Earl Washington - Miserlou \ Wolf Call

Back in my WESU radio days, I took a lot of pride in the various ways I jazzed up Storm Surge of Reverb, already an example of irregularity in the station's programming. One of my favorites was "Spring Break Misirlou" in which I prepared two entire shows of nothing but renditions of Misirlou, both before and after Dick Dale, both surf and non. And had some left over.

So I've heard a lot of renditions of this song. I ran soulseek dry and googled the living crap out of it. I'm sure you've heard plenty too, and though I welcome you to prove me wrong, I bet you've never heard a blues version.

Earl Washington's version of Misirlou probably bares more resemblance to Martin Denny's than Dick Dale's, but it also precedes the dickster's by about 4 years. It's weird for sure, jazzy piano over a blues progression and opera-like singing. It's kind of hard to give it a genre, which is the case for the best music.
Miserlou

Wolf Call is a much more straightforward upbeat blues instrumental. It reaffirms to you that he's a Checker artist, but it didn't inspire me to check out the rest of his work
Wolf Call