Sam and Dave : Rich Kind of Poverty
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I wasn't sure I would have time to post anything on the subject of Income Inequality until I heard Tom Petty's NPR interview. Petty was explaining a song called "Power Drunk" off his new album, Hypnotic Eye, when he veered onto our very topic:
I just tried to kind of explore this gap between the poor and people that get so wealthy that making more money really wouldn't change an hour of the rest of their lives. And yet they're obsessed with making more money, regardless of how that affects other people.
Maybe it's a moral question of, "Do you want something so bad that you don't need, even though it will hurt others?" 'Cause we're looking at a very different time in America right now. We've rubbed out the middle class, which was really the whole point of the thing for a long time — meaning America.
The Isaac Hayes/Paul Selph composition "Rick Kind of Poverty" comes from Sam and Dave's 1967 Soul Men, which of course featured their monster hit "Soul Man". Booker T and the MGs are the studio band.