Albert King – "Born Under a Bad Sign" (1967)

If it wasn't for bad luck

I wouldn't have no luck at all

Last September, a 70-year-old man walked into a Kansas City, Kansas bank and handed a teller a note that read, “I have a gun, give me money.”

In fact, the man did not have a gun – he was armed only with nail clippers and a hairbrush.  The teller didn’t know that, so she gave him $2924.

But instead of fleeing the bank with the loot, he took a seat in the bank lobby waited for police to arrive.  

After he was arrested, Lawrence John Ripple told police that he wanted to go to prison so he could get away from his wife.

Lawrence John Ripple's mug shot

Ripple could have been sentenced to up to 37 months in prison, which would have suited him just fine.  But like the singer of today’s featured song, Ripple was born under a bad sign: the judge who heard his case sentenced him to six months of home confinement!

Ripple’s lawyer told the judge that his client’s crime was the result of the undiagnosed depression he had suffered since undergoing quadruple-bypass heart surgery in 2015.  He argued that Ripple should not be sentenced to prison for his crime.

The bank teller appeared in court to urge the judge not to send Ripple to the poke.

Ripple told the judge that a prison sentence would be more of a punishment for his wife than for him.

(She doesn't look that bad,
but looks can be deceiving)

When Ripple said that, his wife had her arm up his ass and was working his mouth like a puppet.

(OK, I made that up.)

Did the judge sentence Ripple to home confinement instead of prison because he believed that sending him to jail would serve no purpose?  

Or because he believed that not being able to leave the house and get away from his wife for six months was a much worse punishment than prison time?

I'm SURE it was the former – not the latter.

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“Born Under a Bad Sign,” which was co-written by William Bell and Booker T. Jones (of Booker T. and the M.G.’s), was recorded by Albert King in 1967.  

A lot of people have covered “Born Under a Bad Sign,” including Cream, who released the song on their 1968 Wheels of Fire album.

Here’s “Born Under a Bad Sign”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: