Stolen Song Saturday -- Going Down

I use "stolen" in the sense that Otis Redding used it when describing Aretha Franklin's far more successful cover of his "R-E-S-P-E-C-T."

Don Nix wrote "Going Down," a guitar player favorite that has been covered over a hundred times by now; and Don fed it to Freddie King when he got hired to produce an album on Freddie, which was certainly Don's right. Frankly, by that time it was anyone's right under the United States' compulsory license scheme, because the song had been published when it was recorded and released for the first time on an earlier album Don produced for Stax's Enterprise label eponymously titled Moloch. "Going Down" owes a bit to Booker T & the MG's 1967 B-side "Slim Jenkins' Place," or maybe it was the other way around, but that was all in the Stax/Mar-keys family at the time; besides which, the descending lick can be heard in a much older Howlin' Wolf song. Not to take anything from Don, I'm a fan and he's a friend.

I'm not going to upload Moloch's original version of the song (although I won't snitch anybody out who does); but the whole album has been re-released with two bonus tracks, and you can buy it and hear samples off of it on Amazon, or just hear a sample of the first released recording of "Going Down" here.

Anywho, Freddie covered "Going Down" in 1971 on the album Getting Ready. Here he is playing it live in 1972:



Jeff Beck covered "Going Down" in 1972 on the album Jeff Beck Group recorded in Memphis with Steve Cropper producing. Here's the original recording, audio only of course; and here's a video of Jeff doing it live with Stevie Ray Vaughan. Even Keith Richards attributes the song to Freddie King in this video.

Freddie King had another fine performance on that Getting Ready album (full audio here): "Same Old Blues." Guess what? It was written by Don Nix too (one of his very finest efforts, with great, interesting chord changes for a blues) and also first recorded by Moloch. Here's Freddie's version (with Leon Russell's help) and a sample of Moloch's version. Another stolen song, well and fairly stolen. Moloch's bass player at the time told me about picking Freddie up at the airport to take him to Moloch's leader and guitar player Lee Baker's house. On the way, Freddie asked Twitch: "Who is singing 'Same Old Blues' on that record?!" Twitch told him, "Phil Durham."