I feel like I always say this, but it has been a pretty crazy week. Things are starting to tick back up as far as Covid-19 is concerned and our buildings have been shut down for the past couple of days. Students are doing fully remote learning right now and if we continue to have positive cases, we may not resume face to face learning until 2021. In fact, some school districts have already decide to do just that.
Substitute teachers are hard to find when there isn't a global pandemic. Having multiple staff members out due to positive tests or precautionary quarantine makes it difficult to run a building they way you normally would.
Anyway, enough with all of that. Due to the general craziness of the week, my post is going to be pretty much one note (see what I did there) today.
Chris Stapleton has a new album that just dropped last night. I spent the morning listening to it and as much as I like his stuff, there is one song that really defines his current success as an artist.
What was once a fairly obscure country western tune has become widely popular and pretty much a staple of most wedding DJ's.
Chris Stapleton is not new to the music scene. Before he started his widely successful solo career he was in a bluegrass band called The Steel Drivers. In fact, as I mentioned above, Chris wasn't even the first artist to record "Tennessee Whiskey".
In fact, it was written in this building right here in the early 80's by a couple of people named Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove. The first time my wife and I went to Nashville, we made sure to drive by the Blue Bird Cafe on our way out of town heading down to Chattanooga.
It is basically in a strip mall, but many famous people got their starts here and many famous songs were either birthed or introduced to the public for the first time here. To get into a show you have to basically wait in a line that wraps around the plaza all day. We decided to take a hard pass on that but maybe one day we will catch a show at The Blue Bird.
Apparently, George Strait was offered the song but he passed on it (bet he is kicking himself over that).
Instead it was sang by a fellow named David Allen Coe. Now, fair warning, Coe has some really classic country songs under his belt, but he is/was also a pretty big racist and misogynist. He has some stuff in his catalog that no one should ever have to listen to.
Beyond his greatest hits, I can't really recommend that you dig into much of his stuff. I saw him in concert at a place in Flint, MI called the Machine Shop many years ago. It turns out he has actually collaborated on several songs with Kid Rock (but that is neither here nor there).
Anyway, his version will always be special to me because it is the first time I have ever heard this song.
If I had to put the two side by side, the version by Stapleton is clearly the winner.
Then we have this cover by the great George Jones. Not quite as bluesy as the Stapleton version, but more refined than the Coe cut. I was lucky enough to see Jones many years ago before he passed away. I honestly don't remember if he sang this song at the concert, but I do remember it was a good show.
There have been countless covers of Stapleton's arrangement of the song on Youtube by professional and amateur artists alike. For me, the standout version will always be the Stapleton one and that is why it has earned a permanent place on my "Campfire Tunes" playlist.
So there you go, that is kind of what I have been listening to this week. If you have been listening to something really awesome let me know about it in the comments. Better yet, write your own post and use the #whoareyoulisteningto tag!
