Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Tim Rose - Morning Dew



In the rock pantheon, two of the most covered songs remain "Hey Joe", and "Morning Dew". And Tim Rose claims he wrote both.

He didn't. "Hey Joe" was probably penned in the early 60's by Billy Roberts, but when Rose performed his edgy, lethally slowed down version at the Cafe Wha? in New York to an impressionable Jimi Hendrix, and subsequently watched as Hendrix sold buckets of a similarly slowed down version, Rose made an audacious claim as author : he re-recorded Hey Joe in the 1990s, re-titling it Blue Steel .44 and again claimed he wrote it, influenced by similar folk songs from his childhood.

Morning Dew was originally penned by Bonnie Dobson. She leant it to Fred Neil, who took it round the New York circuit - and Rose snapped off the smooth folky melancholic edges, replacing it with a snarling, apocalyptic, reverb saturated blast. He somehow managed to secure a writing credit through this appropriation, and the song went on to be covered ad nauseam till the present day. Worthy mentions go to the ever dependable Nancy & Lee.

For our purposes, there's one big detail here. It's a great song, but it's the breakbeat drumming and colossal chops that counts : stand up one Bernard "Pretty" Purdie.

mp3 removed

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. What a great tune. Never heard of it. I must have been living under a rock for 35 years. Thanks for this. It's wonderful and great and I feel alive having stumbled upon something new to me.

Anonymous said...

BEST VERSION IS THE GRATEFUL DEADS ,ALSO METIONABLE is robert plants verion from the
(2002)album dreamland