Saturday, November 17, 2007

Farmer John's History


Mary Beth, an astute reader, more knowledgeable than I on Neil Young, dropped me a note letting me know that Farmer John was not originally written by Neil, even if I associated him with the song. She believed that he had covered it from a one-hit wonder group named The Premiers. Upon further inquiry though, I realized that they were not the original artist either. Digging down even deeper, I found out that the song goes back to an R&B group named Don and Dewey. Instead of writing a whole bunch and pretending that I already knew, I'll give you a link to a page which educated me about it. While you're reading, enjoy a trip through the ages with some different versions:

Don and Dewey - Farmer John : Jungle Hop

The Premiers - Farmer John (Don and Dewey cover) : K-tel Jukebox - The Sixties Vol 1

Neil Young - Farmer John (Live Don and Dewey cover)
: Weld (disc 2)

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - Farmer John (Don and Dewey cover) : Live at Bonnaroo 6-17-2006

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Grace Potter's got a fun cover of the song. It's kinda ironic, because I have a neighbor here named John, and he's a farmer, and she played that when I got him to go to her concert when she was up.