Ten Million Slaves & Hey Joe – Otis Taylor

Otis Taylor is a really cool artist I’ve been a fan of for a while now. Ten Million Slaves was the first song I came to know by him after hearing it in the great Johnny Depp movie, Public Enemies, about John Dillinger. He’s an incredibly talented musician and has some great original songs as well as renditions of others.

Hey Joe by Hendrix is a top 3 song for me. Otis’s version adds an almost deep-fried vibe to it, with some seriously killer fiddle work. What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle? A violin has strings, but a fiddle has straangs. Otis has a ton of different studio versions of this one, but they all generally have some southern influence, so I linked a really nice live version of him performing rather than choosing a single studio version.

Ten Million Slaves features one of the most badass banjo and guitar combos ever, in my opinion. A killer riff, featuring very simple but poignant lyrics. The album that this one is featured on is great as well, Recapturing the Banjo.

Link to Ten Million Slaves- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sQOOZv_CYM

Link to Ten Million Slaves live – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7FROFtNNfY

Link to Hey Joe live – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NShOQnlNEw