J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - August '10 #2: "Cadillac Jack" by Andre Williams

I, like a lot of 30-something former opiate enthusiast white dudes, first ever heard of Andre Williams through the Crypt Records mail order catalog, where the asshole who ran that shit was like IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHO ANDRE WILLIAMS IS YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE AND YOU SUCK AND YOU SHOULD DIE THIS IS THE BEST GREATEST SHIT EVER TO BE RECORDED or something along those lines. But I didn’t buy nothing with the dude back then. However, at some point during the internet age in the past year of my life, I finally remembered the dude’s name (after mistakenly stealing some Nathaniel Mayer first), and snagged that ass off the interwebz. And it’s not THE GREATEST SHIT EVAR! or anything, but it’s pretty goddamned good. I’m a sucker for that ’60s era country R&B (kinda like I’m a sucker for country rap nowadays, meaning Alabama shit like G-Side and Jackie Chain, not Nashville crap like fucking Colt Ford) and there’s a ton of Andre Williams songs I can get down with, but this “Cadillac Jack” song hit me the mostest of them all. I love the concept of a dude being completely wrapped up in one single solitary material possession, because people do that. And I love the “goes up quick/comes down fast” karmic tale, not to mention the irony of the ending. But mostly, that fucking part at the end where Andre drawls out into a break, instead of just singing “Cadillac” like you’d expect from the rest of the song, where he’s all “long… looonnnng… black… blaaacccckkkkk… blaaaaaaaaacccccccckkkkkkkk… Cadillac,” and the back-up singers crank in as soon as he hits the Cadillac word, that’s some next level other level never again level shit. I actually was playing that song one day in the house and stopped it to explain to my oldest two kids how awesome it was and why it was an example of motherfucking musical song-making brilliance. It may not have sunk in that day, but I’m laying the groundwork for them to recognize the real. Life is real as fuck for most people on this world, so you’ve got to be able to recognize it, especially when some crazy old dude is flipping it on it’s ass and letting it run away then grabbing the world by the tail again, pulling it back, letting it run again, and then wrapping it up and making it feel just right on the proper axis like it wanted to go all along. That takes supreme psychologics, and that’s Andre’s thang more than any thang.
STEAL "Cadillac Jack"
NEXT UP: Finally wrapping up August!