Thursday, October 20, 2011

Jamaican Halloween Spooktacular 2011 - Track Fourteen - Black Magic Woman

The cutie over on the left is going to bring us to the fourteenth track in our yearly countdown of scary tunes straight outta yard! This one is "Black Magic Woman" by the man Eric "Fish" Clarke and it's not to be confused with the Dennis Brown track I posted in 2008. You see, Dennis' track was a cover of the 1968 Fleetwood Mac tune made famous by Santana in 1970... Fish Clarke's version is not.

Eric "Fish" Clarke was born in 1960, the younger brother of long-time reggae star Johnny Clarke. Fish got his training on the drums at the renowned Alpha Boys School and under the tutelage of Sister Ignatius. He got his first real gig playing for Prince Far I's Arabs in the 1970s and later with the Roots Radics eventually cutting some solo material of his own. I think you will agree, he's got a pretty good voice!

This track ranks right up there as one of my favorites in this year's Spooktacular and I hope you will enjoy what I've done for the background; keeping the witches cackling to a minimum but having some fun re-creating a visit to a late-night coven complete with bubbling cauldrons, hooting owls, crows and the ever-present wind that has swirled around so many of these tunes over the last 6 years!

Now here's where I ran into a minor problem... I couldn't find this record anywhere to get a clean picture of the Black Magic Woman label so I had to go online and find a picture of what was the A-side, "River Jordan" by Little John. I have torn apart my shelves looking for this record since July and dammit, I can't find it! I'm more than convinced that it's either in one of the multitude of bins over at my sister's house or in the bin over at my parent's house in the closet upstairs, or maybe this is just a good indication that my record collection has gotten out of control when about half my records are now residing in plastic tubs outside of my own house. Luckily my sister has a lot more room than I do and thankfully she's not charging me a monthly storage fee! Thanks Ang!

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