Rubber City Review

The real Leonard Chess (seated) with Phil at right

A few months ago, my blogging buddy April asked me what I thought about the movie “Cadillac Records,” a glossy look back at the birth of modern electric blues at Chicago’s Chess label in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

My quick response was “not much,” given the project’s main goal of bringing some blues cred – and the thespian merit badge for portraying a tortured druggy artist – to the worldwide franchise that is Beyonce, who plays R&B singer Etta James in the movie. But after I gave it more thought, I decided any film that brings a little Wolf, Walter and Muddy to the masses ain’t such a bad thing.

Most people have a passing familiarity with Chess blues, even if they don’t realize it. They’ve probably heard the Howlin’ Wolf classic Smokestack Lightning in a Viagra commercial. Or maybe they remember Led Zeppelin’s version of Sonny Boy Williamson’s Bring It On Home from ‘69. Or maybe they had too much to drink in a corner bar while the cover band mangled Got My Mojo Working by Muddy Waters.

If “Cadillac Records” encouraged some of these folks to dig a little deeper into the Chess catalog, then it was probably worth the $12 million it took to make it. And it appears the movie accomplished this objective, generating brisk sales of a companion CD (forget the official soundtrack) called “Best of Chess: Original Versions of Songs in Cadillac Records,” featuring prime slabs of Chess goodness by Muddy, Wolf, Etta, Little Walter, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry.

The fact is, there are very few clunkers in the Chess blues catalog, which shouldn’t be surprising given the artists involved and the street smarts of Leonard Chess, who founded the label in 1950 with his brother Phil. Then again, the two men often employed an operating philosophy best described as “DIY.” And Leonard was prodded into recording the label’s bread and butter – primal yet tightly arranged electric blues – by the artists themselves. Also, despite the success of those songs, he would often record harp virtuoso Little Walter without his signature amplified sound.

But by the time Muddy teamed up with bassist/songwriter Willie Dixon and started recording with his game-changing band in 1953 – Little Walter on harp, Otis Spann on piano, Jimmy Rogers on guitar and Elgin Evans on drums – the label had hit its stride. Hoochie Coochie Man, I Just Want To Make Love To You, I’m Ready, Mannish Boy… The only thing that came close to rivaling those amazing songs was the major fuss that Ray Charles created over at Atlantic Records, recording primarily in New York City with a group of hired studio hands. Let’s put the two artists back-to-back in this next sample to get a better sense of how Brother Ray was feeding off the hard stops and starts that had become a staple of Muddy’s working band in Chicago (Hoochie Coochie was recorded in January ’54; Greenbacks in November of that year): (I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man/Muddy Waters-Greenbacks/Ray Charles

Chess even scored with the occasional attempt to latch onto the folk music craze. “Folk Singer” was just as vital as other albums Muddy released in the ‘60s, and “The Real Folk Blues” records sold well too – although I’m sure the coffeehouse crowd was thrown for a loop by these convenient excuses to repackage some fairly menacing and hard-driving blues singles by Muddy, Wolf and Sonny Boy.

Let’s put the hits aside for now and listen to a few tunes that were featured as part of the “Chess Collectibles” series, along with a couple other out-of-print releases.

“One More Mile” (Chess Collectibles Vol. 1, released in ’94) pulled together 41 rare and previously unreleased recordings by Muddy in a wide range of settings. My favorite cuts in the collection feature Muddy either solo or backed only by Louis Myers (original sideman for Little Walter with his band The Aces) on acoustic guitar and Mojo Bruford on harp. Blues promoter Willy Leiser recorded these tunes for a radio broadcast in ’72 while Muddy and band were in Europe to play at the Montreux Jazz Festival. As Mary Katherine Aldin points out in the liner notes, “Perhaps the forced semi-acoustic format of the radio broadcast brought back memories of some of Muddy’s earlier songs and styles, since the majority of the tunes he chose to do that day had very old roots in his repertoire.” Here’s a powerful solo performance of a song Muddy first recorded in 1948: Feel Like Goin’ Home/Muddy Waters

Howlin’ Wolf also got the Collectible treatment in ’94 with “Ain’t Gonna Be Your Dog.” And, once again, I was drawn to the bare-bones stuff that sounds unlike anything else in the artist’s Chess catalog. Ironically, the four acoustic tunes (and an accompanying interview) were recorded in ’68 as part of a promo for his psychedelic album, which clearly inspired The Black Keys when they were trying to come up with a cover for their album “Brothers” (artwork for Wolf’s album at left). Wolf famously referred to the album as “birdshit.” Others loved it. I’ll stick with the acoustic songs – the only time Chess recorded Wolf solo. Maybe the setting put Wolf (like Muddy) in a pensive mood, thinking about the past and songs like this one, which is about as psychedelic as Don Draper’s wardrobe: I Ain’t Gonna Be Your Dog No More/Howlin’ Wolf

Volume 3 in the Chess Collectible series belongs to Little Walter – my personal favorite of the three. And if you share my obsession with all things Walter, you should just go ahead and spring for the five-disc “The Complete Chess Masters (1950-1967).” Given Walter’s phenomenal jazz-like chops (and unlike many of his blues brethren), he rarely fell back on a rote set of licks or solos. Which makes this set a fascinating listen when you compare the masters with various alternate takes. Case in point: the blazing instrumental Juke… In this next clip, listen to the opening riffs in the first sample (the master) and the second (alternate take). If I were Leonard Chess, I’d be hard-pressed to pick which one to release. Both are exceptionally strong, and the alternate certainly deserved a better fate than the 43 years it remained on the shelf in the U.S.: Juke (master)-Juke (alt.)/Little Walter

A few posts back, I waxed poetic about a four-disc set of Sonny Boy Williamson’s complete recordings on Chess’s Checker Records subsidiary. And one of the great joys of this collection is listening to the alternate takes on disc four, complete with some typically profane studio chatter between Sonny Boy and Leonard Chess. We featured the famous Little Village conversation in a previous post. Here’s another exchange involving the song 99 (or “do the 69,” as Leonard says at the top). When it came to music, Leonard Chess only knew what he liked. So he offered very little in terms of specific instructions to Sonny Boy – other than “sing it like you mean it” and “not so much blowin’ on the intro.” And, of course, Sonny Boy would give it right back, which would lead to more personal comments about women on the side and Chess having his “nose in that man’s ass.” Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that place… 99/Sonny Boy Williamson II

I’ll close with a couple cuts from another great (and hard to find) release – “Wrinkles: Classic and Rare Chess Instrumentals.” The first is a tune credited to Otis Spann but it prominently features Jody Williams on guitar. Spann doesn’t show up until about the one-minute mark, but it’s well worth the wait: Five Spot/Otis Spann The second is a Bo Diddley tune called Mess Around, which bears no relation to the R&B hit that Ray Charles recorded in ’53. Just another typically satisfying workout by Bo and his band – and another fine example of the undeniable power of the maraca: Mess Around/Bo Diddley

Muddy at Montreux in ’72… during the same trip that resulted in the solo recording of Feel Like Goin’ Home. Kind of an odd assortment of musicians – looks like Muddy’s band teamed up with some Euro-rockers. What the hell… it’s still Muddy.

Remember the box set? Actually, in a year or two we might be asking ourselves, remember compact discs?

I came fairly late to the CD party – which is probably a good thing, because a research team comprising the world’s leading acousticians recently found that first-generation CDs from the mid-‘80s sound like complete dogshit. All that tinny, undefined high-end noise and hardly any bass. Which is probably fine if you’re listening to tinny, undefined, noisy and baseless pop music from the Eighties, but virtually useless if you’re trying to get your groove on to James Brown and The Fabulous Flames.

Once I started buying CDs, I became one of those maniacal completists who needed to replace virtually his entire record collection with what most of us considered to be a clearly superior format. Yes, I was part of a small army of consumers that kept the major labels propped up about 20 years longer than they deserved.

I won’t even argue that CDs sound better than vinyl. I’ve listened to heavyweight virgin vinyl records played on high-end turntables hooked up to tube-driven amplifiers, and it’s truly a heavenly sound. Just a few weeks ago, nephew Dan convinced me that some 45s actually sound even better than LPs – something about more music data per inch of groove, greater presence and resolution, etc. He played me a French rock ‘n roll single from the early Sixties (might have been Johnny Hallyday), and I couldn’t deny it was sonically superior to the album he had on earlier. Check here for more on this late-breaking news.

But I’m still no audiophile (as evidenced by the term “complete dogshit,” which doesn’t pop up much in Sound and Vision magazine). All things roughly equal – in other words, as long as it wasn’t a Wang Chung CD released in 1984 – I preferred the convenience of slapping a few compact discs in a carousel changer and letting it play all night long. And from there it was just a short walk to endlessly streaming, easily organized mp4 files… preferably played through a tube-driven amp.

Even if CDs become the next casualty in the continued demise of the music industry as we know it, I’ll miss the sheer, tactile pleasures of the box set.

There’s something about those sturdy, attractive booklets with exhaustive information on each recording session – date, studio, producer, engineer, instrumentation, label, chart position, etc… The way everything neatly fits together, like a set of building blocks for kids (appropriate, since we usually give or get box sets for Christmas)… The sense that you’re holding in your hands the most important works of a major recording artist’s entire career – which is probably as enjoyable for me as it is humbling for the artist.

Based on these and other important criteria – like whether I own it – RCR’s research subordinassociates are proud to offer this carefully calibrated list of the 10 Greatest Box Sets of All Time (in no particular order). We’ll apologize in advance for the fact that a few of these are long out of print… and that we’re only covering half of them in this post.

Boogie Uproar: Texas Blues and R&B, 1947-1954… The good Brits who run the JSP label deserve some sort of royal commendation for their consistently first-rate and affordable box sets. If anyone asks me where to start with musical giants like Charlie Parker, Django Reinhardt or Louis Jordan, I just tell them to plunk down $30 (or less, depending on where you shop) and buy one of their budget-priced, five-disc sets – you’ll have just about all the Bird, Django or Jordan you need. Granted, most of that stuff had already been available elsewhere… but you’d be hard-pressed to find virtually all of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown’s classic Peacock recordings in one place. For those who like slashing Texas blues guitar backed by a tough-as-nails horn section, this is the motherlode. Rounder Records gave us a stingy 12-song Peacock collection back in ’92; JSP ups the ante with 38 cuts of prime Gatemouth… PLUS 35 cuts by an even harder-edged Goree Carter… PLUS four by another overlooked and underrated Texan, Zuzu Bollin… PLUS 18 by the virtually unknown but notable blues shouter/guitarist Lester “I can’t lose with the stuff I use” Williams. And, of course, it took a British label to deliver the goods. Here’s just a small taste… That’s Your Daddy Yaddy Yo/Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown

Grant Green Retrospective: 1961-1966… Next to JSP, the best source for quality box sets is probably the Blue Note jazz label… but it appears they might have released their last set several years ago (another great box-set label, Rhino Records, seems to be struggling). If you can still find them, I highly recommend virtually all of these collections – the complete Blue Note Sixties sessions of Dexter Gordon and Herbie Hancock, the complete Blue Note and Roost recordings of Bud Powell, the Horace Silver retrospective, etc. But if you follow RCR on a fairly regular basis, you know that all of us get a little light-headed when it comes to guitarist Grant Green. We believe every young guitar-shredder in America should be required to listen to Blue Note’s Grant Green Retrospective. It may not stick, but at least they’ll know what a true master sounds like. The first two discs feature some of the best organ-combo tunes ever recorded, including this funky workout featuring the great Big John Patton: Soul Woman And the last two discs show off Green’s prodigious jazz chops in a number of different settings, including one he used to play spirituals (love Hancock’s churchy piano on this one… some jazz is meant to be played loud): Go Down Moses This is beautifully recorded, deeply satisfying stuff – and once you get hooked, you may end up sounding as evangelical as we are about the real pride of St. Louis.

Sonny Boy Williamson: The Chess Years… This is one of my most prized possessions – all of Sonny Boy II’s Chess recordings (originally released on its Checker subsidiary), with a bonus disc of alternate takes and studio chatter. There’s just so much to savor on these discs – the dazzling guitar of eventual Cleveland resident Robert Lockwood Jr., the amazing piano of Otis Spann, the world’s greatest blues rhythm section – Willie Dixon on bass and Fred Below on drums… and, of course, Sonny Boy. His worst stuff sounds better than most of the blues recorded since the mid-‘60s. Sonny Boy always gets his due for his deeply soulful harp playing, but I keep coming back to his voice, which is unlike any other in blues. That little vibrato he’d throw in, especially on the lower notes, gets me every time. It’s like he’s mimicking the same guttural sound he gets out of his harp, which blew away the competition (except for Little Walter, of course) with no amplification at all: Help Me On one tune, he even mimics the howl of dogs on the hunt. And hard-core blues hounds always like to bring up the famous exchange with Leonard Chess on Little Village (hey, I’ve already shared it with you twice… check it here). Unfortunately, this set is long gone – but you can pick up most of the pieces as part of various Chess re-releases, like the Essential Sonny Boy Williamson (on mp3).

Five Guys Walk Into A Bar (Faces)… At RCR, we like our rock ‘n roll ragged but right, with no overdubs or apologies. And in this case, amazingly, it involves the same guy who spent much of the last decade snuggling up to the Great American Songbook. Hard to believe that Rod Stewart was once among the world’s pre-eminent rockers. And he had one hell of a band to keep him honest – Ian McLagan on keyboards, Ron Wood on guitar, Ronnie Lane on bass and Kenney Jones on drums. The beauty of “Five Guys” is that it goes far beyond a glorified collection of greatest hits. Sure, you get the best of their studio recordings, like Cindy Incidentally, Ooh La La and Miss Judy’s Farm. But this set is packed with live recordings, rehearsal tapes, BBC broadcasts and other oddities that showcase the Faces in all their drunken glory – just letting it rip like a red-hot bar band near the end of a long night. Most of the credit for “Five Guys” goes to McLagan, who selected the songs (some from his own archives) and sequenced them out of chronological order for a better listening experience. He also gets extra points for coming across in interviews as one of the coolest guys on the planet. And he’s a pretty damn good player to boot: Miss Judy’s Farm (live)/Faces

The Complete Stax-Volt Singles: 1959-1968… If Memphis soul is America’s greatest musical treasure, then this is Fort Knox. I borrowed this box set from a friend of mine, a fellow musician who played keyboards and sax. We spent hours studying these arrangements and even worked a few Stax-Volt nuggets into our band’s set list. Then he passed away suddenly at the young age of 44, which somehow gave greater meaning to a cardboard box and nine shiny discs that both of us already revered, in an unhealthy, music-nerd kind of way. So this one’s dedicated to J.D., who truly was the coolest guy on the planet. And getting back to the subject at hand, it’s hard to hold back the superlatives. Sure, you get the tunes that all of us know and love, like Green Onions and Soul Man and Try A Little Tenderness and Knock On Wood. But there’s also a lot of unsung soul on these discs – shockingly good material that remains almost completely overlooked, probably even by a few people who actually own this collection. I’ll leave you with samples of three hidden gems… and I’m proud to say J.D. and I came close to nailing the third one (R.I.P., John). I’m Glad To Do It/C.L. Blast Able Mable/Mable John I’m Going Home/Prince Conley

To be continued…

Sam and Dave on video… The first clip, from the 1967 Stax-Volt Revue in Europe, shows why none of the other performers wanted to follow Sam and Dave. By ’69, they’d gotten the whole band in on the act.

Nephew Dan is a busy man – touring the world and all – but he wanted us to check out this awesome clip of Otis Rush in his prime, playing in front of a polite but reverent audience of well-dressed white folk…

After viewing this performance (and, unlike most of the audience members, regaining my composure), I had a few important questions: Had Otis and band stumbled onto the set of a TV game show? Did someone pay him to wear the white sweater? And what the hell was this all about?

Turns out this was one of several performances from the fifth year of the American Folk Blues Festival, which toured Europe almost annually from 1962 to 1972. Five additional festivals were held from 1980 to 1985, but these earlier tours were notable for two important reasons. First, they had a powerful influence on the British blues movement of the early ’60s – especially artists like Mick Jagger, Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton. And second, they provided rare opportunities to capture American blues artists like Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Skip James, Son House, Big Mama Thornton, Bukka White and many others, using some of the best studio and video equipment of the era.

For these and other reasons, we have several people to thank – including German jazz publicist Joachim-Ernst Berendt, who first came up with the idea, and promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau, who followed through on it.

This particular performance was shot at a small TV studio in Germany, October 1966. And of course, I had to find a few other clips from the same show. Here’s one with Otis and band (Fred Below on drums… not sure who’s playing bass… maybe Sunnyland Slim on piano?) backing up the great Junior Wells.

I’m sure you gearheads know what kind of mic he’s singing and playing through… I need me one of them.

It’s easy to get lost on youtube watching all of these jaw-dropping AFBF shows… I’ll just share a couple more and then tell you where to buy all this stuff on DVD. The first features blues legends Sonny Boy Williamson and Otis Spann playing a very laid-back version of Nine Below Zero. Sonny Boy is far from his peak, but his delivery is the very definition of deep blues – about as soulful as you can get…

Then we get to Howlin’ Wolf, the Taildragger… where the soul of man never dies. Smokestack Lighting – from a 1964 performance in England with Sunnyland Slim, Willie Dixon on bass and Wolf’s long-time musical foil Hubert Sumlin on guitar. The Brits seem far more excitable than the Germans… Joscha, would you like to weigh in on this?

These and many other performance are available on four volumes of DVDs from Reelin’ In The Years Productions… They’re listed below for your shopping convenience. And remember, a small fraction of each purchase goes toward ensuring I have the meds needed to write these posts at 3 a.m.

Dressed up to get messed up… Good friend and photog Rick Zaidan took this shot of Junior Wells in the mid-’80s at the former Palomino Lounge in Cleveland:

“Junior was touring with Buddy Guy,” Rick said. “We got there about four hours before the show to get a table up front. (Rick’s friend) John had my Buddy Guy Checkerboard Lounge T-shirt on, and Buddy noticed it during a sound check. Buddy came up to us and said, ‘where the hell did you get that shirt?’ I told him I ordered it from a catalog. Buddy said, ‘shit man, I’m not makin’ any money off that shirt… I’m going to have to talk to those motherfuckers.’ He was pissed but autographed the shirt anyway… At one point during the show, Buddy did the requisite walk-around solo using a 200-foot guitar cord. Most of the crowd followed Buddy outside while he soloed in the middle of Lorain Ave. Good times.”

For you photo buffs out there: Rick took the shot with an “ancient” Leica M3 rangefinder, “because it was a very quiet camera… I got some good shots but still didn’t have anything great. With my last three frames I just walked up to Junior and snapped this shot. One of my all-time favorites.”

How’s that for a blowhard title?

The operative word being “moments”… which speaks to one of several fundamentally different ways that we experience music.

Some folks like it in the background, like aural wallpaper. Now, I’m not going to waste valuable bandwidth trashing smooth jazz, Enya or Muzak. I actually felt a tinge of sadness when I found out that Muzak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year. But I tend to have a hard time ignoring ambient music – I’m always trying to figure out what song is being reprocessed, and whether or not it’s an actual improvement over the original.

Years ago, I was toiling away in a Muzak-fed workplace when I kept hearing this nagging melody… Why is this so disturbing? Then I suddenly realized I was listening to an orchestral remake of Journey to the Center of Your Mind by Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, and my head almost exploded. I found out later that Nugent actually tried to purchase Muzak just to put it out of business. So I’ll give the company credit for following through on this diabolical act of revenge.

Other folks just wanna dance. Nothing wrong with that… In fact, that’s probably a far healthier approach to music than this constant need to analyze every song and identify every conceivable influence.

Some of my more literate friends are all about the lyrics. They trace their musical lineage back to Dylan, who begat the Beatles who begat Elvis Costello who begat a whole slew of contemporary indie poets. Unfortunately, some of these modern-day bards approach things like rhythm and musicianship with an attitude bordering on contempt.

I recently came across a quote from guitarist Geoff Muldaur (Paul Butterfield’s Better Days, The Texas Sheiks) in the Austin Chronicle that seemed to describe where I come out on this issue:

“I’m miserable at listening to singer-songwriters, because I’m not interested in the (singer-songwriter’s) music, and I don’t listen to the words,” Muldaur said. “Zero. I come at it from the music. If the lyrics hold up, if the music is compelling, I might listen to words – if they’re spectacular and draw me in. Take ‘Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You,’ as an example. ‘Love makes me treat you the way I do. Gee, baby, ain’t I good to you.’ That’s it.”

Which brings us to the malcontents at Rubber City Review and other obsessive-compulsive types – mostly musicians and record collectors – who simply can’t get certain guitar licks or horn parts or vocal flourishes out of their heads. Sadly, these retained musical moments don’t go away – they begin to crowd out other basic thoughts, such as those involving food, personal hygiene and the speech patterns of spouses and family members. Help stop this terrible affliction…

OCD-related maladies aside, I’ve always noticed that musicians use these moments as shorthand to describe what they like about a certain song, artist or genre.

When I was putting together my post on Robert Quine, I came across a tribute from an old friend of Rob’s, Procter Lippincott (from the music site Perfect Sound Forever). Here he describes a process that should be familiar to most musicians:

“We never listened to whole tracks together. In fact, on most occasions, as I recall, we listened only to that particular instant on any track that we felt made it great, even breathtaking, in its impact. It might have been A Thing of the Past, for instance, where Shirley of the Shirelles’ voice cracked on the first word of the phrase, ‘Thi-i-s-s is the moment to decide’ (my choice), a syncopated line on ‘Waltz for Debby’ (Bill Evans’ ‘Live at the Village Vanguard’… his), or the pregnant pause right after the head in Power to Love on Jimi Hendrix’s wildly uneven ‘Band of Gypsys’ album, before Jimi cranks up the volume to take another unearthly solo (mutually appreciated). Quine typically was not as accepting of my choices as I was of his, but we kept at it endlessly, searching for our secular epiphany.”

Here’s that moment (and more – I just couldn’t cut off the solo) from “Band of Gypsys”: Power to Love/Jimi Hendrix

In the best spirit of this process, I’ve asked brothers Jack and James to join me in sharing some of our favorite musical moments. I promise to be accepting of their choices – even if I’m convinced they suck – and I look forward to joining them at the upcoming Rubber City Roundtable: “Why Our Opinions About Music Are Much More Important Than Yours.”

Tim: Charlie Parker may seem like an obvious choice, but I wonder how many jazz musicians became junkies after hearing Bird’s ultimate throwdown to his fellow be-boppers? This is from a compilation of his recordings on the Savoy and Dial labels (one Dial collection even included this sample as a separate track, listed as the “Famous Alto Break”): Night in Tunisia/Charlie Parker

Jack: This is one of those slow blues that only a good blues singer can sing. I’m talking about Muddy Waters. With a top-notch band that follows his every breath. “Don’t say I don’t love you, cause I stays out late at night long… You know I’m a country boy and I don’t know what’s going on.” It’s great, but the growl and cry at the end really nails it. Country Boy/Muddy Waters

James: It had to be the mid-’70s when I first heard Reconsider Me coming from a record vendor’s booth at a Pensacola flea market. When I asked who the singer was, the vendor said he thought it might be Tom Jones. “Tom Jones can’t sing like that,” I said. Not even in his dreams. It turned out to be New Orleans crooner Johnny Adams. For reasons I still don’t understand, the song was included in a compilation album called “The Streak,” which also featured that Ray Stevens ode to exhibitionism. I don’t know how to categorize this sound. Swampolitan? I do know there aren’t many vocalists, alive or dead, who could sing with this particular combination of sophistication and scary passion. Listen to Johnny’s bloodcurdling falsetto on the chorus. Reconsider Me/Johnny Adams

Tim: Couldn’t resist another perfect falsetto – this one from gospel singer Claude Jeter, who passed away in January 2009. You probably didn’t read about it in the paper or see it covered on Entertainment Tonight. Which makes sense, because he had one of those transcendent voices (like the previous example) that seem to exist in another world… one that would relegate Madonna Ciccone to a lifetime of obscurity. Here’s my favorite moment – actually, two soaring falsettos by Jeter – from my favorite tune by the Swan Silvertones: Mary Don’t You Weep/The Swan Silvertones with Claude Jeter

Jack: The great James Booker… Is he playing in front of the beat or behind the beat?  You figure it out. He sure is creating a lot of excitement with just a couple of chords. Keep On Gwine/James Booker

James: I Ain’t Got Long has to be one of the most deep and moving performances I’ve ever heard on record, and the story behind it is incredible. A prison warden overheard the legendary Bahamian musician Peter Elliot singing the song in his cell, where he was awaiting execution, and was so moved that he arranged his release. Elliot later fell to his death through the open window of a Nassau bar. The song is performed by a group of Elliot’s friends in the same alley where he died. It’s from the classic collection of field recordings, “The Real Bahamas.” This is as real as it gets… (we’ll just play the whole thing) I Ain’t Got Long/Sam Green and group

Anyone else want to weigh in? Doesn’t even have to be an actual piece of music… I’ll leave you with this little slice of studio banter between Leonard Chess and Sonny Boy Williamson (warning: don’t play this for the kids) as you ponder which nugget you’ll send me for a future post: Little Village/Leonard Chess and Sonny Boy Williamson

Today’s Record Store Day… Go spend some cash at one of the 700 independent record stores left in the U.S. so they can stay open for another year.