Listen: I'm A King Bee / Slim Harpo I_m A King Bee.mp3

Slim Harpo, real name: James Moore, might as well have been granted a patent on mid 60′s electric blues. Yeah yeah, there were a bunch of great players then, definitely Jimmy Reed, Freddie King, etc, so it’s admittedly a personal pick. His calm voice sat suggestively in every song and those lyrical double entendres were a riot. This one takes the cake. The Rolling Stones recorded a superb version for their first album, so it was nice to find the original was even sleazier. No surprise it was not a commercial hit, but certainly it’s a classic, one of the many of examples written about in THE LONG TAIL.