![]() ![]() Rodgers’ version of “Mule Skinner Blues” isn’t on his top shelf of stuff (FWIW, the absolute top shelf is “ In the Jailhouse Now ”), but I like that the song is a link back to him. How hardcore, you ask? Rodgers was dying of tuberculosis the entire time he was a star, and recorded a song about it, and the song’s an absolute jam (at least if your concept of “absolute jam” includes cowboy yodeling, like mine).Ĭountry fashion has really deteriorated since Jimmie Rodgers’ day Jimmie Rodgers was pretty goddamned how hardcore. ![]() It turns out that “Mule Skinner Blues” was originally done by Jimmie Rodgers, the “singing brakeman” who was country music’s first superstar. Which I guess is the case, in the abstract, but the actual details and associated story turn out to be pretty damned interesting. I figured it was just some old song that a couple of Wisconsin guys had gotten their hands on and done wild stuff to. So anyway, for a long time this was a song that I liked a lot, but just thought of as an interesting novelty. It was a monster hit in 1960! Big enough to have spawned a Batman-themed takeoff during the era of the Adam West Batman TV show ! The Fendermen are so raw that they’re playing two guitars plugged into the same amp, which is normally the kind of thing you do if you’re 14 and jamming with your friends in the basement. I have a particular love for electric guitar music that comes from before a consensus had solidified about what an electric guitar should sound like this is a great example of that. It’s the kind of raw musical energy people love Bo Diddley for (one important difference: Bo only needs one guitar to kick this much ass). This version gets trotted out a lot on silly song compilations (I think I first heard it on an old record my wife had called “Goofy Greats.” And I guess it’s goofy, but it’s goofy in an absolutely glorious, kick-ass way. Why line dancing footage? Your guess is as good as mine. My intro to the song, and the one most people are most likely to have heard, is the 1960 proto-rock version by the Fendermen, which I can only describe as “two men with electric guitars and a primitive recording setup go completely insane in an extremely entertaining manner.” I mean, check it out: “Mule skinner” is, for some reason, olde-tymey slang for the person who steers a mule wagon. The worst thing that actually happens to mules in this song is that they have to do some mule work. I *guarantee* that no matter what your listening preferences are, there’s a version of this song that’ll make you pump your fists.īut before we get into the song, let’s be clear: no mules are actually skinned. There are a lot of songs like that in every genre! And today I want to talk about one of my favorite of those cases, “Mule Skinner Blues.” It’s nuts how many people have taken this song to strange, awesome places. A couple of months ago, I wrote a bunch about Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” and the way it’s turned into kind of a standard that different guitarists like to take out for a spin to show what it looks like with their sensibility attached to it. ![]()
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