The quest for "Get Out Of My Life Woman"

There's a great piano riff that starts the track "Outta My Way Baby" by Pete Nice & Daddy Rich, and I caught a piece of it on Rob Swift's re-released album, "Soulful Fruit." That's how I found out that the riff belonged to a song called "Get Out Of My Life Woman."

Now, I'm trying to track down that classic riff. It's not from Solomon Burke, or Lee Dorsey, or Freddy King. The versions that are commercially available aren't piano notes, they're synthesizer. Definitely not what I'm looking for.

I'm playing a version by Mel Brown, off the comp album "Neck Bones & Caviar." You'd think with an album title like that, it'd be on there. Nope.

Okay, now we can rule out Albert King. And it sure as hell ain't Mountain ... how ungodly does a blues song sound when it's reheated by a white band with way too much electric? Check out Mountain's "Get Out Of My Life Woman." Chuck Jackson's version is about to make me slip into a coma. And W.C. Clark's version is too guitar driven.

Heh. There's a version by Iron Butterfly.

Then suddenly, BAM! I'm playing all the angles, listening to almost anything when ... "Plunk, plink, piddily-plink, plunk, plink ... get out my life woman .... you'd don't love me anymore." Thad Jones, motherfucker. Joe Williams, Thad Jones, and the Mel Lewis Orchestra.

And, I also did a check on the song, to double check that track and make sure it's the one I'm looking for, and I find a list of other hip hop jams that have borrowed from this track:

Big Daddy Kane’s "Very Special"
Biz Markie’s "Funk is Back"
Double XX Posse’s "Ruffneck"
Doug E Fresh’s "Bounce"
Funkdoobiest’s "I'm Shittin' on 'Em"
Jill Scott’s "Brotha"
Kool G Rap’s "Ill Street Blues"
Main Source’s "How My Man Went Down in the Game"
Pete Nice’s "Outta My Way Baby"
Queen Latifah’s "Latifah's Had it up 2 Here"
Shabazz the Disciple’s "Party with a Tec"
Skoolbeats’s "Outta My Way"
UMC’s "Woman Be Out"

Of course, the track that started it all, Nice's "Outta My Way Baby," I have on CD. Big Daddy Kane's track ... it's Kane, there ain't shit you can say bad about the smoothest rapper to ever spit on wax. I sampled G Rap's track, and it's probably one of the dopest old school tracks I've heard in a minute. I also checked and noticed that I had that Jill Scott track on her ... ahem, album, YEAH I GOT IT! So what, I lose my street cred because of it?! Oh, and we can't forget the wonderfully titled Funkdoobiest's "I'm Shittin' On 'Em" ... that shit's the shit, the hellafied shit that, in a perfect world, would be poppin' in the streets right now.

And that's how, in one night, I became an expert on everything having to do with the song, "Get Out Of My Life Woman."

I gotta tell ya'll, OCD is a terrible, terrible thing.