HARPER'S BIZARRE - "WITCHI TAI TO"

"Witchi Tai To" (Jim Pepper) - 2;55

While in college I heard this on some obscure radio station, but didn't hear who was performing it. Years later I heard a version of it on a Brewer and Shipley album that I bought at a yard sale. That let me track it back to the late Jim Pepper's original version, which in turn, allowed me to hear versions by Everything Is Everything and finally the "commercialized" Harpers Bizarre cover which was the one I'd originally heard.



The late Pepper was best known as a jazz musician. As a sax player he worked with an impressive array of jazz artists including Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. A member of the Kaw and Cree tribes, in the late-'60s Pepper began mixing Native American music and jazz. Having supposedly learned the song from his grandfather, "Witchi Tai To" was a nice example of the jazz and Indian influences hybrid.

The Harper's Bizarre version didn't include the extended Pepper sax solo, but featured a young Ry Cooder on lead guitar and is simply mesmerizing ... Yeah, it's little more than an extended Indian chant, but it's one of those efforts that's get under your skin and simply won't leave.

YouTube has a clip of the song at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1L9RPEM634