"Feel So Bad"

Chuck Willis, aka "The King of the Stroll", originally recorded "Feel So Bad" in the early 1950s as a pretty (great) standard R&B tune, with rolling piano and horns. The structure of every future version is all there - the stops and starts, the lulls and crescendos - but the arrangement isn't too far from other R&B fare from the late-40s and early 50 (or Willis' other big hit, "C.C. Rider"). As far as I can tell, the song didn't get much more attention after the birth of rock & roll in the mid-1950s. Chuck Berry's guitar, Little Richard's piano, and Elvis's hips quickly left the horns & piano of Chuck Willis in their dust.
By the early 1960s, Rock & Roll had been mostly tamed - girl groups like the Shirelles and crooners like Dion had momentarily eclipsed greaser guitarists and bar room piano players at the top of the charts. Elvis, of all people, upon returning from the service to find a very different musical landscape and trying to fit within it, recorded a pretty straight forward, unremarkable cover of "Feel So Bad". It was a minor hit and resurrected the forgotten song, but it still isn't the funky blues tune most know today. At the same time, blues musicians of the day playing juke joints and clubs, put the funky spin on "Feel So Bad" that has since defined the song. Little Milton and Otis Rush both recorded bluesier versions of "Feel So Bad", making it a bit of a standard. In the decades since, everyone from Gregg Allman, Bobby Blue Bland & BB King, The Derek Trucks Band, Gov't Mule, Foghat, among a litany of others have added "Feel So Bad" to their stable of "go to" tunes.

I first heard "Feel So Bad" on The Gregg Allman Tour. I had the double live album on vinyl since it wasn't available on CD until the early 2000s or so. Gregg Allman rearranged the song quite a bit, as he often did, creating a funky interplay between the horns and guitar, and a call and response between himself and his backup singers. Most other versions use the Little Milton version as a blue print, which is probably my favorite version and mostly inspired mine. I also tried to add some of the funkiness of the BB King & Bobby Blue Bland Together Again version, which is bunch of funky fun from two old pros. Naturally, The Derek Trucks Band covered the tune, with Derek playing the hell out of it, bring the song down low and up high like no other.

I wanted to dirty up "Feel So Bad" which made me focus on my tricone rather than the earthier wooden dobro. The song is deceptively simple - I spent a lot more time putting this track together than others, mostly the getting the solos interplay just right. I really wanted to leave space and let the song breathe unlike the wall of resonator sound that I've laid on other recordings. I really got to know my tricone better as I spent time crafting the instrumental highs and lows and call and responses, which is difficult to do on ones own without losing a sense of spontaneity. Since I put the song in the key of E, it left me with less room on the neck of my tricone to play on, which I kept in D with a capo for open E. It was a good exercise, it was a challenge that definitely made me a better player.