On this episode of Hippie Love Turbo, on KUCR 88.3 FM we started the show off with a Spanish cover of These Boots Are Made for Walkin' which was written by Lee Hazlewood and first recorded by Nancy Sinatra. There have been many covers of the song over the years with the most popular versions performed by Jessica Simpson for the soundtrack of the 2005 film adaptation of The Dukes of Hazzard and Billy Ray Cyrus' rendition on his debut album Some Gave All (1992). A somewhat unexpected version of the song was featured on Megadeth's 1985 album Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good! featuring altered lyrics which didn't sit well with Lee Hazlewood. Eventually Hazelwood asked the band to remove the song from future releases of their album which they complied with, for the most part, as some copies of the album contain censored recordings of song with the offending lyrics intact in the liner notes. In 2018 the band released another special edition of Killing Is My Business which featured a version of the song with newly recorded lyrics that matched Hazlewood's original.
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| The Boot as seen on The Simpsons |
The cover you heard on this episode (Gloria Benavides' Esta Botas Son Para Caminar) is one of the few versions in Spanish but other bands from Latin America have also covered the song, mostly sung in English or performed as instrumentals. The Mexican instrumental group Los Aragón released a fun version in 1966, The Hang Tens (Peru) featured the song as a B-side on their sole single release, and the only other Spanish version I found was performed by Mexican pop singer Pyly Gaos.
And for all those folks out there that like punk covers, there are quite a few of them as well by bands like 7 Seconds, Operation Ivy, The Oppressed, Genocide Superstars, and Pure Hell.
The song has been covered to death but if there are any other covers of the song that y'all like, especially non-English versions, I'd love to hear about them in the comments!
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