Tonight I had planned to go to the Open Mic at the Hathern Club but, by the time I’d finished working in the garden, catching up with something that had come up at work and then thinking about dinner, my time to finish working on songs and get across there had passed. The songs I would have played were:

• Jolene (Dolly Parton – RIP)
• Emmaretta (Deep Purple)
• Valerie (The Zutons / Amy Winehouse)

The first is a song by a woman about a woman. It’s “conceit” is that the protagonist is asking the antagonist not to steal her “man” away. That is an unusual approach and a beautiful song which I love to play despite the gender issue.

The Deep Purple song is less well known and is the one I was least confident in. I’ve played it before but it was a while ago. This one is a fairly straightforward song by a man / men to a woman.

I was going to finish on another song about a named woman. Here it was originally written by a man but perhaps became more famous because of Amy Winehouse’s cover. That was the equivalent of me singing Jolene although Winehouse definitely had the better voice! I’ve seen a video that features the real woman behind the song, which adds some fascinating background to the song: