Sweet Soul Music: 50-1 (Now counting down 100-51)

[DapperJong]

30. Reuben Bell & The Casanovas - It's Not That Easy



I am genuinely lucky to own this. I found it in the US while going through records in an antique store and didn't really know what it was until i bought it and listened to it. The vocals are extremely emotional here.

Classic deep Southern Soul, released on the Shreveport based Murco Records out of Louisiana, 1967. Bell recorded quite a few other singles as a solo artist but this was the only 45 done with The Casanovas.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

30. Nolan Porter - If I Could Only Be Sure / Keep On Keeping On

Head to the west coast this time for Nolan Porter, a forgotten Los Angeles R&B performer.

This guy only released a couple of albums (in 1970 and 1972) and I can't split his two best songs. Basically has two tracks that he's remembered for. Paul Weller covered If I Could Only Be Sure in 2004 which brought it to a new audience. The other one is Keep On Keeping On, whose guitar riff was borrowed for Joy Division's Interzone. Both belters:

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

29. Gil-Scott Heron - The Bottle

A genre-bending artist from Chicago, Heron described himself as the 'Bluesologist' so I guess he is to blues what Damien Fleming is to swing bowling! Others have described him as "the Godfather of rap" or "the black Bob Dylan."

Many of his early songs were spoken word, and he is regarded by some as the first rapper. A highly political artist, he rallied for civil rights, against nuclear power, against apartheid in South Africa - "a political voice with a poet's skill."

His 1970s albums Pieces of a Man and Winter in America were collaborations with Brian Jackson and are regarded as his classic releases. The Bottle was a single off the 1974 Winter In America album. It's jazzy sound belies its grim subject matter - the devastating effects of alcoholism and addiction played out against a backdrop of wider social indifference to the plight of the marginalized. Along with his anthem, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, it is his most famous song.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

28. Bobby Byrd - I Know You Got Soul

Overlooked and underrated, Bobby Byrd is known as the man who discovered James Brown. The pair met during a baseball game when Brown was at a juvenile detention centre and became friends. Byrd's mother took Brown in to live with them.

Bobby Byrd is also remembered as being the founder of The Famous Flames, the group which backed James Brown on so many of his hits and was, in many ways, as much responsible for their hit status as was Brown himself. Byrd also was the "warm up" act at most of Brown's live concerts before returning to perform with the group (singing and playing the organ).

Byrd did enjoy some solo chart success but his light baritone was most conspicuous in the "get on up" responses to Brown on his Sex Machine signature tune. His solo career spanned a decade in the 60s and 70s when black music evolved from gritty r&b and soul into funk. I Know You Got Soul was released as a single in 1971 with Byrd backed by James Brown's band, the JB's.



This song was heavily sampled by Erik B & Rakim in their legendary 1987 track of the same name.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

27. Shuggie Otis - Aht Uh Mi Hed

Great article in The Guardian about 'lost' artist Shuggie Otis - link

‘Heir to Hendrix’ Shuggie Otis: ‘I could have been a millionaire, but that wasn’t on my mind’

‘I heard some people heard I’d died. They’ll find out soon that I didn’t,” says Shuggie Otis, making it sound less like a promise than a threat. Otis – the son of rhythm and blues pioneer Johnny Otis – is as close to a living legend as you can get. A bass and guitar whiz who recorded his first album with session supremo Al Kooper and appeared on Frank Zappa's Hot Rats, both in 1969, when he was 15, he was considered the heir apparent to Jimi Hendrix. As a multi-instrumental polymath flitting between genres and experimenting with drum machines, he was the peer of Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder and a precursor to Prince. He was rock’s most wanted, declining offers to join the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Blood, Sweat & Tears, and an invitation to collaborate with Quincy Jones.

He was wilful enough to pursue his own path, but it was worth it: three albums of baroque ballads, paisley funk, celestial blues and proto-electronic pop followed. His self-titled 1970 debut preceded 1971’s Freedom Flight, which featured the ravishing Strawberry Letter 23, a song that has, he admits, “kept me alive all these years”: it was a hit in 1977 for the Brothers Johnson, used by Quentin Tarantino for the Jackie Brown soundtrack and sampled in 2003 by Beyonce. Third and best was 1974’s self-produced magnum opus Inspiration Information, hailed today as a lost classic.

And then, nothing. Between the mid-70s and the start of this century, Otis – a sort of R&B Syd Barrett or Brian Wilson – did a disappearing act that made his old friend Arthur Lee of Love look like an amateur in the reclusive-genius stakes.

(full article is linked above)

This is my favourite song of his. He's an artist worth checking out if you haven't come across him.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

We've reached the halfway mark!

26. Aretha Franklin - Think

Possibly a bit low in the count for the 'Queen of Soul' given that Rolling Stone magazine had her at #9 in the top 100 greatest artists of all time, and at #1 in the greatest singers of all time.

18 Grammys, 75 million records sold, first female performer in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame... an icon. But I don't actually like that many of her songs Too many slow, love songs for mine. Sacrilege in a soul music countdown Perhaps I just need to explore her catalogue a bit deeper.

Her most famous song is her version of Otis Redding's Respect (vies with Hendrix's Watchtower for the best cover of all time IMO) but I've given Think the nod, as she co-wrote it. It was released in 1968.



The version used in the Blues Brothers is slightly different and longer

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

25. Billy Stewart - Summertime

In the 1950s while appearing in a concert in Washington, singer Bo Diddley discovered Billy while he was playing his piano backstage at the Capital Arena Theater, and asked him to join his band.

From this beginning, Billy (nicknamed 'Fat Boy') got his own recording contract. Possessing a distinctive scat-singing style, he would double up words and play with sentences like child with a toy. His love of Calypso music was incorporated in his style of singing.

He had a little bit of success then trying to reach more into the pop stream, he recorded an album of standards, which would broaden his audience. On this album Billy went back to a song that won him a local talent show as teenager with Summertime. It paid off, making Summertime his first crossover top ten hit on the Pop charts and hitting #7 on the R&B charts.

A heap of artists have spun their version of George Gershwin's Summertime but I think this is the definitive version. Only a few years after releasing this song - his biggest hit - he died when he crashed the car he was driving off a bridge and into a river. The soul community mourned the loss of a talented singer who had a distinctive style, and certain way of captivating an audience with beautiful haunting heartbreaking songs.

 

[Eddie Dingle]

Absolutely killing it man.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

24. Black Ivory - I Keep Asking You Questions

A group from Harlem, New York, who had a string of minor hits in the 70s. They were on a fairly small label so their music barely went beyond the east coast and they drifted apart when disco came to the fore.

This song was never released as a single, was just a B-side and an album track from 1972. You might recognise the intro which was sampled in Raekwon's Criminology.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

23. Ann Peebles - I Can't Stand The Rain

Memphis soul is up next with Ann Peebles. She used the same producer and band as Al Green and was actually described by some as 'the female Al Green.'

One evening in Memphis in 1973, soul singer Ann Peebles was meeting friends, including her partner, Hi Records staff writer Don Bryant, to go to a concert. Just as they were about to set off, the heavens opened and Peebles snapped: "I can't stand the rain." As a professional songwriter in constant need of new material, Bryant was used to plucking resonant phrases out of the air and he liked the idea of reacting against recent R&B hits that celebrated bad weather, such as the Dramatics' In The Rain.

So he sat down at the piano and started riffing on the theme, weaving in ideas from Peebles and local DJ Bernie Miller. The song was finished that night and presented the next morning to Hi's studio maestro, Willie Mitchell, who used a brand new gadget, the electric timbale, to create the song's distinctive raindrop riff. It really was that easy. "We didn't go to the concert," Bryant remembers. "We forgot about the concert."

Some critics reckoned Peebles had the talent necessary to be a star but not the outsized personality. Mitchell had another theory. "She was the girl with the big voice who could have really gone further," he told Blues & Soul magazine in 1987. "But I don't think Ann spent enough time thinking about what she needed to do. I don't think she put as much energy into her career as a singer as some of the rest of these people."

Peebles doesn't exactly disagree. "I was happy the way I was. I still did a lot of songs but at that point I was married, I had a child and I was happy. Knowing [stardom] would take me away from what I was really like, it didn't bother me that much."

 

[DapperJong]

I found an original pressing of Winter in America in Germany of all places! Great album.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

22. The Temptations - (I Know) I'm Losing You

Can't believe that I didn't get these guys into the Top 20! One of the biggest, best and most popular groups ever and one of Motown's finest.

At various times the group featured some of the most famous names in soul - Eddie Kendricks, David Ruffin and Otis Williams (still performing with the band today - “Some of the faces change,” sings founder member Otis Williams, “But the name’s the same/Still the Motor City runnin’ through my veins.”)

At the end of the 1960s there was a bit of turmoil with star Ruffin wanting special treatment, including renaming the group David Ruffin & The Temptations. It turned pear-shaped and he was fired. Inexplicably, he still turned up at several of their gigs and jumped on stage and grabbed the microphone when they sang songs he'd previously sung the lead on. They beefed up security but it happened a few times. The positive audience reaction to his walk ons complicated things further. So he was like the Chief Wiggum to their B Sharps. Finally he stopped coming.

The group's sound changed to 'psychedelic soul' during this period which was a blend of Motown and psychedelic rock, similar in tone to Sly & The Family Stone rather than the Ruffin-era ballads.

Plenty of huge tunes and #1's throughout their journey - My Girl, Ain't Too Proud To Beg, Cloud Nine, Ball of Confusion, Papa Was a Rollin' Stone... but my favourite is (I Know) I'm Losing You which was a hit as well. It was released as a single in 1966.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

21. Lee Moses - Bad Girl

Incredible song by an artist not nearly as renowned as most in this countdown. It was released as a single in 1967 but sunk without making a splash. Moses left behind one highly regarded album (1971's Time and Place), a few singles and little else.

From the Light In The Attic website: A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, Moses cut his teeth in the clubs of Atlanta, the ‘Motown of the South’, where he frequently performed alongside his contemporary Gladys Knight (who reportedly wanted him for the Pips, but couldn’t pin him down).

It was, however, in New York in the ‘60s that Moses made his greatest bid to find the solo fame he desired. Moses began working there as a session player, even playing frequently with a pre-fame Jimi Hendrix, but his close relationship with producer and Atlanta native Johnny Brantley eventually saw him getting his own break via a series of 45s in 1967 – most notably with covers of Joe Simon’s “My Adorable One”, The Four Tops’ “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” and The Beatles’ “Day Tripper”.

It was 1971 before Moses’ dream of being at stage front was realized, when he released his Brantley-produced LP Time And Place for Maple Records. Recorded with a band including members of The Ohio Players and Moses’ own backing group The Deciples, it was, nonetheless, Moses himself whose star quality shone through, via his scratchy guitar riffs, his throat-ripping vocals and the stirring mood that permeates the LP’s heady mix of funk, soul and R&B.

The LP did no business, and Moses’ dream quickly crumbled. Though details on his life are scarce, it’s believed he fled New York disenchanted with the music industry, feeling he’d been double-crossed by Brantley both in credit and remuneration for the countless records he’d played on. Back in Atlanta, Moses returned to playing the clubs, married twice, and fell into depression and drug dependency. He died in 1997 at the age of 56.

Time And Place soon became a much-sought-after item for collectors, and its cult has continued to grow over the years.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

20. Wilson Pickett - Engine No 9

An R&B, Soul and Rock n Roll colossus with a string of hits - Mustang Sally, In The Midnight Hour, 634-5789, Land of 100 Dances, Funky Broadway... My favourite song of his though is this funk-riddled 1970 single which was also on the album Wilson Pickett in Philadelphia.

His first solo release was If You Need Me which was taken by Atlantic stablemate Solomon Burke and became a huge hit for him. Pickett said he cried!

He soon found himself with the nickname "Wicked Pickett" - which has been described as a reference both to his screaming delivery and to his offstage behavior. He continued to record songs that would become part of the soul canon. He also earned a reputation as one of music's most compelling live performers, delivering stage shows in which he mixed gospel-tinged solemnity with funk stylings that evoked James Brown.

In 1991, he was arrested and charged with shouting death threats while driving his car over the mayor's front lawn in Englewood, New Jersey, where he lived at the time.

Reflecting on his career years after his chart performance had begun to slip, Mr. Pickett said he had once harbored mixed feelings about abandoning his gospel roots, fearing that "if you leave God and go to the devil, you're going to go to hell," as he told Rolling Stone. "You see, I wanted to sing gospel, but I wanted to make me some money, too."

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

19. Buddy Miles - The Segment

A drummer! Also a great soul singer. He founded Electric Flag and played with Jimi Hendrix with the Band Of Gypsys (he also guested on a couple of Electric Ladyland tracks) before starting his own bands - the Buddy Miles Experience and the Buddy Miles Band. Eventually just Buddy Miles.

His signature song was Them Changes which they'd recorded for the Band of Gypsys album and he re-made for his own album later.

The Segment is a song from his 1971 album, A Message To The People. Have no idea why this guy isn't bigger. An amazing back story and a string of really interesting albums from the 70s. I guess his work with Hendrix overshadowed his solo career which is a shame.



He also released a live album in 1971 which is one of the best live records I've heard from any artist.



Does quite a few cool covers versions of songs, like this one of the Allman Brothers' Dreams.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

18. Baby Huey - Listen To Me

James Thomas Ramsey, aka Baby Huey, introduced himself on stage better than anyone else could have dared: "I'm Big Baby Huey, and I'm 400 pounds of soul." In the 1960s, he and his band, the Babysitters, played everywhere from the clubs of New York to private parties in Paris, but Chicago was where they were best known-- and where they called home. The band would play any gig that would have them during that time, from tiny blues clubs to cruise ships. As a frontman, Baby Huey was talented, flamboyant, and enormous-- anywhere from 350-400 pounds, topped off by a giant afro. Unfortunately, Huey died of a heart attack at 26 in 1970, and never saw his debut album released the following year. Since then, Living Legend has remained an obscurity, though its songs have long been embraced by hip-hop, having been sampled by everyone from Kool Herc to Eric B and Rakim to Ghostface.

One album and a handful of singles is pretty much all Baby Huey left behind. Hard Times is probably his best known song, written by Curtis Mayfield. It was covered by John Legend and The Roots for their 2010 collaboration album Wake Up! The song I like best though is Listen To Me which gathers steam throughout.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

17. Melvin Bliss - Reward / Synthetic Substitution

This guy only released two songs ever (that I can find) and I can't split them. He was a military man who played in navy bands and recorded one single when he finished his service. An A and a B side. Then his label Sunburst went bankrupt and that was it. Career over!

Synthetic Substitution is (apparently) the most sampled song in hip hop ever.





There is a documentary about this mystery man but I haven't seen it

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

16. James Carr - The Dark End Of The Street

Possessing a sweet southern voice, Carr is a well regarded soul artist though didn't have a vast catalogue.

In 1966 he released The Dark End Of The Street, written by Dan Penn and Chips Moman during a break in a poker game. Dozens of artists have released their take on this song but I think Carr's version is the definitive one. On a tour of Britain and Ireland in 1998, Dan Penn made a striking introduction to his best known song. "Everybody keeps asking me which is my favourite version of Dark End Of The Street," he said, "as if there was any other than James Carr's. Not even mine. I'll sing it anyway. But I wish I had James here."

Carr's initial releases in the 60s had made little impact but, with the intense She's Better Than You, it was evident that he had found his voice. You've Got My Mind Messed Up gave him his first hit, followed by Love Attack, Pouring Water On A Drowning Man and, in the last weeks of 1966, The Dark End Of The Street.

But as success came, so Carr became more difficult to work with. A simple man, who had been taught to read and write late in life, he was prone to vagueness at the best of times, a trait exacerbated by a fondness for reefer and by the medication he took to counter fits of depression. He needed patient handling if he was to be coaxed into giving a performance.

His lack of ambition, and inclination to drift into semi-catatonic trances, sabotaged all attempts to further his career. He recorded unsuccessfully for Atlantic in 1971, but then lapsed into a silence briefly broken by tours of Japan and Italy. On his last night in the Far East, he seized up on stage.

In his absence, the legend grew.

One of the most beautiful soul ballads of all time: "At the dark end of the street/ That's where we always meet/ Hiding in shadows, where we don't belong/ Living in darkness to hide our wrong."

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

15. Darondo - Didn't I

Next up is Darondo, a soul singer from San Francisco. The songwriter and performer was famous for his flamboyant personal style and a voice that combined the entrancing sensitivity of greats like Al Green and Ronald Isley with a rawer, idiosyncratic touch that was all his own.

He recorded unsuccessfully in the 70s but didn't really come into prominence until 2006 when DJs started rediscovering his songs and an album of old recordings was released. This is his signature tune Didn't I, which gained a new lease of life when used in Breaking Bad. He also has a killer blues tune The Wolf that is among my favourite songs of all time of any genre.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

Heading towards the top 10 and the business end of the countdown. Has anyone seen Baby Driver? Saw it last night and almost fell out of my seat at a few of the soul songs on the soundtrack. Brilliant and quite timely. One song already appears in this countdown, one to come and one narrowly missed out.

14. Terry Callier - You Goin' Miss Your Candyman

Like Gil-Scott Heron, another genre-bending artist here with folk/soul/jazz songwriter Terry Callier. In what is becoming a fairly common theme in this countdown, Callier was another artist who didn't gain wide recognition during his career but has been discovered later.

In 1964, he was signed to Prestige Records by the producer Samuel Charters, with whom he cut his first album, The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier. Featuring just an acoustic guitar, two bass players (an idea Callier borrowed from the jazzman John Coltrane) and Callier's gentle but hugely expressive voice, the album stands today as a minor masterpiece. .

Callier earned a living by playing gigs in New York and Chicago until he was contacted by Jerry Butler in 1970 and recruited to his salaried group of songwriters. "Our job was just to write songs and learn about the music business," Callier told the journalist Angus Batey. "That was incredible." The following year, the Chess producer Charles Stepney approached Callier for songs. Callier supplied The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind), which was recorded by the Dells and was successful enough to prompt a recording contract for Callier from the Chess subsidiary Cadet. He made three solo albums under Stepney's guidance: Occasional Rain, What Color Is Love and I Just Can't Help Myself; commercial reward did not match their critical acclaim and Cadet ended Callier's contract.

Hope was rekindled when Elektra Records came calling in 1977, though Callier refused to have any truck with the prevailing disco boom, and his two Elektra albums continued his string of commercial flops. His Elektra mentor, Don Mizell, quit the label in 1979, and Callier was dropped shortly afterwards.

When his daughter, Sundiata, who was living with Callier's ex-wife, told him she wanted to stay in Chicago to attend school, Callier realised he had to have a steady income. "She needed me and the music business just didn't seem like a viable option at that point," he said. He quit music and became a computer programmer then was amazed in the 90's when one of his old singles started getting played by DJs in England. Suddenly he was back performing shows and collaborating with Beth Orton.

I was going to go with another track, Ordinary Joe, which is more of a soul-tune but You Goin' Miss Your Candyman is just too good to leave out.

Studio version:



Live version:

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

13. Curtis Mayfield - The Underground

The Impressions have already made an appearance in this countdown (We're A Winner at #35), Mayfield left the Impressions in 1970 to pursue a solo career.

Curtis Mayfield was known for introducing social consciousness into African-American music. Having been raised in the Cabrini-Green projects of Chicago, he witnessed many of the tragedies of the urban ghetto first hand, and was quoted saying “With everything I saw on the streets as a young black kid, it wasn’t hard during the later fifties and sixties for me to write my heartfelt way of how I visualized things, how I thought things ought to be.”

Along with Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, Mayfield's solo albums ushered in a new socially conscious, funky style of popular soul music. He was dubbed 'The Gentle Genius'.

Mayfield was paralyzed from the neck down after lighting equipment fell on him during a live performance at Wingate Field in New York in 1990. Despite this he continued to perform before his death in 1999.

This song is from his 1971 album, Roots, and was also the B-side to his million-selling single Freddie's Dead. The year after this he released his definitive work, the soundtrack to the film Super Fly but this is my favourite song of his. Just seeps into your consciousness.

There'll be no light, so there can be no sight
And you'll judge your fellow men on the stand
By what is right
They'll all turn black so who's to know
As a matter of fact: color, creed and breed must go

 

[QuietB]

45. Gloria Jones - Tainted Love

A famous song but not nearly as famous as Soft Cell's cover version. In fact this 1964 original didn't even chart! It was written by Ed Cobb for Gloria Jones, a singer who he had discovered as a teenager. Cobb also wrote hits for The Standells (Dirty Water) and a few others.

Jones' solo career wasn't particularly prolific and she became a songwriter for Motown records. Later she sang backing vocals for T-Rex and had a long term relationship with Marc Bolan. They had one son (Rolan Bolan). She was the driver of the car that crashed, killing Bolan in 1977. They were both drunk having been out at a restaurant that night. It was ruled an accidental death.

Personally I prefer this version to the Soft Cell one, even though it sunk without trace at the time.

Had no idea this was a cover - it is bloody good

 

[Eddie Dingle]

Drugs Are Bad Mackay? are you a funk man as well?

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

Drugs Are Bad Mackay? are you a funk man as well?

To a degree but prefer blues, soul, folk. Had to cull a few songs that sort of cross over the funk/soul genres to keep it down to 50 songs. Eg The Grunt by the JB's I really like but didn't include. Not a massive fan of Parliament, Funkadelic etc though do like them.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

12. Bill Withers - I Can't Write Left Handed

One of the most interesting artists in the countdown, Withers had 8 years at the top which included some massive songs (Ain't No Sunshine, Lean On Me, Use Me, Lovely Day, Just The Two Of Us) then just walked away. There's an outstanding article from Rolling Stone about Withers that's well worth a read - link here. Here are some tid-bits:

On the mantel in a hallway, there is a Best R&B Song award, for 1980's "Just the Two of Us," from the last time he attended the show, three decades ago; it sits next to two other Grammys, for 1971's "Ain't No Sunshine" and 1972's "Lean on Me." A few years after "Two of Us," Withers became one of the few stars in pop-music history to truly walk away from a lucrative career, entirely of his own volition, and never look back. "These days," he says, "I wouldn't know a pop chart from a Pop-Tart."

"I grew up in the age of Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Nancy Wilson," he says, still musing on the Grammys. "It was a time where a fat, ugly broad that could sing had value. Now everything is about image. It's not poetry. This just isn't my time."

His career lasted eight years by his own count; in that time, he wrote and recorded some of the most loved, most covered songs of all time, particularly "Lean on Me" and "Ain't No Sunshine" — tunes that feature dead-simple, soulful instrumentation and pure melodies that haven't aged a second. "He's the last African-American Everyman," says Questlove. "Jordan's vertical jump has to be higher than everyone. Michael Jackson has to defy gravity. On the other side of the coin, we're often viewed as primitive animals. We rarely land in the middle. Bill Withers is the closest thing black people have to a Bruce Springsteen."

"[Withers'] songs were unbelievable," music executive Clarence Avant remembers. "You just had to listen to his lyrics. I gave him a deal and set him up with Booker T. Jones to produce his album."

Jones, the famous Stax keyboardist, went through his Rolodex and hired the cream of the Los Angeles scene: drummer Jim Keltner, MGs bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, Stephen Stills on guitar. "Bill came right from the factory and showed up in his old brogans and his old clunk of a car with a notebook full of songs," says Jones. "When he saw everyone in the studio, he asked to speak to me privately and said, 'Booker, who is going to sing these songs?' I said, 'You are, Bill.' He was expecting some other vocalist to show up."

Withers was extremely uneasy until Graham Nash walked into the studio. "He sat down in front of me and said, 'You don't know how good you are,' " Withers says. "I'll never forget it."

This powerful, moving war song is from the 1973 album Live at Carnegie Hall.

I can't write left-handed.
Would you please write a letter-write a letter to my mother?

I aint gonna live-I don't believe I'm going to live to get much older.
Strange little man over here in Vietnam I aint never seen, bless
his heart, aint never done nothing to, he done shot me in my shoulder.



If you've got an hour to kill, here's the 2009 documentary about him, Still Bill.