Friday, December 27, 2013

The Other Elvis

One of Elvis' biggest songs was Polk Salad Annie, but do you remember who wrote the song and had the first hit recording of it? I didn't think so. It was Tony Joe White, who also could have passed for Elvis brother back in the day.



This made me think of a yet to be fully developed genre of music I like to call Swamp Rock. Other Swamp Rock songs would be Amos Moses by Jerry Reed:



And of course there's a couple of well known Swamp Rockers by Creedence Clearwater Revival (still one of my favorite names for a band) like Green River and Born On The Bayou:



And one of my favorite guitar pickers, Roy Buchanan, had a great Swampy version of Haunted House:



Can you hear the funky Cajun string that ties all these songs together? These songs were born of the Swamp I tell ya.