Today, on your daily source of enriching musical information, I present to you one of my favorite songs, Blues Run the Game. It was written by the Late Jackson C. Frank and has been covered many times by a dazzling array of artists, as you'll soon experience. First, though, a bit about Mr. Frank;
At the tender age of 11 years old, Jackson C. Frank was hospitalized by a furnace explosion beneath his classroom, which killed 15 students. During his hospitalization, he was introduced to the acoustic guitar and took it up immediately. At the age of 21, he was given a $100,000 insurance check which was more than enough to catch a boat to England (Damn Wikipedia!)
Soon after this, he recorded his debut album with Paul Simon as a producer. The album spawned some great tracks, such as Blues Run the Game. Proceeding this though, the not-so fecund Frank suffered from writers block and was broke like a bad joke (somebody's uncle told, at a wedding reception in 1972) , so he moved back to the US. Unfortunately, fortunes were consistently low for Mr.Frank and he died of pneumonia and cardiac arrest in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on March 3rd, 1999, at the age of fifty-six.
Here's the track Blues Run The Game and about 50,000 different covers of it.
Blues Run The Game - Jackson C. Frank
Blues Run The Game - Nick Drake
Blues Run The Game - Simon and Garfunkel
Blues Run The Game - The Counting Crows
Blues Run The Game - Colin Meloy
Blues Run The Game - Sandy Denny
Blues Run The Game - Bert Jansch
See if you can guess which version is my favorite.
And for the band of the week ...
The recherché, the sterling Okkervil River!
No explanation needed
Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe - Okkervil River
The President's Dead - Okkervil River
Enjoy
