Song: Evil Woman Don’t Play Your Games With Me (1969)
Artist: Crow
Writers: Larry Wiegand, Dick Wiegand, Dave Wagner
Album: Crow Music
Most people probably know the song, Evil Woman Don’t Play Your Games With Me from the cover done by Black Sabbath, under the song name Evil Woman. The original, however, was released by the band Crow, out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1969.
You’ll notice in the original, besides the very strong vocals, the addition of horns, which, by many accounts, was not the band’s idea but was in fitting with the era.
Evil Woman Don’t Play Your Games with Me, published by Amaret Records, reached number 19 on the Billboard charts on January 10, 1970. It is a lot more listenable to Black Sabbath’s phoned-in version of the song, which is ponderous and dead sounding, lending irony to the line “Don’t you wish that you could see me dead?” Although Crow’s original isn’t the best blues-rocker ever written, it is head and shoulders above the Sabbath version, delivered with much more energy and drive. Like Michael Jackson’s song, Billie Jean, the evil woman in the tune is trying to get another man to take responsibility for her baby.
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