Cover Wars: Get Out My Life Woman (Allen Toussaint)
I was watching Allen Toussaint’s recording of Austin City Limits and before playing Get Out My Life Woman, Toussaint says,
“This song coming up is a song that I wrote for brother Lee Dorsey many years ago but it was really made popular by another great person, but it’s my most covered song of all songs I’ve written – I’m not sure why…..because ten minutes after I wrote it, I was quite confused.”
And I…I just don’t know what cover he is referring to. It’s been covered by so many major artists, as you’re about to see. I normally like to cap Cover Wars at ten renditions but somehow we ended up with 12 this time around, and that was excluding some legendary takes from the likes of Joe Williams and Jimi Hendrix.
The Contestants:
Artist: Ant Trip Ceremony
Album: 24 Hours
The Skinny: Chances are, if you aren’t familiar with a lot of random psychedelic bands from the 1960′s, you may not have heard of Ant Trip Ceremony, a band formed at Oberlin College with just this one album. In addition to the originals on their 1968 release are this cover and one of Hey Joe.
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READ ON for more covers of Allen Toussaint’s Get Out My Life Woman…
Artist: Bill Cosby
Album: Sings Hooray for the Salvation Army Band
The Skinny: Few have had achieved the crossover music/television success that Bill Cosby has. A bunch of alternate verses of unknown origin in this rendition.
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Artist: Derek Trucks Band
Album: Roadsongs
The Skinny: Allmusic.com puts it nicely saying that, “The medley of ‘Get Out of My Life Woman/Who Knows’ begins as a shimmering, big-band Chicago blues that gives way to a slippery, in-the-pocket James Brown-style funk jam.” It really is quite the 12+ minute clinic in both arrangement and tasty guitar work.
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Video with help from Derek’s wife Susan Tedeschi:
Artist: Freddie King
Album: Freedie King Is A Blues Master
The Skinny: Freddie King delivers this top-notch reading courtesy of this 1969 aptly titled LP.
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Artist: Gerry Rafferty
Album: On a Wing & Prayer
The Skinny: If you hit play on this cover without knowing it was Gerry Rafferty, I think the instrumentation would still give it away before the vocals kick in. This 1992 instrumentation contains all this signature sounds of Rafferty that you hear in hits hits such as Baker Street. “Walk on”
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Artist: Iron Butterfly
Album: Heavy
The Skinny: Color me a bit surprised at The Meters-esque groove that Iron Butterfly lays down on this track from their 1968 debut. I’ll admit it, I don’t know them much beyond In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and I will be rectifying that after hearing this and a couple other tracks from Heavy.
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Artist: Jerry Garcia Band
Album: Jerry Garcia Band (Live)
The Skinny: If I know our readers, and I think I do, this is likely the most well-known cover from the lot this week. This particular rendition comes off a double-album that I just absolutely wore out in my formative musical years.
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Artist: Jimmy Smith
Album: Respect / Livin’ It Up
The Skinny: Respect is a fairly forgettable release from 1967 by Jimmy Smith, but that is just because his catalog is so prolific. The whole disc is pretty dope, I accidentally listened to the whole thing while writing this.
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Artist: The Mighty Diamonds
Album: Ice on Fire
The Skinny: Nine covers into this alphabetical listing, and I know you’ve been listening to all of these in order thus far, seems appropriate for a reggae cover to mix things up.
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Artist: Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Album: East West
The Skinny: The reviews over at allmusic.com (and I realize I don’t normally cite these reviews) give this 1966 album a lot of credit saying that the final cut, the instrumental title track, “was the first of its kind and marks the root from which the acid rock tradition emerged.”
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Artist: Solomon Burke
Album: I Wish I Knew
The Skinny: Solomon Burke does just what you think he would with this cover, which is totally blow the doors off it. There’s even a verse in here about running for President.
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Artist: The Wood Brothers
Album: Up Above My Head
The Skinny: And finally, The Wood Brothers recorded this cover on this EP of all covers.
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Checking in on last week’s Fame Cover Wars, Roster McCabe has emerged victorious. Wait a minute, it was those guys idea to have that Cover Wars in the first place, what a racket…
Incredible video of Lee Dorsey performing with the Sam & Dave orchestra, Germany 1967:
Allen Toussaint in London 2008:
That allmusic review of East West is correct. It’s a brilliant and massively influential album. Mike Bloomfield was also hugely influential among his generation of guitar players. The group, as a whole, and Bloomfield in particular are totally underrated, imo. People who like jam bands and/or the blues will absolutely love the album. It’s got some great standards, a great cover, some straight up electric blues, and two longer psychedelic/blues instrumentals. A true classic by a great band. Interestingly, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band had an excellent, but not as great, second incarnation after Bloomfield left that included David Sanborn as part of the horn section.