#UnderTheSoulCovers: “Que Sera Sera”--Sly Stone + Corinne Bailey Rae

By Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan |with thanks to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

Saturday, June 4, 2016.

Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be),” is one of those trinkets of mid-century American culture, that epitomizes the White Breadedness of that moment. The song was featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), which starred Day, opposite James Stewart, and earned an Academy Award for best song.   

One can only imagine what much Sly Stone knew, when he decided to record “Que Sera, Sera” for Fresh (1973), and with the help of his sister Rosie Stone, transformed the song into a drag of Black existentialist desire (“whatever will be, will be”).  You might expect a lighter touch from Corrine Bailey Rae, in what is a clear homage to Sly, yet the 13-minute version, which appears on her “live” The Love EP and is recorded in the aftermath of her husband’s death, is decidedly more sanctified than anything even Sly might have imagined for the song.