Friday, February 28, 2014

Earl King - Come On

This is the original (I think) of a song that was famously covered by Jimi Hendrix on the LP, Electric Ladyland.  I love Earl King, his biggest "hit" was "Trick Bag."

YouTube is funny.  The comments usually degenerate into a "who done what best" dog fight.  For this song, the argument is between Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn.  People ignore poor Earl.  Now Jimi and Stevie were great players, for true, but for my money Earl's version is worth considering.  Earl stays the closest to the musical idea, it's a song with a narrative after all.  It's got charm and it rocks too.  The guitar is very accomplished, and I like the tone a lot.  The sound is string oriented, not way up in the amps somewhere.  It's subtle, which is an adjective that is rarely applied to Jimi or Stevie. 

New Orleans music by the way, which is always okay by me.

All of you YouTube commentators out there, chill out.  There's usually no "best" version.  There's only different.  Any player can pick up a song and make his or her own version.  So let it go already, and just enjoy the variety. 

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