Gimme Some of Yours ...

Don Covay & The Jefferson Lemon Blues Band - Ice Cream Man (The Gimme Game)

Don Covay and his eccentric recordings have been the subject of a prior post, to which I refer you. For a few years in the late '60s and early '70s Covay fronted the "Jefferson Lemon Blues Band" on recordings for Atlantic and Janus. Although the best-known Jefferson Lemon Blues Band recording was the unusual but awesome Atlantic LP House of Blue Lights, which found Covay mixing some deep-in-the-Delta blues stylings with his more customary soul groove, he also recorded some hard-hitting soul and funk sides, most notably a version of "Sookie Sookie." Today's selection was the flip side of the bluesy Atlantic single "Black Woman." After a stinging blues guitar intro, "Ice Cream Man" starts off with a nice burbling groove over which Covay narrates the song's premise, but then moves into an aggressive climbing groove in which Covay turns a children's game into a not-so-veiled come-on. Despite the innuendos, and the craggly falsetto Covay uses for his overdubbed backgrounds (and what's with the "Popcorn! Ice cream! Candy!" during the mid-song vamp?), the record is a solid piece of get down, and by the time the horns are blasting at the end you shouldn't be able to sit still.