Roy Head – Driving Wheel
Roy Head
Listen/Download – Roy Head – Driving Wheel MP3
Greetings all.
The tune I bring you today is from what is by far the funkiest album by one of the great white R&B/soul singers of the classic era.
Roy Head, formerly of the Traits was a bona fide Texas legend. Posessed of a great, raspy voice and excellent taste in material, Head had his first hit in 1965 with ‘Treat Her Right’ (which became a standard) for Back Beat and even though he didn’t cozy up to the charts much more after that, continued recording quality stuff into the 1980s.
The tune I bring you today hails from the excellent 1970 LP ‘Same People’, which contains a number of amazing tracks (including covers of the Sir Douglas Quintet’s ‘She’s About a Mover’ and Dyke and the Blazers’ ‘Let a Woman Be a Woman’).
The original version of ‘Driving Wheel’ was recorded in 1936 by Roosevelt Sykes (aka The Honeydripper) and went on to become a blues standard, with Little Junior Parker taking it into the R&B Top 5 in 1961 and Head himself recording it for Back Beat in 1966.
Here Head lays into the tune in a funky way, with blazing horns and a chugging Hammond organ laying the foundation underneath.
If you can get your hands on a copy of the album (which I sought after and increasingly scarce) do so with a quickness. You will not be disappointed.
I will surely post other tracks from it in this space in the future.
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Keep the faith
Larry
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Good call on this one, Larry. I dig the well recorded bottom. If the rest is as good as you say, this album sounds like a lost gem.