Song of the Day: 'Take Me to the River'

Take me to the Reverend: The original from Al Green plus moist covers by Talking Heads, Levon Helm, Mavis Staples, Annie Lennox and Roxy Music.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books and now writer/director of award-winning films. He was also a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy.

As I noted yesterday, a Grammy winner last night was a song “Stompin’ Ground” from Aaron Neville and the venerable Dirty Dozen Brass Band from the soundtrack album to last year’s documentary on New Orleans music, Take Me to the River. The title song, oddly, does not appear on the album, so I thought I would remedy that with the original 1974version by Rev. Al Green (who co-wrote it), below, plus several notable covers. The daily cartoon is also down the page.

Enjoy, then subscribe if you want me to continue (no joke), it’s still free.

Al Green, live, pre-Reverend, via Soul Train. No auto-tuning, kiddies.

Now the white boy/big suit version from David Byrne and the Heads.

When Rev. Al got his Kennedy Center honors, Mavis Staples and Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave fame) did this. Sam, back in 1976, sang at our 10th anniversary party in NYC for Crawdaddy, guesting with Southside Johnny. Before Springsteen took the stage.

Bryan Ferry and his gang.

Levon Helm, of course, sang a great version.

Annie Lennox with a more unusual take, though based, it seems, on Heads version.

Cartoon of the Day

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s atomic bomb movie twisted by the White House and Pentagon), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His 2021 film, Atomic Cover-up, won four awards, and his current one, The First Attack Ads, aired over hundreds of PBS stations this past fall. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.