Hot Sauce - Bring It Home (And Give It To Me)

It’s hard to ignore a band named Hot Sauce. I found Bring It Home (And Give It To Me) (1972) on a Stax compilation. The catches your ear immediately, the vocal cadence sounds like Amy Winehouse at her best. The singer is Rhonda Washington and she is in fantastic form for the rest of the song:

Hot Sauce Although it appeared on Stax compilations, Hot Sauce actually recorded on Volt, a subsidiary label based in Detroit. In reality, Hot Sauce is just Rhonda Washington, I can find little to no record of the backing band, and Washington herself disappears after Stax goes bankrupt in 1975. It seems that the record was produced by Al Perkins (not to be confused with the guitarist), a Detroit based, Memphis born, radio DJ. After a bit more digging, it turns out this is actually a cover of a Na Allen song:

As you can tell, the arrangement is almost identical. But while Allen’s recording is a straight forward soul song, Hot Sauce’s is incredible

Arctic Monkeys - Baby I'm Yours

If you haven’t spent much time at the bottom of the Arctic Monkey’s Spotify page, I recommend it. There are some very cool covers lurking in their b-sides like Right Red Hand (the theme song to Peaky Blinders) and Diamonds Are Forever (which they also performed at Glastonbury).

My personal favourite is their version of Baby I’m Yours. Something about the song just fits their sound so well. Although they recorded it in 2006 (it was released as a b-side to Leave Before The Lights Come On) the song would fit very well with the ballads on 2011’s Suck It And See. And the whole 50’s/60’s vibe fits very well with Alex Turner’s look on the AM tour.

Anyway, have a listen below and go have a look through the rest of their back catalogue.