Well we just can’t stay away from these old blues here at The Audio Museum. We love’em we really do. And it sure feels good to finally break into the top ten, now we’re getting somewhere!

After digging deeper into the roots of the blues I came across this gem by Otis Rush called Double Trouble. He wrote and and recorded the song in 1958. And yes Stevie Ray Vaughan eventually renamed his band The Triple Threat Revue to Double Trouble (named after this song) on firing one of his guitarists and female lead singer.

Wiki:

“Double Trouble” is a slow tempo twelve-bar blues notated in 12/8 time in the key of D minor. “The song’s underlying air of quiet desperation stretched to the breaking point is enhanced by brilliant use of dynamics and some truly mind-boggling, strangled guitar fills near the end.” According to Otis Rush, the song’s title was inspired by a comment by a woman upon viewing her hand during a card game “trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, double troubles”.

The song was produced by Willie Dixon and features Rush (guitar and vocal), Dixon (bass), Ike Turner (guitar), Little Brother Montgomery (piano), Harold Ashby and Jackie Brenston (saxophones), and Billy Gayles (drums). Although Rush plays the lead guitar introduction to the song, Turner plays the signature vibrato guitar parts. In 1986, Rush recorded a live version of the song for Blues Interaction – Live in Japan 1986, which was released in 1989.

In 2008, Rush’s original version was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, who called it a “minor-key masterpiece”