Night Music: Humble Pie and Ray Charles, “I Don’t Need No Doctor”

When I was out in Arizona seeing AFL baseball games a reporter from the NY Times called, and I did an interview while standing on the mezzanine behind first base at Talking Stick in Scottsdale. The subject was primary care physicians, and we had a nice chat. The story has a little less scope than I imagined, but just as in Larry Schechter’s new book, Winning Fantasy Baseball: Secret Strategies of a NINE-TIME National Champion, out the first week of January, the first two words in this story are “Peter Kreutzer…”.

The Humble Pie version of this song is the one I grew up with. Heck, I probably thought they wrote it, or I didn’t care. This analog YouTube video has typical analog sound, but don’t be afraid to turn it up. THe distortion makes it all the more like a 1971 8-track.

I think I must have heard this Ray Charles version at some point, but tonight it surprised me. It’s the original recording of the song, which I learned from the “video” was written by Nick Ashford, Valerie Simpson and Jo Armstead. Sweet!

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