Song of the Day: Alabama Song by The Young Gods

Sunday song is an old song recorded by many artists but The Young Gods version is my own favorite of all of them! From their album The Young Gods Play Kurt Weill of 1991. I have blogged about them before, you know? Yeah, they do a full album of eight Kurt Weill songs so check it out if you’ve never heard it? Let’s talk a little about the composer Kurt Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950) who was a German composer and mainly active in the 1920’s, this song was from his 1927 play Little Mahagonny. An English version translated from German by Bertolt Brecht and Alabama Song is sometimes also known as Moon of Alabama, Moon Over Alabama or Whisky Bar. Original version was first recorded in 1930 by Lotte Lenya, who was Weill’s wife and was the star of the theater show way back then.

Because I’m in love with 90’s music, I can tell you a couple of other great versions were recorded back then. In 1996 Marianne Faithfull did it on her epic live album Twentieth Century Blues, it’s Marianne singing only backed by piano so check out the full album too, if you’ve never have?

Then in 1997 the various artist album of the 1994 VHS long form music video tribute titled September Songs – The Music of Kurt Weill was released. The New York Dolls’ David Johansen & Ellen Shipley who did this track, found the visuals on YouTube. Once again the whole album is well worth checking out with artists like Nick Cave, William S. Burroughs, Lou Reed, PJ Harvey etc. and the project’s music supervisor was the late great Hal Willner:

Off course, before all that the most famous version of it is then entitled Alabama Song (Whisky Bar) by hippies The Doors on their debut self-titled record of 1967 so let’s included that to end with today:

BTW I think, this is the very first place in America named after a track that I’ve posted for my SOTD posts too! It’s the very first SOTD post of this year, if you need reminding I’m for some mad reason I’m kind-of alphabetical order naming/posting track I really dig, after well over a year of going this idea I’m still in letter “A” and only the ones starting with “Al” too! Far from doing it everyday anyway that’s that and a little bit of a history lesson today with four versions of the very same song with my favorite at the top over. Like I said many artists have done it, have I missed one you dig? Wanna share, please do! Or what say something else about it, please do?