THAT SPOONFUL

I am going to revisit some of my posts from the early years of this site.

I ran a series of compilations that were called Basic Garage Mechanics. Essentially they were songs that I felt every garage band had in their repertoire. Every local band played at least 2 or 3 of these songs.  

I have put together a fresh look at each of the songs and their importance to the genre of garage bands.

 SPOONFUL

"Spoonful" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon and first recorded in 1960 by Howlin' Wolf. Called "a stark and haunting work", it is one of Dixon's best known and most interpreted songs. Etta James had a pop and R&B record chart hit with "Spoonful" in 1961 and it was popularized in the later 1960s by the British rock group Cream.

Dixon's "Spoonful" is loosely based on "A Spoonful Blues", a song recorded in 1929 by Charley Patton (Paramount 12869),itself related to "All I Want Is A Spoonful" by Papa Charlie Jackson (1925) and "Cocaine Blues" by Luke Jordan (1927). The lyrics relate men's sometimes violent search to satisfy their cravings, with "a spoonful" used mostly as a metaphor for pleasures, which have been interpreted as sex, love, or drugs.

    It could be a spoonful of coffee, it could be a spoonful of tea
    But one little spoon of your precious love, is good enough for me
    Men lies about that spoonful, some of them dies about that spoonful
    Some of them cries about that spoonful, but everybody fight about that spoonful...

01  willie dixon and howlin' wolf
02  allman joys
03  etta james
04  paul butterfield blues band
05  blues creation
06  ten years after
07  canned heat
08  cream
09  grateful dead
10  chris whitley
11  willie king and the liberators
12  aquarium rescue unit
13  shadows of knight
14   blues project
15  q65
16  vivian campbell
17  radiators
18  zero
19  jack bruce & mick taylor
20  govt mule
21  harry manx
22  izzy stradlin
23  ronnie wood
24  robert plant & sensational space shiftefs