Saturday, September 27, 2014

Canned Heat and the Flute Mystery

Here's Canned Heat playing their song "Going up the Country" at Woodstock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Luq3g47cbWI

Here they are playing the song in the official "Woodstock"  movie, the version you all saw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0Dm-OaTNk

Notice anything different?  Answer: the first one has no flute.

See anything odd about this one?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPcsNqPQuc0

Answer: the guy "playing" the flute starts out blowing through the wrong end of the flute, but the notes seem to be coming out anyway. How the heck can that happen?  Lip-syncing, I guess.

Canned Heat rewrote the lyrics of a 1920's song "Bull Doze Blues", renamed it, and  used studio musician Jim Horn to play the flute part.  The song went to #11 on the Billboard Charts and #1 in 25 countries, but they only had a flute player as a band member between 2000-2005 according to Wikipedia.  The "Woodstock" movie used the studio recording, not the recording played at Woodstock.

There is at least one Youtube version with Canned Heat and a flute player from 2014:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BD6K_WuNX0

In 1928, Henry Thomas played "Bull Doze Blues" solo with a guitar and a quills (a kind if pan flute) in a neck holder.  Here's the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qo9R5kDZWY