Vera Hall

I felt Vera Hall deserved her own separate post here. I think her voice and her songs are absolutely mind-blowing.

Most people would probably recognise this as it was used in Moby's 'Natural Blues' track.


Moby's version:


Death Have Mercy:


I'm pretty well-known for not being the biggest fan of soul music. I don't know what it is exactly but soul and garage music are genres I just can't identify with. There is nothing there that I feel akin to...the voices, the music (ok so this sounds REALLY generic but you know, I'm being lazy), the subject matter is something alien and unrelatable to me.

However I am a big fan of folk music and I know that this is intrinsic in influencing so much music out there. I love Vera Hall's version of 'Another Man Done Gone', which is an old Alabama chain song.

Here are some other versions of it:


This version starts off quite good, I like the fact that it's got both male and female vocals however from around 1 minute onwards I find it quite hilarious. I love Johnny Cash, he's amazing. However I find some of his pronounciations and tone of his voice sound like Elvis singing this song and it just seems...well funny and wrong. I feel it doesn't have any of the passion and meaning of the original.

Probably the most famous version is by Odetta. For some reason I can't post the youtube version up here but here is Odetta singing 'Water Boy':


My favourite version still remains to be Vera's. Odetta's voice is more experimental and stronger however Vera's subdued and gentle voice really overwhelms me.

For a long time I wanted An Experiment to cover this song but for whatever reasons, we never did it. I've done a version here for Blue On Blue. You can download it for free if you wish. I have so many songs for Blue On Blue and I'm not weird about making tracks exclusive and paid for. It would be great to have people pay for your music so you could live off it but I think all of us new bands will never really be in that position due to the current climate.

Anyway, here you go:
Blue On Blue Another Man Done Gone