Tuesday, June 09, 2009

The Song That Got Away (An Occasional Series)

From the 1982 EP Trap Door, please enjoy T-Bone Burnett's remarkable take on Jules Styne's ode to conspicuous goldiggery (a/k/a The Judi Nathan Story) "Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend."


You know what to do -- just click on the play button and marvel.



T-Bone has claimed this was an attempt at a sort of Tommy James thing; myself, I hear more of a Tex-Mex Lou Reed, but in any event it's a genius version ("Let's rock!" in this context may be the most hilariously brilliant exhortation in the history of the music). As a scholarly note, I should mention that the vinyl version of this disappeared almost as fast as it was released; I had it on a cassette that eventually fell apart in the early 90s. "Diamonds" itself didn't show up on CD until 2000 and the soundtrack album to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (with extraneous overdubbed applause) and it made its first official unsullied appearance on Sony's excellent two-disc T-Bone best-of Twenty Twenty in 2006.

Actually, I just found a link where you can download the entire original EP, which includes the even more amazing "A Ridiculous Man."

Go for it HERE.
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10 comments:

  1. JB6/09/2009 6:32 AM

    The only thing I don't like about T-Bone being a big time producer is that I'd rather be hearing great new T-Bone music. He's an underappreciated genius.

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  2. korralhex6/09/2009 8:41 AM

    great ,thank you...
    http://whenyoufindout.blogspot.com/

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  3. steves6/09/2009 9:53 AM

    What Jim said. But he is a great producer.

    And thanks, Steve.

    (Hehehe...And a surprisingly relevant word verification: "progent")

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  4. cthulhu6/09/2009 10:10 AM

    Glad to see you giving T-Bone some recognition on your blog. But "Trap Door" was available on CD sometime in the late '80s, because that's when I bought it. At least it was available in Texas...

    BTW, if you ever get a chance to catch T-Bone live, take the opportunity - his show in San Diego in 2006 was marvelous.

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  5. steve simels6/09/2009 11:04 AM

    cthulhu:

    I stand corrected about Trap Door on CD....

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  6. dave™©6/09/2009 7:22 PM

    His first solo elpee was great - "Driving Wheel" is an absolute classic - and when the FUCK is the Alpha Band catalog gonna be re-released?

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  7. Wendy6/10/2009 12:35 AM

    Lou Reed for sure.

    This is great.

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  8. Steve F6/10/2009 11:59 AM

    It reminds me of Webb Wilder as well as Lou Reed

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  9. TMink6/10/2009 12:13 PM

    I have this somewhere in my collection, I just wonder where.

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  10. Anonymous7/14/2010 5:26 PM

    I played this track at my uncle's wedding reception, which I was DJ'ing with my brother.

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