Album: I’m New Here
Year: 2010
Nearly 40 years after “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” became an instant and forever maxim, Gil Scott-Heron walked into a recording studio for the first time in 15 years and laid down maybe the first Robert Johnson cover in years — maybe ever, really — that captured the spirit of hopelessness and dismay that permeated so many of Johnson’s recordings.
With his voice wrecked from years of abuse, Scott-Heron sounded like he had first-hand knowledge of walking side by side with the Devil, and it showed in every nook and cranny of the performance.
With producer Richard Russell laying down doomy synths, trip-hop beats and punctuating the music with a weird electronic stutter at seemingly random intervals, Scott-Heron’s soulfully broken vocals emphasize just how much despair is in the words of “Me and The Devil.”
You may
Bury my body
Down by the highway side
I don’t really care where you bury me when I’m dead, I’m gone
You may bury my body
Down by the highway side
So my old evil spirit
Can get a greyhound bus and ride
“Me and The Devil Blues” is, of course, one of the Robert Johnson songs that is most central to his legend, so for Scott-Heron to consciously tackle it and wrest at least some of the legend from it goes to where he was when he was recording it. It feels almost too brutal, too personal to be released, which is why it was such a fucking miracle that it was.
Official Video for “Me and The Devil”
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