https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ugW4gw0yeA
He really is one of the greats. Between my daily non-musical spells and moments, I've been listening to him, and reading about him, all day. He was all twangy, hilarious, insightful, lyrically nimble brio. He pretty well invented rock 'n' roll, which is definitely one of the happier complications of simplicity we've got.
What a guitar player! What a songwriter! What a singer and showman and master of elemental rhythms! And what a poet! (You heard me.) I began the day convinced that "Too Much Monkey Business" was my favourite of his tunes (it is utterly brilliant fun), but by noon I was no longer sure because by then there were just too many others vying for top spot. A lot of the Euro-descended boys who copied him became much richer and more famous than he ever was, but that's white supremacy for you.
In the end, I decided on a straight blues number he covered in 1960, when he was thirty-four and still in his prime. I was still just a kid then, and knew more about Elvis Presley than about him (there's that white supremacy again).
His rock 'n' roll songs were great because he understood the blues, as "I Got To Find My Baby" so deftly demonstrates.
His rock 'n' roll songs were great because he understood the blues, as "I Got To Find My Baby" so deftly demonstrates.
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