Billy Butler and the Enchanters: I Can't Work No Longer (1965)

 |   |  <1 min read

Billy Butler and the Enchanters: I Can't Work No Longer (1965)

It's only Monday but this title just about sums it up . . .

Except?

While this wonderful post-Sam Cooke soul ballad starts off as you might expect (want to get home, we ain't getting any younger) it does take a slightly darker and more interesting turn if you are prepared to hear it that way:  "I'm just another lonely man" . . .

And there is another woman on the other side?

Or not?

Extraordinary ambiguity. 

"My time is up and I'm probably/finally free".

From the day job, the wife, the lover, the racial division . . .?

This was written by the teenage Curtis Mayfield for the Impressions who recorded in '62 but their version didn't appear until three years later as ana album track.

By which time Billy, the brother of the Impressions departed lead singer Jerry, had recorded this version.

Lovely. But ambiguous?

And this was Billy's first and last chart hit. 

For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.

 

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   From the Vaults articles index

Texas Jim Robertson: The Last Page of Mein Kampf (1946)

Texas Jim Robertson: The Last Page of Mein Kampf (1946)

Texas-born Jim Robertson was one of those who sang about the Second World War and knew what he was talking about. No stay-at-home, when he was rejected by the army he enlisted in the marines and... > Read more

Jessi Colter: Diamond in the Rough (1976)

Jessi Colter: Diamond in the Rough (1976)

The sassy Jessi Colter was married to the late Waylon Jennings and was something of a rarity in the Seventies, she was a woman (and a confident, songwriting woman at that) and part of the almost... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

THE BEATLES. LIVE AT THE STAR-CLUB, HAMBURG, GERMANY 1962, CONSIDERED (1977): Twist and shout, shimmy and shake

THE BEATLES. LIVE AT THE STAR-CLUB, HAMBURG, GERMANY 1962, CONSIDERED (1977): Twist and shout, shimmy and shake

The recording is of ridiculously low quality – just a reel-to-reel tape set up on table in a club with a single microphone pointed at the stage – and there has always been some debate... > Read more

GUEST WRITERS GAVIN AND ODETTE consider the romantic young John Lennon

GUEST WRITERS GAVIN AND ODETTE consider the romantic young John Lennon

A Hard Day’s Night by the Beatles is a mono vision. When you put it on – while reading this article of course – make sure you put it on loud. The first thing you will realize... > Read more