A Futile Quest for Authenticity in the Top 40...

The struggle for authenticity is a constant battle in the annals of Rock n' Roll. Long before there was even a phrase to "keep it real" artists have been plundering the vaults of recorded music, in search of that illusive moving track to reinterpret as their own, authentic experience - despite a songs cultural origins.
To me, Rock n' Roll is a general term, not confined to the stereotypical electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, vocalist line up you would expect. To me, after a certain point of cultural acceptance in any genre of music that has been established, it is Rock n' Roll.
Hip hop is now Rock n' Roll, electronic, techno, and house music is Rock n' Roll.
Rock n' Roll is more of a state of mind, a pop cultural institution than it is a specific genre or sound. It's both vague in the broad net that it encompasses, like the label "art", yet could be specific to a certain feeling invoked by the music.
"Did you see the DJ smash his turntables and set fire to them, how rock n' roll!"
Rock n' Roll is an amalgam of global cultural artifacts. While the origins and roots of Rock n' Roll music can be traced to the blues of the Mississippi Delta and Jump Blues of artists likeWynonie Harris, Rock's cultural staying power is that it is cannibalistic of all styles, cultures, genres, and identities that it comes in contact with.
It is always interesting to hear popular artists reinterpret a song that is clearly not culturally relevant to their own history. Outside of a songscatchiness or next hit possibilities, an attraction to things we may not completely understand, except through the music, remains.
Music is interesting that way, that how, for whatever the ulterior motives may be for an artist to cover a song, it gets been picked up, mutated, and spread in a viral way across borders and airwaves (and nowadays networks and blogs) to the listeners ears.
I'm trying not to look at these songs in terms of good or bad, but rather to look at them as they are created for the intention of a possible slot on the charts - as veritable litmus tests to the chops of professional musicians, and whether you can shake the dirt off of a traditional song and turn it into pop gold.
Harry Belafonte - The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)

Harry Belefonte was born in Harlem. Sure his father was from The Carribean, but Mr. Belafonte became known as "The King of Calypso" (a term he was never comfortable with) and made many Americans aware that there was actually whole cultures on those tiny islands east and south of Florida. A lot of debate could be set off on just who Belafonte's popularized Caribean music was for (White audiences and not black - is usually the argument), but it is catchy, nonetheless.
Pat Boone - Tutti Frutti

The wonder bread poster boy of rock n' roll may seem to have cheesed up this rock n' roll standard/classic and thus divested it of any soul, but Boone proved the sort of viral messenger that spread Rock n' Roll's message to a wider audience. Little Richard's original was a ribald rollicking ode to anal sex that would probably have had a hard time getting on the radio today. The song was "tidied" up a bit with cleaner by lyrics written by Dorothy LaBostrie , and the rest they say, is Rock n' Roll history...
Beach Boys - Sloop John B.

I don't know if there is a more American band than the Beach Boys. The BB's sound of the mid 60's are about as ubiquitous and squeaky clean as you can get in popular music. The melodies and harmonies are so lush and catchy that crew cut wearing hold outs from theEisenhour era and new rebels such as Bob Dylan could be in awe of the beauty and simplicity of their music.
From Wikipedia:'"Sloop John B" is the seventh track on The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album and was also a single which was released in 1966 on Capitol Records. It was originally a traditional West Indies folk song, possibly recorded earliest by The Weavers under the title "Wreck of the John B", the song taken from a collection by Carl Sandburg (1927). Alan Lomax made a field recording of the song in Nassau, 1935, under the title "Histe Up the John B. Sail". This recording appears on the album Bahamas 1935: Chanteys And Anthems From Andros And Cat Island.[1] The song was adapted by Weavers member Lee Hays. The recording of the song which directly influenced The Beach Boys was by The Kingston Trio."
Beach Boys - Cotton FieldsProbably one of the most unusual covers by America's premiere "surf" band of Lead Belly's Cottonfields. What business a bunch of guys from the Los Angeles suburbs have singing about plantation life, I'll never know, but it paints an interesting picture of a band treading the fine line of being a hit single producing group, and appealing to those older fans who were now entrenched in the counter culture movement.

Eric Clapton - I Shot The Sheriff

Is Clapton just following Pat Boone's lead in covering an artist with more soul? Maybe, but Clapton, like Boone, helped bring Marley's music to a wider audience by covering this song. Which may or may have not been inevitable withSka's revival in the UK in the mid to late seventies.
Imitation Is The Sincerest Form of Flattery, and sometimes more sincere.
The Kingsmen - Louie Louie
This Rock n' Roll standard is more Jamacain sounding in it's lyric and vocal delivery, but aside from that, the music is pure 100%, prime, grade "A" American gold standard of rock music. Full of missed cues and raw production, it's seeming imperfect performance is what makes it so perfect and unique. Here you have theKingsmen's reinterpretation of Richard Berry's original ballad (which was inspired, in part, by Chuck Berry's "Havanna Moon"), in which they make the tune their own, imperfections and all.
And perhaps that's what it's all about. Maybe rock's originality, and authenticity relies on co-opting the earnestness or sincerity of other cultures music and ideas to create an original. Because rock is more about image and it's projection, rather than introspection. Just as the desire to makeanothers song into your own hit will always be a driving factor in popular recorded music, so is the need to have your audience believe what your saying, too.