Buddy Guy - "I Dig Your Wig"

It's been awhile since my last post. I gotta thank Brian for all the blog activity while I was being a slug. Anyway, this week marks the second anniversary for It's Great Shakes. Not only do I wanna thank Brian (yet again) for all the help these past two years but also everyone who's read, linked to and especially taken the time to comment on the blog. It's all much appreciated.

One other thing I want to mention is that I'm continuing to add songs to the little mp3 player in the right-hand margin of the blog. I'm up to about two dozen tunes now. These are all songs that have been written about here in the past. I'll keep adding to it and hope that someone is enjoying it. Comments and feedback are appreciated.

Okay, today's record is Buddy Guy's "I Dig Your Wig". Oftentimes, when I find new records, I do a web search to try and learn more about them. Obviously, there's a lot of information on Buddy Guy out there but I wanted to know more about his stint with Chess, as well as this particular song. This time, my search landed me over at Amazon.com, where Buddy has a two CD set covering his entire Chess output, 47 tracks in all.

The customer reviews of the set are mixed, most complaints centering around the number of inessential numbers it contains. My favorite example is from the reviewer who says, "Wacky dance songs like "Slop Around" and novelties like "I Dig Your Wig," are mixed with great tunes like "My Mother," and "I Suffer the Blues." Ouch! A check of the sound samples confirms this. A bunch of other tunes, with titles like "Hully Gully", "American Bandstand", "$100 Bill", "Crazy Love (Crazy Music)" and "Going To School" are just wacky enough to send our guest reviewer lurching for the button. What I wanna know, is where I can get a disc with just the novelties and wacky dance tunes. Sounds like it'd be great fun to listen to in the car or wherever.

On "I Dig Your Wig", Buddy is lamenting a girl without any hair. He's gonna buy her some because her folks didn't give her any. Yeah, he's gonna get her one of those three color wigs, something the cat's are gonna dig. Interestingly, the instrumentation is mostly piano and harmonica, without much of Buddy's guitar playing to be heard. Hell, maybe this is a novelty, after all. I still love it though.