The Black Crowes debut album was named after a song that was not on it!
American The Black Crowes formed in 1984. It would take them seven years before the debut album came out in 1991.
Consisting of some covers, and some originals, it was entitled Shake Your Money Maker, named after the Elmore James tune which strangely enough wasn’t on the album, although they did play it live at the time.
A famous cover that was present was the Otis Redding classic Hard To Handle, this would come to be their biggest hit, it confusing cover bands as the arrangement and key are different from the original.
Many times have I stood on stage with half the band playing the soul version in Bb with the other half in B rocking out the Black Crowes version! I guess this is the price you pay when the band is formed in the car park, an hour before the gig!
The skill in these kinds of situations is how well you change from one to the other without the crowd realizing…
Anyway, the album did contain another hit, She Talks To Angles, although this one didn’t stick in the public consciousness, even though it reached #1.
A quick glance at the Spotify numbers reveals that Hard To Handle, four decades later has twice as many plays.
The very successful debut album sold five million copies and The Black Crowes became a band known worldwide because of it.
The follow-up came only a year later in The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, here the awesome tune Remedy was the lead single, reaching #1 in the U.S. and the U.K. This is, in my opinion, their best tune.
Since the follow-up, The Black Crowes have released more studio albums but none have reached the same heights as Hard To Handle or Remedy did.
The Black Crowes Tunes | Related Pages
Hard To Handle
Learn how to play Hard To Handle by Otis Redding and the cover version by The Black Crowes using chords, lyrics, and the original recordings.
| Bb7 | Bb7 (A7 Bb7 Eb6) | Bb7 | Bb7 (A7 Bb7 Eb6) |
Baby, here I am, I’m a man on the scene…
The Black Crowes on the web
Artists & Bands
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About me | Dan Lundholm
This was an article about The Black Crowes tunes, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and learn guitar with Spytunes.
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