Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.
This is “Jesse James” by Ry Cooder:
There are numerous versions of the folk ballad, “Jesse James,” about the famous outlaw and train robber. This Ry Cooder version gives you a sophisticated yet fun barroom instrumental version before an equally fun and stylistically sprawling–if not to say eccentric– vocal rendition. Johnny Cash offers a decent rendition, like Ry Cooder’s, from a film soundtrack, in which he makes the most of the couplet that rhymes “drunk” with “plunk.”
