Ricky Allen

Listen/Download Ricky Allen – Cut You A Loose

Greetings all

 

The end of the week is nigh and so must be the Funky16Corners Radio Show, Friday night at 9PM on Viva Radio. If you cannot join me at airtime, you can always subscribe to the show as a podcast in iTunes or grab an MP3 here at the blog.

Now…I hope you’re all strapped in securely and have ingested your blood pressure medicine and all necessary sedatives.

I only mention this because the record I’m going to whip on you this fine day is likely to blow your doors off, set your hair on end and (if you’re lucky) drive you into the kind of convulsions often recognized as “dancing”.

I first heard Ricky Allen’s ‘Cut You A Loose’courtesy of my friend Michael Newman’s ‘Hinky Dinky Time’ radio show.

It was one of those times where I heard a record for the first time (happens a lot at DJ nights) and the intersections of the pleasure and acquisition centers of my brain light up at exactly the same time.

Gotta hear that record again, and gotta get me a copy to stash in my play box, in that exact order.

It didn’t take me too long to find a nice, clean copy of the 45, and when it did fall through the mail slot I digimatized it forthwith and put the digital copy on a loop.

Like Bobby Parker’s ‘Watch Your Step’, ‘Cut You A Loose’ is one of those records that lives in the mystical land where blues and soul (and rock’n’roll) coexist peacefully, breeding at will and producing offspring like this.

‘Cut You A Loose’ was a Top 20 R&B hit in August of 1963 and Allen (who was born in Nashville but relocated to Chicago in the late 50s) went on to record a handful of 45s in a similar vein through the 60s.

After I’d digested this tune, it occurred to me that it sounded familiar. It wasn’t until I’d played it a dozen or so times that it occurred to me that ‘Cut You A Loose’ bore an interesting resemblance to another record, that being Dave Baby Cortez’s ‘Getting To the Point’.

As far as I can tell, ‘Cut You A Loose’ came first (by a few months), with ‘Getting To the Point’ being a rather savage, Hammond-driven “homage”, if you will.

‘Cut You A Loose’ became a Chicago blues standard of sorts, with cover versions by James Cotton, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, and Koko Taylor among others (I have no idea how this song didn’t become a staple of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s repertoire).

Allen apparently retired in the early 70s to run a limousine business and a laundry, before returning to the festival circuit years later.

This record is as powerful 2:47 of music as you’re likely to find, and I hope you dig it as much as I do.

See you soon.

Keep the faith

Larry

 

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Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived!

The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock.

They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US).

Click here to go to the ordering page.
Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

 

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

4 Responses to “Ricky Allen – Cut You A Loose”

1. Mark says:

   March 15, 2013 at 10:00 pm

   Awesome!

2. chekov says:

   March 17, 2013 at 1:51 pm

   Yes, incredible R&B-Tune. If I remember correctly there is an even better funky remake of this tune a few years later by Ricky Allen himself (probably heard it on the soulvile-radioshow), but I never did see or find the record.

3. Pep Tames says:

   March 20, 2013 at 9:02 am

   I like very much your selection of Funky16Corners Podcast Archive. I am able to listen them but not to download them.

   Could you guide me to know how to do it.

   Thanks a lot in advance.

   jazz-funk-soul lover

4. Larry says:

   March 21, 2013 at 12:28 pm

   Pep
   If you’re on a PC, right-click on the link and select ‘download’.
   Larry