Notes from YouTube: Grateful Dead playing Death Don't Have No Mercy live at the Melodyland Theater.
http://squeezemylemon.blogspot.com/search/label/gospel%20blues
This tune was a favourite of my dad's. In fact, it was my dad who told me about Tampa Red. I like his clean and stylish slide playing. Tampa Red was the first to record this tune in 1940, although many people think of it as an Elmore James tune, because of the following version from the mid-50s.
Here's Bob Dylan's take on the song:
There are plenty more versions of this great blues around, but let's wrap up with The Grateful Dead. I think this is the first time I've posted anything by the Dead on this blog. There's a first time for everything.
"Wang Dang Doodle" was written by Willie Dixon for Howlin' Wolf at Chess Records in Chicago. Willie Dixon says in his autobiography that of all the songs he wrote for Howlin' Wolf, "Wang Dang Doodle" is the one he hated the most. However everyone seems to know it and has been heavily covered.
This?
or
or the original?
or
The folk blues song Sitting on Top of the World has been done by so many great musicians over the years that I thoght I would do a post on it.
It was originally written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon, core members of the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular country blues band of the 1930s.
According to Wikipedia;
In May 1930 Charlie Patton recorded a version of the song (with altered lyrics) called “Some Summer Day.” During the next few years cover-versions of "Sitting on Top of the World" were recorded by a number of artists: The Two Poor Boys, The Famous Hokum Boys, Big Bill Broonzy, Sam Collins, Milton Brown and Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys. After Milton Brown recorded it for Bluebird Records the song became a staple in the repertoire of western swing bands.
"Sitting on Top of the World" has become a standard of traditional American music. The song has been widely recorded in a variety of different styles – folk, blues, country, bluegrass, rock – often with considerable variations and/or additions to the original verses. The lyrics convey a stoic optimism in the face of emotional set-backs and the song has been described as a “simple, elegant distillation of the Blues”.
