This week, we have the long overdue Cover Wars debut from legendary British rockers Dire Straits. Sultans Of Swing was the band’s first single off their first album, which was self-titled and released in 1978.

Cover Wars

In The Fender Stratocaster Handbook: How To Buy, Maintain, Set Up, Troubleshoot, and Modify Your Strat, Mark Knopfler shares how Sultans Of Swing almost had an entirely different melody, funny to think if the song would have still been popular with the alternate structure. Knopfler says no.

I originally wrote Sultans Of Swing on my National steel guitar, open tuned. Same lyrics, but a different tune. Since I can’t remember it, it was completely unremarkable! When I got the Strat and plugged it into an old Vibrolux, it became something else.

Check out the rest of that page over on Google Books for some funny quotes from Mark as he discusses the pros and cons of music theory.

The Contestants:

Agents Of Good Roots: Here’s a blast from the past in the jambands department. Fans of the Dave Matthews Band might remember these guys as the band that Dave shared some stage time with in the mid 1990’s. Source: 2-5-2000

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READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…

The Balance: This rendition was the last one to make the cut this week. I had the other four versions already in place – but I realized that there wasn’t a single “straight” cover yet. So I poked around on The Archive for some bands I hadn’t heard of and found this solid performance. If you like it, you might be out of luck, as The Balance have not logged in to their MySpace page since March of this year. Source: 9-7-2007

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David Gans: David Gans, host of The Grateful Dead Hour, delivers a nice extended acoustic rendition here with a little help from members of Railroad Earth. Source: 8-16-2005

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Keller Williams: Everything you’d expect from Keller here: Exaggerated vocal delivery, some mouth trumpet, scatting of the guitar solo, etc. Source: 3-2-2005

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Short video of Keller:

Trey Anastasio: Trey added this cover to his solo band’s repertoire in the Summer of 2002, the third tour for the ever-evolving Trey Band with horns. It was the sixth show into the tour, in the encore slot, when the crowd in San Diego was treated to the debut. Everything about this song made perfect sense for that band to play. Quick shoutout to trombonist Andy Moroz, who did the dirty work of actually transcribing the guitar stabs into horn arrangements. Source: 6-7-2002

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Video From 10/29/02 Palace Theatre, Louisville, KY:

Checking in on Last Week’s I’m Only Sleeping Cover Wars, it’s the performance by Yonder Mountain String Band that our readers liked the best.

Some video of the original artist before we go:

Taken from the “Night In London” VHS:

July 10th, 1985 Wembley:

June 30th, 1990 Knopfler with Eric Clapton:

Live Aid (1985):