polished, uptempo "You Keep Me Hangin' On" immediately before Vanilla Fudge's own version — same song, same words, but stretched, darkened and turned funereal, the clearest possible demonstration of the "slow it down" idea Stein described.
The Rascals1960s · Blue-eyed soul / Rock / Pop
Vanilla Fudge's Mark Stein has said watching the Rascals' Felix Cavaliere play Hammond B3 was his "first influence" and the reason he had to get his own organ — by his own account the whole band "really was a hybrid of The Rascals and The Vagrants that got us started," with the Rascals supplying the blue-eyed-soul organ core.
listen: upstream & here
1966
Good Lovin'The Rascals
1967
People Get ReadyVanilla Fudge
listen forCompare the Rascals' driving, Hammond-fueled "Good Lovin'" with Vanilla Fudge's cover of "People Get Ready" — both ride Cavaliere-style call-and-response organ and impassioned vocal harmonies, just stretched out and made enormous in Vanilla Fudge's hands.
The Vagrants1960s · Garage rock / Blue-eyed soul
The Vagrants — the Long Island blue-eyed soul band that launched Leslie West — shared the same Action House circuit as Vanilla Fudge and, per Mark Stein, were literally half the recipe: "it really was a hybrid of The Rascals and The Vagrants that got us started," contributing the heavier, blues-drenched guitar attack to Vanilla Fudge's soul-organ foundation.
listen: upstream & here
1967
RespectThe Vagrants
1967
Take Me for a Little WhileVanilla Fudge
listen forSet the Vagrants' fuzzed-out cover of Otis Redding's "Respect" against Vanilla Fudge's own "Take Me for a Little While" — both take a soul song and push the guitar and vocal power into overdriven, garage-rock territory well before "heavy" was a genre.