i'm your puppet

i missed the drive-by truckers when they came through chicago this past monday on the final leg of their "dirt underneath" tour with the one & only spooner oldham in tow...i guess i just wasn't interested in an acoustic drive-by truckers show (even though my friend gutwald once went on for a good 20 minutes about the time he saw patterson hood perform unplugged at schubas a few years back, in which he played some 45 minute song that he'd only played once before, & how incredible it was), but i was instantly disappointed that i didn't go when i saw over at largehearted boy the other day, that they had covered "i'm your puppet", one of our favorite songs here at the leather canary...written by oldham & dan penn back in 1965, the song became a hit a year later for james & bobby purify & has since been recorded a number of times by groups like the box tops, sam & dave, & marvin gaye & tammi terrell...here's what penn had to say about the song over at proper american's website:

“We’d done our usual, which was go get a barbecue plate or a burger. Then we came to the studio, and I had just bought a little 12-string guitar that sounded pretty good, so I just started playin’ [voices the guitar line from the song], and Spooner just slid in with [he makes the familiar keyboard sound]. Next thing you know, we’re into this song. I started writin’ stuff down, we cut a little demo on it and me and Rick came up to Nashville and put some strings on it. Actually, it was a record that came out on me, I believe on MGM, but it was called ‘The Puppet’—wasn’t no ‘Your.’ My little record didn’t do anything, and it went to the demo file. So when producer Don Schroeder brought the Purify brothers in, they went to the demo file and they picked that one out. When they started singin’ it, they sang ‘I’m your puppet’—they couldn’t remember, I guess. And I didn’t like it anyway; I thought it was too fast, kind of a rip-off of Sam & Dave, I thought. At least that’s what I was thinkin’ then. Later on, when it came out and became a hit, I loved it. It was easy to get on board later.”

when the drive-by truckers played it monday night, special guest kelly hogan handled the vocals...if you want to hear the rest of the show, which included several previews of the forthcoming brighter than creation's dark album, go here.

download: james & bobby purify - i'm your puppet
download: drive-by truckers ft. kelly hogan - i'm your puppet

related: patterson hood addressed the new album's title in his latest tour notes.