Thursday, May 12, 2011

The Burning Wood Challenge




It's simple, really.

The first person to supply me with a listenable MP3 of Allen Toussaint covering Marty Robbins' "El Paso" will get a 100 song, custom-made, iPod ready data disc of anything they'd like---rare live Costello, New Orleans R&B, multiple versions of "Honey", etc. You name it.



Let the games begin.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow, never even heard him play that one.
george

jeff kisseloff said...

Would Kinky Friedman's "I'm Proud to be an Asshole from El Paso" or Bobby Fuller's "El Paso Recordings" get me fifty songs?

Sal Nunziato said...

@Jeff, I'll give you 25 songs just for asking.

steve simels said...

I had a friend who used to sit in with my band from time to time because he knew the complete lyrics to El Paso (the LP version, not the single).

I must say, as much as love it, it's very hard to hear it sung live, a foot or two away from you, without laughing.

I don't know why that is.

steves said...

Would you settle for one by the Dead? ;-)

And Simels...I remember him singing it at a couple of jams as well, but I can't for the life of me remember who it was. Damn senility!

Big Jim Slade said...

Well, it seems you have the crowd stumped. So I will fill in the blank space with how I first heard of Allen Toussaint.

It was 1991, I walked into Rhino Records (that's the record shop, not the record label) on Westwood Blvd. A punker girl standing behind the counter was quietly grooving to the music. I listened for a minute as I walked a few more steps inside. I didn't recognize the music at all, but it had such a sweet groove that I had to backtrack and ask her what was playing. It was the Allen Toussaint Collection. "We even have a used copy in the back." I grabbed it and it has been a Desert Island Disc for me ever since.

Hey, you!
Ah-hey, you with the curly bush on your head baby.
You know you're lookin' good, you know you're lookin' good, you know you're lookin' goo-oo-oo-ood,
Soul sister, sistah, sistah, sistah ooo-oo-oo-oooooh!

But no El Paso. Rhino was also where I got turned onto Lee "Scratch" Perry and the album Scratch Attack! :-) (And where I bought pretty much everything in the early 80s during high school.)

Leon said...

Oh MAN I would love to hear that... El Paso, one of my fave songs, done by one of my fave musicians.... despite the fact we seem stumped, please post it if ya get it OK Sal?