The Great Pretender

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"The Great Pretender" is a popular song recorded by The Platters and released as a single on November 3, 1955. The words and music were created by Buck Ram, the Platters' manager and producer who was a successful songwriter before moving into producing and management. The Great Pretender reached the #1 position in 1956. It is one of three Platters records included on the American Graffiti soundtrack.

Oh yes, I'm the Great Pretender, pretending that I'm doing well.

My need is such, I pretend too much. I'm lonely, but no one can tell...

[edit] Cover versions

• It was covered in 1984 by Dolly Parton, who made it the title song of an album of covers from the 1950s and 1960s (The Great Pretender)
• There is also a cover by Roy Orbison
• The song was also repopularized in 1987 by Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the rock band Queen, reaching #4 on the UK Singles Chart.
• The Band covered it on Moondog Matinee, an album of covers.
• Perhaps most radically, it was tackled by Lester Bowie and extended to nearly seventeen minutes of improvisation on his album of the same name.
• E of the Eels covered it during a 1992-94 tour
• Gene Summers included "The Great Pretender" on his 1997 CD "The Ultimate School Of Rock & Roll".
• It was covered by the all-star blue grass ensemble Old and in the Way, which included Jerry Garcia, and was released on their 1996 album, "That High Lonesome Sound".

[edit] Popular culture

• In 1999, National Public Radio included the song in the "NPR 100," in which NPR's music editors sought to compile the one hundred most important American musical works of the 20th century.

• The song makes an anachronistic appearance in Günter Grass's novel, The Tin Drum, during a sequence on the beaches of Normandy just before D-Day.

• The song has also been used in early 2007 as the soundtrack for a new advert featuring Daniel Lapaine for the Volkswagen Golf - a special version of the track was recorded by Adrian Sutton, with the caption saying "The Power Of The Understatement".

• Stan Freberg parodied the song, with a pianist who was more accustomed to jazz and kept going off onto other musical tangents.^{[citation needed]}

PIANIST: Don't bug me, man, I ain't gonna play that pling-pling-pling jazz.

FREBERG: You play that pling-pling-pling jazz or you don't get paid tonight!

(pianist resumes accompaniment)

At another point, where Freberg does the "Wo-oh-ho" at the start of a verse, the pianist slams on the keys and says, "Man, you scared me! Don't do that!" The pianist starts playing the accompaniment too fast, at the end, and Freberg says, "He ruined the ending--one of the loveliest parts of the whole piece!" Then the back-up singers intone in harmony, "THE WHOLE PIECE!" The Platters were not amused.^{[citation needed]}

• The original Platters version was used in the 1985 movie Mischief.

[edit] External links

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6596196/the_great_pretender