Led Zeppelin, Ƶ ɸ ʘ @ (Atlantic, 1971); composed by John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant & Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie began her lengthy career with this song in 1929, two years after the cataclysmic flood it describes, when she was still performing with her first husband who co-composed and plays guitar with her on it. Even with the memory of the flood as fresh as it was, Minnie’s dispassionate alto suggests that the upheaval she is describing is as much sexual as it is about merely surviving. There is nothing quaintly stoic about it, but its droll matter-of-factness surprises anyone who hears Led Zeppelin’s 1971 track of the same title first. Although Minnie received co-composer credit and the lyrics are largely the same, the two songs have far less in common than do “Killing Floor,” and “The Lemon So
ng” (which conspicuously failed to credit Willie Dixon). It is meaningless to say that Led Zeppelin’s re-creation is overstated, when overstatement is its subject and its medium. The drums were recorded in a stone hallway with mikes catching three floors of echo and overtones. Nothing on the master tape is played back at the same speed at which it was recorded. A record that sounds like there is more music on it than there possibly could be, because there is.Note: For Advent, 25 secular essays about 25 songs, one per day from Dec. 1 through Dec. 25. Each essay is exactly 200 words long.
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