| "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad)" | |
Original record |
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| Written by | T-Bone Walker |
|---|---|
| Music by | T-Bone Walker |
| Published | 1947 |
| Language | English |
| Original artist | T-Bone Walker (1947) |
| Recorded by | Allman Brothers Band (1971), Albert King (1979), Jethro Tull (1988), Eva Cassidy (1997), Cream (2005), And many others... |
"Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad)" (also known as "Call It Stormy Monday" or just "Stormy Monday") is a blues song written by T-Bone Walker and first recorded in 1947. Confusingly, it is also sometimes referred to as "Stormy Monday Blues", although that is the title of a 1942 song by Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine. Walker titled his song as he did to avoid the name collision.
The song is based in the standard 12-bar blues format. The lyrics portray a person who is separated from their love, and is suffering from guilt in some way because of what they have done.
The original recording appeared on Black & White Records, produced by Ralph Bass, and was one of Walker's breakthrough sides in pioneering the idiom of electric blues guitar. This recording also featured smoky trumpet work from sideman Teddy Buckner. It reached number five on the R&B charts in 1948. B.B. King has said that "Call It Stormy Monday" inspired him to begin playing electric guitar.
Walker re-recorded the song with better fidelity and a somewhat different arrangement on his classic 1959 Atlantic Records album T-Bone Blues.
The song became a standard for blues and blues rock artists, and over the years was recorded by Albert King, Eva Cassidy, Question Mark and the Mysterians, Jethro Tull, Eric Clapton, Shake Your Hips!, Lee Michaels, and others. Trouble ensued when artists named it "Stormy Monday Blues", however, as for instance Bobby Bland did on a well-known rendition, as it was mis-credited and royalties went to the Hines-Eckstine song rather than Walker's. This may have also happened on some of the treatments that were just called "Stormy Monday".
The Allman Brothers Band included a live performance (as "Stormy Monday") on their album At Fillmore East in 1971. It garnered considerable airplay on progressive rock and album-oriented rock radio formats during the 1970s.
The 1988 Mike Figgis film Stormy Monday was named for the song, and includes B. B. King's performance of it over the opening credits.
"Stormy Monday", although written in the key of A flat major, is usually performed in the key of G major, follows the structure of an altered 12-bar blues, using the following chord progression:
The Allman Brothers Band instrumentation of the song is typical of the group, consisting of vocals, two guitars, bass guitar, organ, and drums. It demonstrates a different style of music, however, from most Allman Brothers pieces, with a very slow tempo and softer feel, running at only 60 beats per minute. Duane Allman's virtuosic guitar playing can be heard at this slower tempo, in the first of three solos, with Gregg Allman's organ solo shifting to a jazz-waltz feel and Dickey Betts' guitar solo ending it. By means of a careful tape edit, a harmonica solo by Thom Doucette was omitted from the issued version in 1971; it was restored to the song in the 1992 release of the The Fillmore Concerts.