I just went to see the band Old Crow Medicine Show about a week ago, and and I highly recommend seeing them if you have the chance.
They are particularly famous for the song “Wagon Wheel.” Wait a minute, is that their song?
Well – the song is co-written by OCMS’s Ketch Secor and Bob Dylan. How did Bob Dylan come into play? A bit of the chorus of the song comes from a bootleg recording by Dylan for a movie soundtrack recorded back in the 70s.
Ketch heard that fragment, in which Dylan mumbles quite a bit, and fleshed out the full song from it. Before Ketch started work on it, the song was known as “Rock Me Mama.” It’s since been the signature song for OCMS.
But it was also a huge recent hit for Darius Rucker, former front man for Hootie and the Blow Fish. (And one of very few top country hits by an African American singer.)
But the roots of the song go back further – Dylan credits the words “Rock me, mama” to blues player Arhtur “Big Boy” Crudup. And Crudup may have gotten the idea from a Big Bill Broony recording.
In short, you will see that the history of Wagon Wheel follows the themes disucssed in Everything is a Remix Part 1. It’s not that “Wagon Wheel” isn’t an original song – it clearly is. It’s just that almost everything in art and music owes a debt to what came before.
P.S. Devil Makes Three was the opening act for Old Crow, and they were fantastic!