One of the more outstanding Super Bowl commercials in this year’s mostly lackluster bunch was the Coca Cola Black History Timeline commercial.
What smacked me over the head the most was the music used — a slow, smokin bit of blues. It’s a song called “Blues For Tiny” recorded by Smokey Hormel and Lee Allen before he died. Sadly, as much as I’ve quested for it, it seems to be unavailable except for the snippet on the Coke commercial. Here’s an except from a recent interview:
AM: I heard you were going to put out a single with Lee Allen called Old Rockin’ Chair?
Smokey: Actually it was going to be a whole album. I didn’t get it together. I recorded about 8 songs with him. Top Jimmy sang on it and it’s really good. I started it by recording some rhythm tracks with Larry Taylor from the Hollywood Fats band and James Cruz, a drummer with JJ Cale. We recorded a bunch of rhythm tracks then I got Lee to come over and overdub sax parts. We all went in to the studio and did three more songs– An original of mine called DRINKIN ALONG, and two jump Blues. One slow blues that is awesome; I named it BLUES FOR TINY for obvious reasons (Lee’s wife’s name). I have to take the time to finish it and hopefully It will come out as an EP or something.
This song has jumped to the top of my obtain by (nearly) any means list. I, too, hope that interest in the song because of the ad helps get this great great great bit of blues released.
