Saturday, July 10, 2010

Willin to plagiarize

I thought Old Crow Medicine Show had recorded a pretty nifty tune called Wagon Wheel. I sing it once in a while. Maybe the chorus written by Bob Dylan.




Then I hear a random tune off my ipod from the Byrds untitled cd and it's called Willin' originally by Little Feat, who originally came from Zappa's band. Here's the Byrds version which is slightly mellower than the original. Gene Parsons sounds like he's singing through a portal to the late 1960s. Amazing voice that has hints of Townes Van Zandt.



Well, I'm no expert, but these songs are very similar in chord progression, lyrics, instrumentation and everything. The key is G. Chord Progression of verses is a classic descending bassline G, D/F#, Eminor, C, D

The chorus is A minor, C, G. Then walk the G, A ,B to the next C chord. Eminor, C, D.

The "Willin" part is a gospel half cadence IV-I. C-G.

It just goes to show you that the Byrds covered Dylan tunes and then covered a Little Feat tune which was later stolen by Dylan but never recorded so Old Crow Medicine Show took it and finished it and recorded it and it's a good tune. Maybe that just proves when good musicians steal from each other you still get good music.
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.