Led Zeppelin continue releasing rare songs from their vault. Above you can listen to their original tune "Sunshine Woman," which will be featured on the upcoming deluxe reissue The Complete BBC Sessions. The track was recorded in London on March 16, 1969 and aired April 14 on the BBC, but was never officially released until now.
The song begins with John Paul Jones on piano, which makes this especially rare in the Led Zeppelin catalog. (He played organ and electric piano on many Zeppelin songs, but not classic acoustic piano in a blues setting.) If that guitar lick sounds familiar, you might say it sounds a bit like what Hubert Sumlin played on "Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" which was recorded in 1964 and later covered by Jimi Hendrix and countless other blues rock bands.
Led Zeppelin famously did their own version of "Killing Floor" but re-worked the song and renamed it "The Lemon Song" on their second album in 1969. "The Lemon Song" included raunchy lyrics that drew inspiration from blues great Robert Johnson and did not include the upbeat guitar lick of Howlin Wolf's original. The Zeppelin band members originally took writing credit for "The Lemon Song," but added Howlin' Wolf as a co-writer after a law suit was settled out of court in the early 1970s.
Considering the song's lyrics like, "Got a mortgage on my body / Got a lien on my soul," it's only appropriate that it premiered on The Wall Street Journal.
The newly remastered collection was supervised by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. You can order The Complete BBC Sessions through Amazon.
For more music, news, and tour information about Led Zeppelin, check out their Zumic artist page.
