Elvis Ate Dynamite

Happy Friday, everybody. Well, we lost another legend (as I mentioned the other day) — the great Joe Ely has gone to that roadhouse in the sky. Ely, as you may know, was a great friend and admirer of Joe Strummer and the Clash, having toured with them and sung background vocals on “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” one of their biggest, if not the biggest, hits. Shortly after Ely passed away, the official Joe Strummer IG page posted a short video of him playing and signing “I Fought the Law,” originally written by Sonny Curtis and recorded by the Bobby Fuller Four. Clash fans, of course, know that they covered it, too, on the US version of their debut album. As I mention in the video, that was the first Clash song I heard on the radio, and that got me thinking about how musical innovators — punks, hip-hop artists, roots musicians — often go back in time to find that vital thing that makes music great, and they bring it forward into the future.