It Ain't No Trick To Get Rich Quick

Here’s something that’s a little fun, but maybe only funny to me. Since I’ve been trying to do more writing and recording lately, I entered the SA Rockstar XX contest. The challenge this time around was to take a Disney song, and cover it as another artist. I picked “Heigh Ho”, from Snow White, and covered it in the style of Uncle Tupelo.

I usually don’t like explaining jokes, but the ‘only funny to me part’ comes in because a) “Heigh Ho” is a very upbeat song about the joys of hard work and getting rich mining while b) the chords and melody I used are from Tupelo’s “Coalminers”, which is also about mining, but has lines like:

mining is the most dangerous work
in our land today
plenty of dirty, slaving work
for very little pay
coalminers, won't you wake up
and open your eyes and see
what this dirty capitalist system
has done to you and me

So, uh, irony, if you will. Anyways, my entry did alright. In one sense, I got 4th place out of 11 entries, and some really nice compliments. In a more realistic sense, I got about 4% of the votes and was basically statistically tied for last with the 4-11 entries. It was a lot of fun though.

Here’s a clip of the original:



And my entry:



As I mentioned above, it uses the chords and melody from “Coalminers”, which I couldn’t find online, but is on the totally awesome March 16-20, 1992 album. It’s in a minor key, which immediately makes the “Heigh Ho” whistling melody sound completely different. In the spirit of March 16-20, 1992 the entry was conceived and written in about an hour, and recorded in one take - vocals, guitar, and whistling all through my condenser mic.