Leon Russell’s Carney LP is an all-time favorite. My dad used to play it, but usually just the first side with “Tight Rope” and “Out in the Woods”, and I ended up having about four copies of it at one time when I was buying every record possible. Plus, when Boogie Brown gave me a pair of turntables and mixer to fuck with, which I did but never got any good of note, one of the best routines I came up with was juggling the beginning two measures of “Out in the Woods” between two turntables, and then letting it play, but blending into a live version of the song from Leon Live 3xLP where he explained how he asked a Zulu dude what the words for lost were in Zulu and the guy was like, “There is no word for lost in Zulu,” and then his back-up singers go into some Zulu singing in a wild-assed manner. Good shit.
Leon Russell has an extensive catalog of music, but also is a white dude who married a non-white lady, so he suffers from the same thing white dudes do to this day – thinking they can get down with the black musics in ways they probably shouldn’t. Leon Russell has made some really terrible lovey R&B wannabe music over the years. But he’s also made some amazing ass grimy Okie rock-funk tinged with just enough hillbilly to make it perfect on a hungover Sunday morning in rural Southside Virginia, which is probably why my dad used to pump it.
This song by the CunninLynguists is not a song I’d go to the wall for, cosigning, to blogospherically tell you it’s the best shit ever, because it’s not. In fact, there’s not much by this group that is non-instrumental or not a remix featuring Khujo and Killer Mike (as in the remix of “Georgia”). Plus, I hate their name because I used to rock that as well, although I’m sure any early ‘90s college educated down ass whiteboy thought “cunning linguist” was the most cleverest shit ever. (I had some wack ass self-deprecating style back then with one song that was all “ignored cunning linguist, running my fingers up and down my penis all ten centimeters” and so on and so forth.) And even in the mini-genre of rap songs about broke down vehicles, this is not that great a track, although enjoyable. But just the presence of a beat built off of a Leon Russell sample makes me love it. Still though, as much as I have pumped this track in recent months, it still will probably get overshadowed by the actual Carney LP that I stole from the interwebs the other day, and the original source of this sample, “Manhattan Island Serenade”.
Leon Russell still tours regularly, and I’ve wanted to see him, but his shows are always like double-priced and in that small type of serious music fan club that has microbrews on tap and organic sustainable mini-portions of $12 entrees, and makes me feel uncomfortable like I’m gonna break something, because although I am white for the most part, I am composed of trash genetics that can’t have nothing good. That makes me feel good for Leon Russell, some Okie pokey hick with an inclination to grow his hair long for his entire life and get all convoluted by Hollywood living to think marrying outside his race is okay back in 1974, and here he is now getting $40 a pop to watch him bang on a piano and sang sang sang. The Okie dream is not dead, though there still is no semi-famous Okie rapper.
STEAL “Broken Van”
NEXT UP: Alabama spaceship muzak!
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