Title: “Stormy Monday”
Format: Single
Written by: Aaron “T-Bone” Walker
Performed by: Gary Moore
Genre: Blues
Taken from: Back to the Blues
Year: 1947 (original) 2001 (Moore version)
Acclaim: One of the most popular blues standards, it has been covered by everyone from BB King to John Mayall and from Mountain to Muddy Waters.
If you're into the Blues then you really have to be into this song. It absolutely drips the kind of self-pity, anger and bitterness that informs the blues, as the singer laments about facing another week. On one level, we all know that feeling, and given that the full title of the original song is “Call it stormy Monday (but Tuesday is just as bad)” there's no indication things are going to get any better for the singer. Written by blues legend T-Bone Walker, I could have chosen any of a dozen versions to showcase here, but picked one of my two favourite bluesmen, as I believe Gary Moore does a fabulous and emotional version here. Hard to track down a studio version on YouTube but here's Gary live, as we say here, giving it socks.
Things I like about this :
Everything. I know, it's the easy way out, but I do. It's just such a great song, I don't want to break it down into separate components, even if I could.
Things I don't like about this:
Nothing
Rating: 