Foghat – "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (1975)

I don’t want you cook my bread

I don’t want you make my bed

I don’t want your money too

I just want to make love to you

Let’s be honest.  You don’t really want to “make love” to her, do you?

(Guys will say anything.)

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Chicago blues legend Willie Dixon wrote “I Just Want to Make Love to You” in 1954.   (Dixon’s songs – he wrote or co-wrote over 500 – have been recorded not only by many great blues singers, but also by classic rock bands like the Rolling Stones, Doors, and Led Zeppelin.)

Willie Dixon

Muddy Waters was the first to record “I Just Want to Make Love to You.”  In his version of the song, the verse quoted above is the third verse.  

In Dixon’s own recording, it’s the second verse.

But it’s the first verse in Foghat’s cover of the song.

Foghat also leaves out the “to” that precedes the verbs in most of the song’s lines.  (“I don’t want you to cook my bread” becomes “I don’t want you cook my bread” and “I don’t want you to make my bed” becomes “I don’t want you make my bed.”)  

Producer Dave Edmunds may have gotten that idea from the Animals’ recording of the song, which not only omitted the “to’s” but also made the verse quoted above the first verse.  

By the way . . . do you find it odd that Dixon wrote “cook my bread” rather than “bake my bread”?  (I haven’t seen that expression anywhere else.)

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I never thought much about Foghat – never bought any of their albums.  But they were money!  (Of their first eight albums, five went gold, one went platinum, and one went double platinum.)

Foghat in 1975

“Fool for the City” was a great hard-rock record – I’m shocked it made it only to #45 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”

And what’s not to like about “Slow Ride”?  After all, Richard Linklater chose it to accompany the final scene of his iconic movie, Dazed and Confused.  (If “Slow Ride’ is good enough for Mitch Kramer, David Wooderson et al., it’s good enough for me.)

“I Just Want to Make Love to You” was the first track off Foghat’s eponymous debut album – these guys didn't waste any time in kicking *ss and taking names.  (For those of you who are relatively new to 2 or 3 lines, you should know that I rarely go longer than a month without slipping “eponymous debut album” into a post.)

Click here to listen to Foghat’s recording of “I Just Want to Make Love to You.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: