You could say I'm almost gutless. I've had the hardest time choosing between these two wonderful performances of John Prine's Angel from Montgomery, so I've decided to post both of them. I am, however giving the nod to one of them via the artist info for this post. I'm listing them chronologically.

The first is the version done by a young Bonnie Raitt, and this performance gets the nod from me by an ever-so-slight margin. I have two reasons:

1) Bonnie captures a certain amount of anger in the song that Susan doesn't. In particular, the way Bonnie sings, "How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, And come home in the evening and have nothing to say."

2) Bonnie's the one who reworked the rhythm of the chorus from Prine's original. When you listen to Prine's version, where he sings, "Just give me one thing that I can hold on to," the rhythmic emphasis is on the word "to". Bonnie places the emphasis on the word "on," which gives the whole thing a completely different feel.

And, now, for Susan Tedeschi's version, which is almost a tribute to Bonnie Raitt's. Despite the fact that I gave the nod to Bonnie Raitt's cover, this one is probably more my personal favorite. It has more melancholy, less anger, and there's also a playfulness here, particularly the quote of Sugaree near the end. Also, Susan's vocal flourishes take the song in another direction entirely. It's probably not quite the artistic effort that is Bonnie's version, but I find this one more enjoyable to listen to.