Remarkably, bizarrely, incongruously, the bland of the bland, Radio One DJ Tony Blackburn delivered a rather faithful version of the Yardbird’s ‘I Can’t Make Your Way’. It appears on Side Two of his debut album Tony Blackburn Sings (flat, I might add) sitting alongside Four Tops and Vera Lynn covers. There’s a rather reserved attempt to emulate Beck’s guitar lines and an added backing vocal line “I can’t make it baby’, which I rather like. John Peel introduces Tony’s version [here] so please do give it your full attention
Awhile before Tony got a strangle hold on the Yardbirds’ tune, Texan and one time member of Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps, Scotty McKay, gave it his best shot. As part of the underused Simon Napier-Bell arranged contract with Columbia that gave individual Yardbirds the opportunity to produce the work of other artists, Jim McCarty took his new American friend, who he had met on the Dick Clark Caravan of the Stars tour in 1966, into the studio for a run through of ‘I Can’t Make Your Way’, released in March 1967 [here]. It’s a pleasant enough excursion, piano is the featured lead instrument, but it is all a bit lacklustre, doesn’t over shadow Blackburn’s version, which wouldn’t take that much effort, and is not a patch on Al Stewart’s cover of the Yardbirds’ ‘Turn into Earth’ that Paul Samwell-Smith helmed for Decca (released in August 1966) [here].
For a band that had a problem writing original material the Yardbirds nevertheless oversaw some arresting cover versions of tracks from Roger. Though not from that album, you might also want to tune into Manfred Mann’s Henry Mancini-esque ‘Still I’m Sad’ [here] . . . Down the road apiece, I suspect I’ll be back with more of the same . . .
Recorded after his dalliance with the Yardbirds on the Dick Clark Caravan and his Columbia 45, McKay’s tribute to the band with ‘Train Kept-A-Rollin’ (note the writer credit) is outstanding and even better in the unedited version you can hear here
Bear Family have a very fine compilation of Scotty’s tracks in their ‘Rocks’ series, which comes with a biography that is as detailed as you could hope for. The edited single version of‘Train Kept-A-Rollin’ makes an appearance but not ‘I Can’t Make Your Way’, which was probably because it doesn’t rock.