This morning I listened to a compilation album of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen titled Too Much Fun: Best of Commander Cody. I found "Good Rockin' Tonight" (written by Roy Brown) particularly interesting, although not for anything specific to their version (at least not at first). Mostly, I was interested in the phrase "mighty, mighty man," which appears in the first verse. "I wanna hold my baby as tight as I can / Tonight she’ll know I’m a mighty, mighty man"
"Mighty, Mighty Man" is the title of a song by Bobby Darin ("by" as in written by and performed by). So I looked at the lyrics of his song, and I'm pretty sure he took some inspiration from "Good Rockin' Tonight." It couldn't have been Commander Cody's version because Darin predates him by almost twenty years, but I do have versions of "Good Rockin' Tonight" by Elvis Presley (recorded 10 September 1954) and by Buddy Holly (recorded November/December 1956), both of which predate "Mighty, Mighty Man," which is from 1958.
All of the verses of Darin's song end with the line "Tonight I feel like a mighty, mighty man," which includes not only the phrase "mighty, mighty man," but also "tonight," just like "Tonight she'll know I'm a mighty, mighty man" in "Good Rockin' Tonight." In the third verse of Darin's song, there's the line "Well, come a little closer, don’t you be afraid," which bears some resemblance to a line in the second verse of "Good Rockin' Tonight" - "Don’t you be afraid, I’d do you no harm." Also in the third verse, there's the line "I’m gonna love you, little baby, all that I can" (at least, that's the best I could transcribe it as), which has the same sort of idea as "I wanna hold my baby as tight as I can" in "Good Rockin' Tonight."
In looking at the three versions of "Good Rockin' Tonight" I have, I also found some interesting variance in the possessive pronouns in the second verse. All three direct the girl to "bring along... rocking shoes," but in Elvis' and Buddy Holly's versions, it's "my rocking shoes," where Commander Cody's version has it as "your rocking shoes." The line after "bring along my rocking shoes" is some variation of "tonight I'm gonna rock away all... blues." Elvis' and Commander Cody's versions have "all my blues," but Buddy Holly has "all your blues."
I've written about this type of thing before - where tiny words like pronouns and tense markers drastically affect what the speaker/singer is saying - and I never know whether it's an intentional change or not. Regardless, that's illustrated again here. In his version, Buddy Holly seems more interested in his girl's well-being than his own, wishing to rock away her blues rather than his own.
