"I Walked on Gilded Splinters"

I can play a lot of things: guitar, mandolin, piano, bass, a little saxophone. One thing I am not is a drummer (many would say "singer" as well). So choosing to tackle Dr. John's rhythm-heavy "I Walked on Gilded Splinters" with stomp buckets and a cajon was a bit of a challenge.

Dr. John

Dr. John first recorded the voodoo song for his 1968 album, Gris-Gris. It's full of spooky atmosphere, with hissing and background singers seeming to appear from the ether, or at the very least, from the far corners of the recording studio. Dr. John recorded the song in the same studio Cher was recording an album in LA. Oddly enough, she covered the tune which is full of voodoo studio production and a tone-deaf Cher vocal. But she may have planted the idea to speed up the song, which a blues man from Georgia cutting his first album would also do - Johnny Jenkins.

Johnny Jenkins had played the chitlin' circuit for years as Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers. For a time he employed a backup singer named Otis Redding. Jenkins manager, Phil Walden, would concentrate on Otis once his career exploded until Otis tragically died in a plane crash in Lake Monona (a block from my where I grew up and learned to skip stones). Walden quickly found a new project: Duane Allman.

As Allman put together his new band, Walden built Capricorn Records around them, as a place for his collection of southern musicians to record without having to leave for New York or LA (or Memphis or Alabama). One of the first albums Capricorn released was Johnny Jenkins' Ton-Ton Macoute. It is something of a concept album, full of voodoo inspired intensity, which Jenkins was reportedly not happy with. The songs themselves are a bit of a grab bag of unused material, including a couple of cuts from Duane Allman's first pass at a solo album. But somehow it all comes together and works beautifully, it is one of my favorite albums.

 The album kicks off with Butch Trucks' heavy, funky beat. It's a train that slowly gains steam until background singers and Duane Allman's dobro kick in. Johnny Jenkins' cover of "I Walked on Gilded Splinters" is heavy and funky. Others have since covered the song - Humble Pie, Widespread Panic, Paul Weller, even the Allman Brothers - but Jenkins' is the definitive version for me (The Allman Brothers would probably agree since their version is clearly based on Jenkins'). Not only have others covered it, but Butch Trucks' funky drum opening has been heavily sampled, most famously by Beck on "Loser" (whose dobro lick sounds an awful lot like Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider"). Trucks has been quoted as wishing he received writing credit for his drum parts on songs, so hearing your drums on others' popular songs can't make him too happy and is probably why "Gilded Splinters" is part of his Freight Train Band's regular sets. Gregg Allman himself would rework his own epic "Whipping Post" into an acoustic version that sounds an awful lot like Jenkins' "Gilded Splinters".

My biggest challenge was translated his rhythms using simple tools. Our home just happened to recently add a cowbell, which helped, and I was able for the first time create some complementary rhythms that played off of each other. It was a challenge, but it all kind of came together, including dueling resonators in dueling tunings (G for the tricone, E for the spider with a capo at G).