Listen: Get Out Of My Life, Woman / Lee DorseyLeeDorseyGetOut.mp3

Listen: Working In The Coalmine / Lee Dorsey LeeDorseyWorking.mp3

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s version from their EAST / WEST album was my inroduction to Allen Toussaint’s ‘Get Out Of My Life, Woman’. Seemed like all of a sudden, I was seeing Allen Toussaint’s name in the fine print on a bunch of records. All those ignored-by-everyone-else details on the labels were fireside reading for me. A $1.99 mono cut out of his RIDE YOUR PONEY / GET OUT OF MY LIFE, WOMAN album was irresistible around the time, brimming with Allen Toussaint this and that. I was hooked.

‘Working In The Coalmine’ always felt just like…working in a coalmine. Even though I was a youngster addicted to English rock music, it still left loads of room to fantasize about the deep south and it’s chitlin circuit. Anything ethnic was a big magnet, and always on first listen. I’d heard Sam Cooke’s ‘Chain Gang’ but this sounded like working on a chain gang. The pipe clinging sound effect probably being the clincher for a kid. Yeah, Lee Dorsey has the vocal torture down pat too. Definitely rivals ‘Honky Tonk Women’ for best intro.