SONG: MOVE OVER
SINGER/WRITER: JANIS JOPLIN
The snarling blues riff copies the melody sung and written by Janis Joplin on this three minute and forty second performance which opens the Pearl album.
Recorded on the same day as "Trust Me" and "Me And Bobby McGee, September 25, 1970, fans got to see Joplin give a preview of this on the Dick Cavett Show prior to the release of Pearl. The subject matter concerns "men", as Janis told Cavett. More specifically, the guy tells her it's "over", but keeps hanging around. It's a very driving, very direct rocking blues number, the singer equating the way some guys hold out on love to a carrot stick keeping the food inches away from the mouth of a mule. "Please don't you do it to me, babe" she - not begs - but demands - "Honey, you're teasing me...I believe you're toying with my affections...I can't take it no more babe, and furthermore I don't intend to." The fading lyric is a bit salty/blasphemous with producer Paul Rothchild tucking the scat and bluesy wail inside the music as it concludes. The opening drum beat with Joplin's vocal and the guitar makes for a powerful first track, the hook built inside the song and the riff when she repeats the line "You know that I need a man". Different from anything else on the album, unlike the co-write that is "Mercedes Benz", Janis wrote "Move Over" on her own.
TRUST ME from PEARL. One of my All-time favorite songs by Janis, written by Bobby Womack. Song Review by Joe Viglione [-]
Songwriter Bobby Womack released this superb tune on his 1975 Safety Zone album, but in its form as the sleeper track on Janis Joplin's 1971 Pearl album, "Trust Me" emerges with great power, a performance that is Janis at her absolute best. Her voice goes from sweet in the first couple of lines to raspy when she so knowingly issues lines like "the older the grape, the sweeter the wine." Ken Pearson's organ works wonderfully alongside Bobby Womack's acoustic guitar and John Till's electric. Paul Rothchild's production work is simply amazing, choreographing this thick array of sounds and piecing them together perfectly, Brad Campbell's bass and Richard Bell's piano lines both dancing inside the changes. Listen to Clark Pierson's definite drums as the song fades out, a solid team effort recorded on September 25, 1970, just a week and a half before Janis would leave us. In a small catalog of work, "Trust Me" shows what truly gifted art Janis Joplin brought to this world. Having Womack participating is a treat, the element of the songwriter working with the interpreter and their camaraderie as a major contribution to this definitive version cannot be overlooked. The creative energy is in these grooves and one doesn't have to imagine how magical the room must have been when this music was made. It translates very well. As "Me & Bobby McGee" has been overplayed, "Trust Me" has been underexposed. This key piece of the Pearl album concisely shows Janis Joplin as the equal of Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton, Billie Holiday, Otis Redding and her other heroes. At certain moments during this song Joplin eclipses even those gods.
AllMusic Review by Joe Viglione [-]
Perhaps the greatest tragedy next to her early passing was the lack of Janis Joplin material released to the public after her death. She was missing from the original Woodstock movie and soundtrack album, except for a brief cameo in the film; the soundtrack to her biopic, Janis, failed to include the performances seen on the silver screen, Columbia having the audacity to leave songs off or put the version of "Cry Baby" from Pearl on the soundtrack, something as bogus as Milli Vanilli and something the artist would not have allowed had she lived; and there was never a live album released from her underrated Kozmic Blues Band. Joplin in Concert gave listeners Big Brother & the Holding Company as well as Full Tilt Boogie Band, but that wonderfully creative interim period only got to the fans through tape trading and this incredible bootleg disc. Sure, Woodstock 1969 has a muddy bootleg rough mix, but the performance by Janis Joplin is extraordinary. Where she reinvented the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody" on the Kozmic Blues album, she reinvents it again in this pivotal performance. The band wasn't Blood, Sweat & Tears playing with precision, or Ten Wheel Drive wildly experimenting, but there is an absolute charm and importance that the Kozmic Blues Band display on this and other recordings. Just as Live at Winterland '68 vindicates Big Brother & the Holding Company from the rumor and innuendo, so too do performances like "Summertime" from this Woodstock 1969 underground release. The keyboards, horns, and guitar all combine to create the most rock & roll version of this classic Gershwin cover. Where the Cheap Thrills May 1968 performance was subtle acid rock by Big Brother, and the Full Tilt Boogie Band provide a slick wall of sound on 1970's Get It While You Can boot (another prize possession), this crunching performance is a complete blend of Janis Joplin's superior handle on the blues with a punch of musicians who had some clue that they were backing a living legend. It culminates with what may eventually be considered Joplin's true signature tune, "Kozmic Blues," which she composed with her producer, Gabriel Mekler. "Kozmic Blues" is a masterpiece of songwriting, and here the artist takes a complex composition and transforms it live. It is Janis Joplin preaching, it is her giving postgraduate philosophy, it is a band frozen in a moment of time, a concert performance for the ages, and a good argument for why these recordings deserve to reach the public. If this forces Sony's hand to give listeners a professional mix and high-profile release of Janis Joplin's material from Woodstock, all the better. It would be a wonderful companion piece to the Jimi Hendrix CD from this same event.
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