What a venerable rock and roll institution the cover version has become. The act of recording or performing a song associated with another artist has seen its stock rise and fall during five decades of rock music.

But the practice has never been more popular, or reflected more credibility on the covering artist than today.

Covering a song is not merely recording or performing a song written by another. It is inherently a song that has already enjoyed a public life, though perhaps an obscure one. Many covers outshine or outsell the original version, and may become more widely known. "Oh, I didn't know that was a (insert fringe artist here) song!"

Not the Singer, but The Song

In the early days of radio, when few people had the means to play pre-recorded music in their homes, the purpose of the singer was to popularize the song, not the recording. A few people might buy the recording, but hundreds of thousands could be tempted to purchase the sheet music. Aside from jazz and hillbilly artists, few performers and recording artists wrote much, if any of their own material. The primary musical commodity in this era was the songwriter.

Following the second world war, the economy and technology conspired to make record players an affordable luxury in millions of American homes. Many of the biggest singing sensations were personalities made famous by radio and motion pictures, such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. In order to keep these artists supplied with material, songwriters' songs were pitched to A&R (artist and repertoire) men. The original purpose of these people was to match artist with repertoire, and bridge two distinct worlds.

The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll

Rock 'n' roll began essentially as the marketing of rhythm and blues and other beat music to a white audience. The demand was created by young kids listening to the wrong radio stations, and picking up on so called "race music." When a few courageous disk-jockeys decided to try and program this music directly to a white audience, all hell broke loose. Subtle, closeted racism in northern, middle-class America lurched right out into the open. Parents, educators, radio programmers and others decried this "jungle music" as a corrupter of lily-white youth. Still, a savvy music industry was able to recognize a potential gold mine.

Many of the earliest rock and roll artists, Fats Domino and Little Richard among them, trace a musical lineage back through the musical traditions of jump blues and jazz, where performers like Louis Jordan and Joe Turner had written their own material. They did so as well. The music industry's approach to marketing this music to as broad an audience as possible was to re-associate this repertoire with other artists -- non-threatening artists -- white artists.

Sam Philips, owner of Sun Studios in Memphis, is credited with having said, "If I could find a white man that could sing like a black man, I could make a million dollars." He'd have been right too, if he hadn't sold Elvis' contract to RCA for peanuts. Elvis was proof there were millions to be made selling rock 'n' roll by white artists to white audiences.

The fallout from this realization were the castrated covers of great rhythm and blues from the sanitized likes of crooner Pat Boone, and pre-fab hep cats like Fabian.

Very early on, great white artists like the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and Ricky Nelson emerged with first-rate original material. Covers as a solution to a social problem were history.

Changing the Game

Up to this point artists that wrote for themselves were still an exception. Leiber and Stoller, writers Goffin and King, Mann and Weill, Neil Diamond, impresarios like Phil Spector and Berry Gordy at Motown with his stable of writers were churning out potential hits to be matched with artists and taken to market. It was business as usual.

The Beatles and Bob Dylan changed the game by writing their own songs. Based on their success, rock and roll culture began to diverge from "pop" music. Credibility in the rock world came to depend on artists playing their own material. Not coincidentally, this is the same point in time where rock and R&B began a parting of the ways. Rock and rollers not writing their own songs would be the exception, while the soul artist that didn't write his/her own would be the rule. The one vein of rock that would persist in the use of covers was in the blues-rock revival. For the Stones, Yardbirds, Bluesbreakers and the rest, authenticity meant playing the standard blues repertoire from legends like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Big Bill Broonzy, and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Once the Beatles established a criteria where rockers wrote their own material, the whole meaning of performing or recording a cover was altered. The Beatles cut their performing teeth in Liverpool and Hamburg like any knockabout band, playing almost nothing but covers. They knew songs, they studied songs, they appreciated songs. Later, as a recording band, the choice to give up album space to covers wouldn't be made lightly. Consider the Beatles recording Meredith Wilson's "Till There Was You," from the musical The Music Man. Why is it there? McCartney was writing ballads of his own, and it could be cynically argued that it was a play to convince parents the Beatles were safe to bring home. In truth, it's because the song was good. It was an example of song writing that was influential on McCartney, and there was an opportunity to expose it to a new audience.

Covers in the Modern Day

Some artists built very successful careers on covering other's material. Joe Cocker gained notice for songs such as the Beatles "A Little Help From My Friends," and the Box Tops "The Letter." Linda Ronstadt's most fruitful years saw her charting hit versions of songs by Buddy Holly, Warren Zevon, Elvis Costello and Karla Bonoff. Robert Palmer's breakthrough hit was a cover of Moon Martin's "Bad Case of Lovin' You."

Occasionally an artist that's known as a songwriter of great merit will record or perform covers. Elvis Costello has never been reticent about performing a good song he didn't write. A list of all the covers he's recorded or performed would be staggering. They can be found from "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding," a song Nick Lowe wrote for Brinsley Schwarz, to Almost Blue, an album consisting solely of classic country and western songs, through to the present day. Always eager to pay homage, reveal an influence, or draw an ironic parallel, he did all three on the last of the recent five disc Costello/Steve Nieve live set. He sang a medley of "Allison/Living A Little, Laughing A Little/Tracks Of My Tears/Tears Of A Clown/No More Tearstained Make-Up/Clowntime Is Over." It's an astute song cycle beginning and ending with his own songs, taking the listener on a journey through like-minded classics.

Usually, artists will include a cover as an album track. Less frequently, a cover will appear as a featured single, such as David Bowie's version of Iggy Pop's "China Girl," or Sinead O'Conner's cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 You." When the recording is a breakthrough single for a new artist, it may mean that they're destined, or perhaps doomed to play that cover for the rest of their performing career. Frente!'s sole charting single in the U.S. is a cover of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle." The first two charting songs from the Lemonheads, covers of Suzanne Vega's "Luka" and Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson," may haunt that band forever.

"Mrs. Robinson" falls within the bounds of another trend in covers -- the nostalgia cover. Going back to Bananarama's smash cover of Shocking Blue's "Venus," one of the safest routes to chart success has been to record a song that hit big once before. Lightning frequently strikes twice just ask Tommy James and the Shondells. Joan Jett's cover of "Crimson and Clover," and Billy Idol's cover of "Mony Mony," and Tiffany's hit version of "I Think We're Alone Now" were all big successes.

This trend has recently been fueled by motion picture soundtracks for the films I Shot Andy Warhol and Austin Powers, both period pieces featuring classic songs of the '60s and '70s performed by contemporary artists. The former includes Luna doing Donovan's "Season Of The Witch," R.E.M. performing The Trogg's "Love Is All Around," Wilco doing Neil Young's "Burned," Ben Lee singing Small Faces' "Itchycoo Park," Jewel's take on Donovan's "Sunshine Superman," and Bettie Serveert performing Dylan's "I'll Keep It With Mine."

The Tribute Album

In the 1990s, the cover version has become an institution, in no small measure due to the advent of the tribute album. It's a testament to the mature state of rock and roll music, given that one is hard-pressed to list significant artists from decades gone by that haven't been the beneficiary of a tribute.

If a single album can be credited with starting this trend, it was The Bridge - A Tribute To Neil Young,. Released in 1989, The Bridge was the brainchild of Terry Tolkin, who was then working at Caroline Records. Tolkin, a fan of Young's, learned that Young had recently fathered a second son who suffered from cerebral palsy. This happened at a time when the iconoclastic Young's career was at a low ebb due to a lawsuit brought by label head David Geffen (Geffen was suing Young for not making "Neil Young" albums). Tolkin learned of the Bridge School, a special school that Young's sons attended. Knowing of the esteem in which a younger generation of artists held Young, and how influential he'd been on their music, Tolkin conceived of The Bridge.

There was little precedent for a tribute album. There had been a lot over the years in the jazz world but the only rock tribute Tolkin knew was "Fast and Bulbous," produced by a Captain Beefheart fanzine. "It was really poorly done" recalls Tolkin, "Don Van Vleit (Beefheart) was furious."

With The Bridge, Tolkin was determined to do the job right. Looking back, Tolkin selected the talent well since Soul Asylum, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Nick Cave,Victoria Williams and Henry Kaiser have all exhibited real staying power. Most importantly, a whopping 82% of the proceeds from the album have gone to the Bridge School.

What draws an artist to participate on a tribute album? Bill Janovitz, guitarist and lead singer of Buffalo Tom, who has appeared on tributes to the Velvet Underground, Victoria Williams, and Schoolhouse Rock says, "I'm as cynical as the next Joe as to the over-proliferation of these things. But we're whores and will go to any party honoring people we admire."

Buffalo Tom has recorded a handful of covers, including George Harrison's "Wah Wah," Rain Parade's "Blue," Dylan's "She Belongs To Me," and The Stones' "Spider and the Fly." But, playing covers live is a different matter, says Janovitz. "Not that we're the Dead or Soul Asylum, but we've done a lot of covers live. I mean, the Stones canon alone would take too long to delve into. For instance, I think we once came pretty darn close to covering the entire "Some Girls" record at a party in college. The selection process is pretty simple. We have to all love the song and feel as though we've done something original with it."

Covers in Concert

If you're a regular concert-goer, you've undoubtedly heard many covers. A band like the Grateful Dead built a substantial chunk of their repertoire around a reliable catalog of them.

Sometimes an artist will adopt a cover as a set-piece in the live show, such as Freedy Johnston's trademark cover of the Jimmy Webb-penned Glenn Campbell hit "Wichita Lineman." When The Presidents of the United States of America perform Iggy Pop's "TV Eye," only a handful in the audience recognize it. Perhaps it's an obscure, ultra-hip, cred thing.

Often a cover is a handy device for creating an instant connection with an audience. Back in the mid-'80s, the Replacements would cover songs they heard in the van on the way to the gig. They understood that slapping around an old Kiss tune communicated that they were once 14 year-old rock fans too.

Neo-hippie jammers Phish have taken the live cover to the extreme. For the last three years, on Halloween, they've taken the stage in sonic drag to perform someone else's entire classic album. Beginning with a complete performance of the Beatle's "White Album" in '94, they followed up with the Who's "Quadrophenia" in '95 and Talking Heads' "Remain In Light" last year. Clearly to pull this off, not only is a good deal of work involved but a band also has to have cultivated an audience willing to go along for the ride.

So what is there to look forward to in the world of covers? The practice of sampling will continue to blur the line between originals and covers. Is Coolio's "Gangsta Paradise" not a cover of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise?"

There are plenty of tribute albums coming down the pipe. Look for major label, big budget tributes to Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones in the coming months. The nostalgia cycle is shrinking and plenty of '80s new wave songs have been covered by the alternative nation.

Keep your eyes out for tributes to '90s artists. The Nirvana tribute can't be far off.