Obvious coinkydink of the day:. Two all-star baseball players named Steve, both coming out of Florida.
Not a coinky-dink, really, but I did spend a rather drunken evening with Rick Nielsen crawling music clubs in New Orleans in 1998.
That sounds like a good time.
It was a good time. It started a bit nerve-wracking. I was at a Microsoft Tech conference. They had a jam session at the Sheraton hotel, so I went and sat in for a couple of songs. I called for a favorite song of mine, "Damn Your Eyes," which was famously done by Etta James. I talked everyone through it quickly, and then we did a reasonably good job jamming it. It got an enthusiastic response from the audience.
Afterward I was standing in the back watching others play. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Nice work on the Etta James song." I turned and it was Rick Nielsen. "Holy shit!" sez I. If I'd known he was in the audience, I likely wouldn't have got onstage. So I bought him a beer, and told him about how it had been Sam Taylor who taught me the song at the Chicago Bar in Tucson. Most people haven't heard of Sam Taylor, but the Rolling Stones had to pay him some money because they had "inadvertently" plagiarized a song of his called "Midnight Rambler." Nielsen knew who Taylor was, and also some other musicians in Tucson that I knew.
Nielsen invited me to go with him to catch a set by the Radiators at Tipitina's, which turned into a foray through the music clubs in the French Quarter until about 4am. Good time.
That's an awesome story. Listening to the song now on Spotify.
Etta's version or Raz's ?
I don't believe there are any recordings of me playing it. But my version is pretty faithful to Etta's, except with extended instrumentals. It's really the ultimate bar jam, because even white guys who aren't drunk will ask their spouse, SO, or that girl in the corner to dance.
I'm notorious for saying that the job of a bar band is to facilitate the drinking of booze and the getting of laid, and that song always seems to do the trick.
