Yes, the Joe Strummer thing rings a bell but don't have enough interest to chase it down, lol.
Ok, I got completely lost in some partly related search and made a brain spaghetti, but you know, all the roads lead to something Michaeel-Jackson-related (I know a forum where all the roads used to lead to Invincible... well that's a little hardcore...).
Talking of Strummer and Brel, I thought of the cover of
My Legionnaire by Édith Piaf by the Clash. Well, no by the Clash but it's on Ellen Foley's album
Spirit Of St. Louis. Clash members wrote and played almost all the songs on the album (including casual Clash violonist Tymon Dogg). Ellen Foley also sings
Hitsville UK on the Clash
Sandinista! album, which is a "Motown inspired" tune. So in a sense, I see
Spirit Of St. Louis as an extension to
Sandinita! *. Ellen Foley was Mick Jones girlfriend back then. He wrote
Should I Stay Or Should I Go? after their relationship.
Ellen Foley is also famous for being one of Meat Loaf's vocalists (
Paradise By The Dashboard Light , album version
). I thought that she had done more with him but I'm not sure. And just because I like to link random stuff right now, yesterday after checking the Foo Fighter (previously talked about in this thread), I checked Jimmy Ruffin who also in my artists-to-check list and I need something lighter in my ears... and I thought... that guy sounds like he could be an influence to Meat Loaf (just an hypothesis)... Talking about Meaf Loaf, it's also the same guy who did the
Bat Out Hell II and
The Very Best Of Meat Loaf and the Jacksons
Victory cover (and also a bunch of metal covers including 4 from Sepultura).
I actually made a search on Foley after thinking of
My Legionnaire because I had a vague memory that she was related to one of the Jackson brothers... Not sure at all, may be wrong... She was actually on an album by Joe Jackson (NOT the Jacksons' father but the singer) which only makes such a search more difficult.
What I stumbled uponthen is that she has a version of
Nightline/
Nite Line on her album
Another Breath (1983) :
https://mljs.evilnickname.org/ellenfoley/nightline.html
So according to this page and to Discogs, there was not 1 version of Nite Line released by another artist in 1983 but actually 3:
- Randy Crawford (the one people usually refer to)
- Ellen Foley
- the Pointer Sisters
* Though I think it was released before.
And she has a live version: