Recycled Song

It's just not paper, glass and plastics, you know.

In 1966, R&B/Rockabilly guitarist-vocalist Ray Sharpe was in New York City to do a session with fellow Fort Worth, Texas natives King Curtis and Cornell Dupree, both very busy session men for Atlantic Records. At the time, King Curtis also employed a guitarist in his band that a year later would be known as Jimi Hendrix. Jimi liked the Them/Van Morrison song Gloria and often played it live during his few short years of fame and borrowed a little of it for this song. The record label shows the song credited to Ousley (King Curtis' real name was Curtis Ousley), Sharpe and Dupree.

 

Early 1967 and Aretha Franklin is in Muscles Shoals, Alabama working on her breakthrough recordings for Atlantic. The sessions that would produce hits like her cover of Otis Redding's Respect, I Never Loved A Man, and Do Right Woman - Do Right Man. The sessions are finished up in New York with the participation of King Curtis. King takes the backing track of Help Me, leaves the horns off until the end and Aretha and her sister Carolyn add some new lyrics and now the song is Save Me.

 

The next year, 1968, King takes the track and adds some vocals and sax work of his own and you have an Instant Groove.