Ask a group of gui­tarists to name their favorite gui­tar solo, and there’s a pret­ty good chance some­one will men­tion Eric Clap­ton’s solo on the live record­ing of “Cross­roads,” from Cream’s 1968 Wheel’s of Fire album. So then, whose solo does Eric Clap­ton like? On more than one occa­sion he has sin­gled out Duane All­man’s break­through per­for­mance on Wil­son Pick­et­t’s R & B cov­er of the Bea­t­les’ “Hey Jude.”

In late 1968 All­man was about 22 years old and had not yet formed the All­man Broth­ers Band. Eager to make a name for him­self, he showed up at Rick Hal­l’s now-leg­endary FAME Stu­dios in Mus­cle Shoals, Alaba­ma, to offer his ser­vices as a ses­sion gui­tarist. Hall told All­man he already had more gui­tar play­ers than he could use. All­man asked if he could just hang around the stu­dio and help out if the need should ever arise. “I mean, this was Duane,” Hall said to All­man’s biog­ra­ph­er Randy Poe. “He was hell-bent for star­dom and noth­ing was going to stop him.”

Hall let the young gui­tarist hang around, and before long he was play­ing on a few ses­sions with Clarence Carter.  Hall liked what he heard, and All­man’s cru­cial moment arrived short­ly after­ward, when the for­mer Stax record­ing artist Wil­son Pick­ett showed up at the stu­dio unex­pect­ed­ly. As Poe writes in his book Sky­dog: The Duane All­man Sto­ry,

“Pick­ett came into the stu­dio,” says Hall, “and I said, ‘We don’t have any­thing to cut.’ We did­n’t have a song. Duane was there, and he came up with an idea. By this time he’d kind of bro­ken the ice and become my guy. So Duane said, ‘Why don’t we cut “Hey Jude”?’ I said, ‘That’s the most pre­pos­ter­ous thing I ever heard. It’s insan­i­ty. We’re gonna cov­er the Bea­t­les? That’s crazy!’ And Pick­ett said, ‘No, we’re not gonna do it.’ I said, ‘Their sin­gle’s gonna be Num­ber 1. I mean, this is the biggest group in the world!’ And Duane said, ‘That’s exact­ly why we should do it — because [the Bea­t­les sin­gle] will be Num­ber 1 and they’re so big. The fact that we would cut the song with a black artist will get so much atten­tion, it’ll be an auto­mat­ic smash.’ That made all the sense in the world to me. So I said, ‘Well, okay. Let’s do it.’

The orig­i­nal Bea­t­les ver­sion of “Hey Jude” is over sev­en min­utes long. Pick­ett was deter­mined to keep his ver­sion short­er, to make it suit­able for radio play. At four min­utes long, it was still more than a minute longer than the aver­age pop­u­lar song from that era. Most of the extra time is tak­en up by All­man’s explo­sive rock and roll-style gui­tar solo. “From the moment Duane plays the first lick ten sec­onds into the coda,” writes Poe, “until the song fades out over a minute lat­er, it is entire­ly his show. The back­ground vocal­ists are singing those famil­iar ‘na-na-na-na’s’ — but it’s all for naught. Rick Hall has pushed them so far down in the mix, they are mere­ly ambiance. Absolute­ly noth­ing mat­ters but Duane’s gui­tar.” When it was over, every­one rushed to hear the play­back. Hall was so excit­ed he picked up the tele­phone and called Atlantic Records pro­duc­er and exec­u­tive Jer­ry Wexler, who had sent Pick­ett to Mus­cle Shoals. Writes Poe:

Hall cranked up the vol­ume, held the receiv­er near the speak­ers, and played the record­ing all the way through. The gui­tar play­er, nat­u­ral­ly, blew Jer­ry Wexler away. “Who is he?” Wexler asked. Hall told Wexler that Pick­ett called him Sky Man. He said that Sky Man was a hip­pie from Flori­da who had talked Pick­ett into cut­ting the tune. Wexler per­sist­ed. “Who the hell is he?” “Name’s Duane All­man,” Rick replied.

Before Pick­ett chris­tened All­man “Sky Man,” the gui­tarist already had a nick­name he was fond of: “Dog.” In keep­ing with it, he always wore a dog col­lar wrapped around his right boot, like a spur. So the two nick­names were com­bined, and All­man was known there­after as “Sky­dog.”

Although Pick­ett record­ed “Hey Jude” against his will, he liked the result so much he made it the title song of his next album. And right about the time the Bea­t­les’ ver­sion was com­ing down after nine weeks at num­ber one on the Amer­i­can charts, Pick­et­t’s ver­sion start­ed going up. It peaked at num­ber 15 on the R & B chart and num­ber 23 on the pop chart. When Clap­ton first heard All­man’s solo on his car radio, he report­ed­ly pulled over to the side of the road to lis­ten. “I drove home and called Atlantic Records imme­di­ate­ly,” Clap­ton said. “I had to know who that was play­ing gui­tar and I had to know now.”

Lis­ten to the full song:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

Dionne War­wick:

Aretha Franklin and Dionne War­wick are two of the high­est chart­ing women in music his­to­ry. Between them, they’ve made 129 appear­ances in the Bill­board Hot 100. Two of those were with the same song: the 1966 Burt Bacharach and Hal David com­po­si­tion, “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer.”

The song was writ­ten espe­cial­ly for War­wick. David’s lyrics are about a wom­an’s dai­ly thoughts of her man, who is away in Viet­nam. Bacharach arranged and pro­duced the orig­i­nal record­ing in April of 1966, but was unhap­py with the result. “I thought I blew it,” he told the Los Ange­les Times in 1998. “The tem­po seemed too fast. I nev­er want­ed the record to come out. So what hap­pens? They put out the record and it was a huge hit. I was wrong.” The song was released over Bacharach’s objec­tions in Octo­ber, 1967 and rose to num­ber 4 on the Bill­board Hot 100 and num­ber 8 on the Bill­board R & B charts.

Aretha Franklin:

A few months after War­wick­’s sin­gle came out, Aretha Franklin and The Sweet Inspi­ra­tions were singing “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer” for fun dur­ing a break in record­ing ses­sions for Aretha Now. Pro­duc­er Jer­ry Wexler liked what he heard, and decid­ed to record the song. With Franklin on piano and the Mus­cle Shoals Rhythm Sec­tion behind her, it was record­ed in one take. Franklin’s ver­sion has more of a gospel and rhythm & blues feel, with a flu­id call-and-response inter­play between the lead and back­up singers.

Released in July of 1968, the sin­gle was less of a crossover hit than War­wick­’s ver­sion — it peaked at num­ber 10 on the Hot 100 chart — but rose all the way to num­ber 3 on the R & B chart. Over­shad­owed at first, Franklin’s record­ing has grown in stature over the years. Even Bacharach likes it bet­ter than the one he made with War­wick. As he told Mitch Albom ear­li­er this year, “Aretha just made a far bet­ter record.”

You can lis­ten above, as War­wick per­forms “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer” in an uniden­ti­fied tele­vi­sion broad­cast and Franklin sings it with the Sweet­hearts of Soul on the August 31, 1970 Cliff Richard Show. Tell us: Which ver­sion do you think is bet­ter?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Aretha Franklin Per­forms ‘Respect’ Live in the South of France, 1970

The Queen of Soul Con­quers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Ams­ter­dam, 1968

She is 14 years old, and appar­ent­ly French. Not much else is known about this pre­co­cious young gui­tarist who goes by the name “Tina S” on her YouTube chan­nel.

Tina became an Inter­net sen­sa­tion in late May, when she post­ed an aston­ish­ing cov­er ver­sion of “Erup­tion,” from Van Halen’s debut album. Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolf­gang was so impressed he tweet­ed, “I need to meet this girl!!!”

Writ­ing as “@Tina_Guitare,” the young musi­cian replied, “I need to meet you too! Haha :))” Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres also went on Twit­ter and said, “This girl is incred­i­ble. If you know where she is, I want her on my show imme­di­ate­ly.” There was no reply to that one — at least not on Twit­ter.

Now Tina is back with a new video, made by her teacher Renaud Louis-Ser­vais, in which she rips through a cov­er of “Vival­di Trib­ute,” Patrick Ron­dat’s speed met­al adap­ta­tion of the cli­mac­tic “Presto” (very fast) move­ment of the Baroque com­pos­er Anto­nio Vivaldi’s “Sum­mer” con­cer­to from The Four Sea­sons. It’s an amaz­ing per­for­mance for a 14-year-old, although you should also see her play­ing clas­si­cal gui­tar when she was nine.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

I recent­ly read an arti­cle in which a music crit­ic argued for Bob Dylan’s 1970 dou­ble album Self Por­trait as his best. This pro­voked so much deri­sion and out­rage in the com­ments that I almost felt sor­ry for the author. But this is not unusu­al. Rolling Stone’s Greil Mar­cus opened his review of the record with a surly “What is this shit?” Dylan him­self explained in a 1984 inter­view with the mag­a­zine that the record was inten­tion­al­ly bad, a “screw you” to his less dis­cern­ing fans. And why not? Bob Dylan can do what­ev­er he wants.

Well, the album The Onion’s AV Club calls “almost uni­ver­sal­ly loathed” is being reis­sued in a four-disc set that includes out­takes and bootlegs, as well as alter­nates and demo takes from Nashville Sky­line and 1970’s New Morn­ing. You’ll find the full track­list of what will be released on August 27 as Anoth­er Self Por­trait here. (The album itself can be pre-ordered here.) For a pre­view, watch the video above of “Pret­ty Saro,” an 18^th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish folk tune Dylan record­ed for Self Por­trait but nev­er released. As with Mar­cus’ review and Dylan’s explana­to­ry inter­view, this comes to us via the stal­wart Rolling Stone.

Film­mak­er Jen­nifer Lebeau made the video, which con­sists of care­ful­ly select­ed pho­tos from the Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion and which Lebeau says “lit­er­al­ly goes from women on farms with wag­ons to Rosie the Riv­et­er.” It’s a cool con­cept and a beau­ti­ful song. Might it per­suade you to re-eval­u­ate Self Por­trait? If you nev­er loathed it but defend­ed it, does this out­take enhance your appre­ci­a­tion of its genius? Maybe you’re in need of a refresh­er on the con­fused, amused, and infu­ri­at­ed reac­tions that this record gen­er­ates. If so, you may wish to vis­it this site for “24 min­utes of footage of peo­ple talk­ing about Bob Dylan’s puz­zling” 1970 album.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Bob Dylan, Nico & Sal­vador Dalí

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

What is a “Rev­o­lu­tion”? The ques­tion might pre­cede a lengthy dis­qui­si­tion on polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy; it might presage a man­i­festo redefin­ing an old, worn-out term; it might open up a vinyl-era flight of the­o­ret­i­cal fan­cy over the qual­i­ta­tive dimen­sion of Rev­o­lu­tions Per Minute. As an open­ing gam­bit to a dis­cus­sion of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (and “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”), per­haps the ques­tion ven­tures on the truth of ver­sions, alter­nates, “takes,” as much a part of his­to­ry as top­pling regimes and mass move­ments.

How does all of this heav­i­ness get into pop music? Ask John Lennon. Well, no, ask his music. Ask the his­to­ry of his music, the alter­nates, the hid­den inten­tions, false starts, dis­card­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments. Ask, “Rev­o­lu­tion Take 20,” the alter­nate take of “Rev­o­lu­tion” that you hear above. “Rev­o­lu­tion 20” has a lot to say. It tells us about how a noisy, upbeat shoo­by-doo-wop blues pro­claim­ing the pow­er of love over vio­lence did not orig­i­nal­ly do so with such star­ry-eyed opti­mism and com­fort­ing pop brevi­ty (the kind of thing that sells Nikes, for instance). “Rev­o­lu­tion” had oth­er inten­tions, which we only glimpse in the song’s sev­ered ves­ti­gial tail “Rev­o­lu­tion 9,” and which we may have had quite enough of, thank you, in the arty weird­ness of Yoko Ono’s most exper­i­men­tal work.

You see, “Rev­o­lu­tion” and non-Nike-wor­thy “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” once belonged to the same ani­mal, a crea­ture that evolved from Lennon’s (and Ono’s) fas­ci­na­tion with musique con­crète, and with decon­struct­ing rock music into some­thing unrec­og­niz­able. The kind of rev­o­lu­tion “Rev­o­lu­tion 20” stages isn’t the dichoto­mous option between peace & love the­atrics or reac­tionary violence—it’s a rev­o­lu­tion of form, which is what Lennon seems to be after here, a new way of being that dis­solves con­tra­dic­tions in the sil­ly Freudi­an shtick of Paul McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son singing “Mama… Dada…” over and over as the clas­si­cal tropes of rock and roll warp and wob­ble around them in dis­in­te­grat­ing pitch shifts, radio noise, and spo­ken word non-sequiturs.

At over ten min­utes in length, “Rev­o­lu­tion Take 20”—which appeared as a mono mix on a 2009 boot­leg CD called Rev­o­lu­tion: Take… Your Knick­ers Off (after a piece of Lennon humor at the intro)—is more than an alter­nate take. It’s an alter­nate his­to­ry, one in which Lennon doesn’t just lay in bed for peace; he lays down on the stu­dio floor to record his vocals, and all the while his mind active­ly dis­as­sem­bles rock and roll. As the record­ing engi­neer Bri­an Gib­son remem­bers the ses­sion: “John decid­ed he would feel more com­fort­able on the floor so I had to rig up a micro­phone which would be sus­pend­ed on a boom above his mouth. It struck me as some­what odd, a lit­tle eccen­tric, but they were always look­ing for a dif­fer­ent sound; some­thing new.”

That Lennon ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to divide this mon­ster into Rev­o­lu­tions 1 & 9 does not mean that he’d giv­en up on mak­ing “some­thing new.” Per­haps it was a mar­ket­ing deci­sion; maybe he real­ized that he had a hit on his hands. Less, cyn­i­cal­ly, per­haps he felt that pop music could not con­tain the weight of his desire to move beyond, or to dis­solve, the seem­ing false choic­es on offer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Decon­struct­ing The Mas­ter Track of The Bea­t­les’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band”

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness