Top Shelf White Boy

What do you turn to when you need music to do your morning push ups to?  Whatever jazz you had on, while you were reading the paper just before hand isn’t going to cut it.  Last week I had some turn of the decade 69-71 funk mixes that I’d stumbled across on Youtube.  That fit the bill.  At least this song does.  And that one I’ll skip.  But this one is outstanding.  And you search this way and you see a photo or a title that might suggest another mighty compilation.  But it craps out.  So does that one.  Go back to the first mix then.  For a while.  

I got it in my head this morning to put some Allman’s on.  I think it had to do with the book my mom had me reading: “White Trash”, a historical, sociological treatment of class, in America.  And this was in no way denigrate Duane and Greg, who’s band wasn’t the least bit trashy and was only 5/6th ‘white’ anyway.  But they certainly gave the south an updated and dignified rock voice, some fifteen years after the likes of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, and in so doing spawned a less flattering litter of me-too bands. And after about two hundred and fifty pages into the plight of the poor whites, in the Deep South, some top-shelf white boy blues, with a non-affected twang, seemed about right.  

I had an unquenchable romance with the first two “official” Allman’s albums, there on the “Beginnings” double album, back when I was in my senior year of undergrad.  As I recall.  I was down with the blues.  Mine were bad, but Greg were worse.  Clearly.  Always.  And all I wanted to do was figure out how to cop Dickie and Duane’s back and forth licks on “Black Hearted Woman.” I didn’t manage much, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try, over and over and over again, through a loud tube amp or just sitting there, unplugged, in my room.

I looked on Spotify and of course they had all the classic albums there.  I saved a few so as to link them to my phone for later and then saw there were deluxe versions with re-masters with the old songs plus outtakes and slightly different versions.  Why not?  It’s free.  Sort of.  I unsaved and re-saved everything as deluxe versions.  Next time I want to strut off the plane all downhearted and up-neck air-guitared, I’ll have an idlewind at my back.