Jealous Again

You are tuned to THE ZOO, and the needle just dropped on a record that walked into 1990 dressed like 1972 and refused to apologize. “Jealous Again” is the debut single from The Black Crowes, the first shot fired off Shake Your Money Maker, and it still swings like a barroom door that never quite latches. Chris Robinson is out front, half sermon and half smirk, and Rich Robinson is underneath him with a rhythm guitar part that never sits still. The song does not ask permission. It leans on the downbeat, kicks the snare a hair late, and dares the room to keep up.

The brothers Robinson grew up in the Atlanta suburbs, Marietta kids who treated the British Invasion, the Stones, Humble Pie, and the Faces like neighborhood gossip. In 1984 they put a band together under the name Mr. Crowe’s Garden, a psychedelic handle borrowed from the paisley-underground records they were spinning at home. Clubs did not always know what to do with them. Rich was still underage for a stretch, which meant the guitar player sometimes waited in the car until the set started. They kept the “Crowe” when they finally changed the name, because that was what people on the sidewalk were already calling them. The Black Crowes stuck. By the time George Drakoulias, then a staffer in Rick Rubin’s Def American orbit, caught them in New York, the songs were already meaner and looser than the hair-metal traffic clogging the radio.

Shake Your Money Maker, also styled on the sleeve as The Black Crowes Present: $hake Your Money Maker, landed on Def American on February 13, 1990. The title is a tip of the hat to Elmore James and the old blues number of the same name. Drakoulias produced. Rubin sat as executive producer. The band cut the album in 1989 at Soundscape in Atlanta and at Chapel, Paramount, and Grandmaster in Los Angeles. Drums and guitar went down mostly live, amps cranked in a big room, microphones everywhere, solos and vocals stacked afterward. Chuck Leavell, the Allman Brothers piano man, sat in on keys. A young Brendan O’Brien was in the engineer’s chair, playing a little of everything. The lineup on this record, and only this record, was Chris on vocals, Rich on guitar, Jeff Cease on the other guitar, Johnny Colt on bass, and Steve Gorman on drums. Cease played most of the leads, cut as close to the moment as they could get them. Rich’s weapons of choice included a ’68 Telecaster, a ’68 Les Paul goldtop with a Bigsby, and a Gretsch Roc Jet, run through Marshalls, a Bedrock head, and Fender Twins and Showmans. No pedalboard philosophy. Just volume and fingers.

“Jealous Again” was the lead single, out on cassette in the United States on January 30, 1990, months before the album, with “Thick N’ Thin” on the flip. The 12-inch and CD added “Waitin’ Guilty.” Rich has been plain about the blueprint. They were chasing the feel of “Tumbling Dice” from Exile on Main St., that staggered, almost drunk groove where the band sounds like it might fall over and never does. He wrote the intro, built the tune with Chris, and brought it to rehearsal, where everybody got it on the first pass. The first time they played it in front of people, they were opening for Drivin’ N Cryin’ in Nashville. Chris has called the early Crowes records a document of youthful exuberance more than angst. The lyric rides that line: road miles, a girl who will not stay put, a singer who has already decided he is not going home to sulk. “Singing songs, ain’t got no regrets” is the whole job description.

Rock radio heard it before the pop charts did. The song climbed to number five on Billboard’s Album Rock Tracks chart and finished 1990 at number seven on that chart’s year-end list. It nicked the Hot 100 at number 75, reached number 56 in Canada, number 76 in the UK, number 34 in the Netherlands, and number 96 in Australia. Pete Angelus directed the video, later tucked into the Sho’ Nuff box. None of that made the album an instant smash. “Jealous Again” was the handshake. The Otis Redding cover “Hard to Handle,” which Drakoulias pushed for, and the older ballad “She Talks to Angels,” a riff Rich had written as a teenager, were the songs that kicked the door wider. Shake Your Money Maker peaked at number four on the Billboard 200, went five-times platinum in the United States, and helped Rolling Stone’s readers name the Crowes Best New American Band. They spent the better part of two years on the road behind it, hundreds of shows, opening for Heart and anybody else who would have a band that looked like it had raided a 1973 thrift store and meant it.

The song never left the set. Chris has said he still likes hearing it, that it remains an iconic piece of the show alongside “Twice As Hard.” An acoustic rethink turned up on Croweology in 2010, the twentieth-anniversary record where they sat down and played the catalog like a front-porch band instead of a stadium act. Live versions have surfaced on Freak ’n’ Roll and on the greatest-hits set A Tribute to a Work in Progress. In 2008 the band filed suit against country singer Gretchen Wilson, arguing that one of her songs stepped on the copyright. The groove, it turns out, was worth protecting.

What you are hearing is the moment a local Atlanta outfit stopped sounding like a tribute and started sounding like a problem for everybody else on the dial. Hair metal was still loud. Seattle had not yet taken the wheel. The Crowes parked in the middle with open-G chords, a piano that rolls instead of tinkles, and a singer who could sell a grudge like a love letter. If you want the rest of the story, the brothers, the tours, and whatever they are tearing into next, the official home is theblackcrowes.com. The Crowe-Mafia fan club, with presales and vault tracks, lives at join.thechorus.com/theblackcrowes. They keep the social doors open on Facebook, Instagram, and X. And when you want the deep cuts without the commercials, you already know the address: THE ZOO. Turn it up. “Jealous Again” still does not sit down.