Eldorado Cadillac/Billy Boy Arnold

[Aeskow@xxxxxxx]

Will asked who wrote the lyric
"I got an Eldorado Cadillac..."

The original, I Ain't Got You, was done by Billy Boy Arnold, a fine Chicago 
harp player, and the brother of both Jerome Arnold, who played bass for The 
Paul Butterfield Blues Band on their first album (later replaced by jazz drummer 
Billy Davenport) AND an excellent novelist whose first name slips my mind.  
Brother #3, the literary one, wrote a novel called The Bluesman, which is well 
worth picking up if you find it in a remainder bin.  But he was clearly not the 
only Arnold blessed with literary talent: Billy Boy's lyrics for Aint Got You 
also include: "I got a Maserati GT/with snakeskin upholstery/I got everything 
I need/but I ain't got you."  And: "I got a Mojo/and a liquor store/I play 
the numbers/Yeah 444/I got a clothes store/But don't ya know/I'm all dressed up 
with no/Place to go."  The blues-as-poetry thing can get kind of pretentious, 
but not when it sticks to inner-city visions of heaven or hell.  Willie the 
Wimp, buried in his Cadillac coffin, has to be one of the hippest dead men in 
history; William de Vaughn's "Be Thankful (For What You Got)" is wise advice 
from a lovable uncle ("diamond in the back/sun roof top/diggin' the scene/like a 
gangster lean"--people forget, but the point of the lyric is that you DON'T 
need "a car at all"--it might be the exact opposite of the Bling-Bling Academy 
of Hip-Hop Self-Realization), and ol' Lee Oskar himself co-wrote, with the rest 
of War, a little-known but highly cool album cut called "Whose Cadillac Is 
That?"--which, I guess, is the existential question which--like "Do not ask for 
whom the bell tolls"--we all come to grapple with at some point in life ("It 
tolls for thee"--which, in the original version, was actually "Do not ask for 
whom the drummer lays down a 4/4 shuffle in Bb; he lays it down for your harp 
solo.")

Peace, Respect, and Still Diggin' the Scene with a Gangster Lean,
Johnny T