Maverick Philosopher

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Weather Conditions

Earl Scruggs and Friends, Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Ella Fitzgerald, Misty. Beats the Johnny Mathis version. A standard from the Great American Songbook.

Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze. Not from the Great American Songbook. And presumably not about weather conditions.  'Scuse me while I kiss the sky? Or: 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy?

Cream, Sunshine of Your Love

Tom Waits, Emotional Weather Report

Art Garfunkel and James Taylor, Crying in the Rain. Written by Carole King and popularized by the Everly Bros.

Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Written by Fred Rose and performed by Roy Acuff in the '40s.

Now my hair is turned to silver
All my life I've loved in vain
I can see her star in heaven
Blue eyes cryin' in the rain.

Someday when we meet up yonder
We'll stroll hand in hand again
In a land that knows no parting
Blue eyes crying in the rain.

Allman Bros., Blue Sky

Kansas, Dust in the Wind

Eric Clapton, Let It Rain

Dave van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters, Clouds ("Both Sides Now").  This beautiful version by "The Mayor of MacDougal street" goes out to Oregon  luthier Dave Bagwill who I know will appreciate it. Judy Collins made a hit of it. And you still doubt that the '60s was the greatest decade for American popular music?  Speaking of the greatest decade, it was when the greatest writer of American popular songs, bar none, Bob Dylan, made his mark. Some generational chauvinism is justified.

Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall Could Johnny Mercer write a song like this?

Eva Cassidy, Over the Rainbow. Another old standard from the Great American Songbook.

Tom Waits, On a Foggy Night

Rolling Stones, She's a Rainbow

Dan Fogelberg, Rhythm of the Rain

Cascades, Rhythm of the Rain. The original.

Dee Clark, Raindrops. Manny Mora:

"Raindrops" is a 1961 song by the American R&B singer Dee Clark. Released in April of that same year, this ballad peaked at position 2 on the Hot 100 and at position 3 on the R&B chart.  [. . .]

Clark's biggest hit was also his last. [. . .]

Clark had a brief revival in 1975 when his song "Ride a Wild Horse" became a surprise Top 30 hit in the UK Singles Chart, becoming his first chart hit in the UK since "Just Keep It Up." Afterwards, Clark performed mostly on the oldies circuit. By the late 1980s, he was in dire straits financially, living in a welfare hotel in Toccoa, Georgia. Despite suffering a stroke in 1987 that left him partially paralyzed and with a mild speech impediment, he continued to perform until his death on December 7th 1990, in Smyrna, Georgia, from a heart attack at the age of 52. His last concert was with the Jimmy Gilstrap Band at the Portman Lounge in Anderson, South Carolina.

Dave Bagwill sends us to a clip in which Dave van Ronk talks a bit about the days of the "Great American Folk Scare" and then sings his signature number, "Green, Green, Rocky Road."

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Songs with 'When" in the Title

B. B. King, Nobody Knows You when You're Down and Out

John Fogerty, When Will I Be Loved?  This cover of the old Everly Bros. tune is now my favorite.

Beach Boys, When I Grow Up (to be a Man)

Bob Dylan, When the Ship Comes In

Clancy Bros., When the Ship Comes In

Laura Nyro, And When I Die

Percy Sledge, When a Man Loves a Woman

Bob Dylan, When I Paint My Masterpiece

The Band, When I Paint My Masterpiece

Bob Dylan, When the Deal Goes Down

Colander Girl

With apologies to Neil Sedaka, Calendar Girl. 

A 'pastafarian' idiot was allowed to wear a colander in an official DMV photo in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Bring on the hoodies, the sombreros, the ski masks . . . .  Story here.

Does this have anything to do with the decline of the West?  Something.  It is just another little indication of the abdication of those in positions of authority.  A driver's license is an important document.  The authorities should not allow its being mocked by a dumbass with a piece of kitchenware on her head.  But Massachusetts is lousy with liberals, so what do you expect?  A liberal will tolerate anything except common sense and good judgment.

A penne for her thoughts as she strains to find something to believe in.  If only she would use her noodle.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: 'In' Songs

Are you 'in' with the 'in crowd'?

Ramsey Lewis Trio, The 'In' Crowd

Dobie Gray, The 'In' Crowd

Glenn Miller, In the Mood

Beach Boys, In My Room

Beatles, In My Life

Suzi Quatro, Stumblin' In 

Bob Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind 

Kansas, Dust in the Wind

Bob Dylan, Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

Bob Dylan, In My Time of Dyin'

Bob Dylan, Tangled Up in Blue

Five Satins, In the Still of the Night

Mungo Jerry, In the Summertime. That fabulous and far-off summer of 1970. I was unloading mail trucks at Terminal Annex, Los Angeles. 

Van Morrison, Into the Mystic

Saturday Night at the Oldies: More Messages, Letters, etc.

Marvelettes, Please Mr. Postman. 

Elvis Presley, Return to Sender

Joan Baez, Rock Salt and Nails. "The letters you wrote me were written in shame/And I know that your conscience still echoes my name."

Son House, Death Letter Blues

Elvis Presley, The U. S. Male

Larry Finnegan, Dear One. If you remember this one, I'll buy you a beer.

Hank Williams, Dear John. "That's all she wrote. I sent your saddle home."

Ricky Nelson, That's All She Wrote

Joe Cocker, The Letter

 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Messages, Letters, Epistles, Novels and such

Bob Dylan,  Take a Message to Mary. I prefer it to the Everly Bros. effort. 

Boxtops, The Letter

R. B. Greaves, Take a Letter, Maria

Beatles, Paperback Writer

Dinah Washington, I Could Write a Book

Donovan, Epistle to Dippy

10,000 Maniacs, Hey Jack Kerouac

Simon and Garfunkel, I am a Rock. "I have my books and my poetry to protect me." 1960's teenage alienation at its finest.

Ketty Lester, Love Letters

Paul McCartney, I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter. Original by Fats Waller.

How could I fail to include . . .

Monotones, The Book of Love.  I never did find out who wrote it.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

A mixed bag for your enjoyment, but mainly mine.  I post what I like and I like what I post. And I post what I've posted before. Links go bad, and even when they don't I never get tired of the old tunes I like. It's Saturday night, friends, pour yourself a stiff one and relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow.  I am drinking the fermented juice of the agave cactus mixed with a little orange juice and ginger ale. What's your libation? Forget for a time the swine who have taken over our great country, and enjoy the moment.

Thelonious Monk, I'm Getting Sentimental Over You

Wes Montgomery, 'Round Midnight

Cannonball Adderley, 74 Miles Away. In 7/4 time.

Ry Cooder, I Think It's Going to to Work Out Fine

Jeff Beck, Sleepwalk. The old Santo and Johnny instrumental from 1959.

Danny Gatton, master of the Telecaster. Phenomenally good, practically unknown.

Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. When your name is 'Bob Dylan' you have your pick of sidemen. A great band. "The walls of pride, they're high and they're wide. You can't see over, to the other side."

Joe Brown, Sea of  Heartbreak.  Nothing touches Don Gibson's original effort, but Brown's is a very satisfying version.

Elvis Presley, Little Sister 

Carole King, You've Got a Friend

Buddy Guy, et al., Sweet Home Chicago. Looks like everyone is playing a Strat except for Johnny Winter.

Ry Cooder, He'll Have to Go.  A fine, if quirky, cover of the old George Reeves hit from 1959.

Marty Robbins, El Paso. Great guitar work.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: September Songs

September already.  A transitional month leading from hot August to glorious October, Kerouac month in the MavPhil 'secular liturgy.'

Dinah Washington, September in the Rain

Rod Stewart, Maggie May. "Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you/It's late September and I really should be back at school."

Carole King, It Might as Well Rain Until September

The 'sixties forever! We were young, raw, open, impressionable, experience-hungry; we lived intensely and sometimes foolishly.  We felt deeply, and suffered deeply. Youth has its truth. And our popular music put to shame the crap that came before and after. Or so we thought. Would I want to live though the 'sixties again? Hell no, I am having too good a time enjoying it memorially at a safe distance.  Youth has its truth, but if you can make it into old age with health and intellect intact, and a modicum of the lean green, you are winning the game. 

Django Reinhardt, September Song

George Shearing, September in the Rain

Walter Huston, September Song 

Van Morrison, September Night

Brothers Four, Try to Remember. I do remember when I was "a tender and callow fellow." 

Addendum

This from a London reader:

Thanks for linking to the George Shearing ‘September’. I had forgotten he grew up in London (in Battersea, just down the road from me). I love the Bird-like flights on the piano. Indeed I think he wrote ‘Lullaby of Birdland’. Another Londoner is Helen Shapiro who does a great version of ‘It might as well rain until September.’  Great alto voice, never made it in the US as far as I know. There is an  account of her conversion to Christianity here.

I was first hipped to Shearing by Kerouac who referred to him in On the Road.  I too love the 'Bird'-like flights on the piano. The allusion is to Charley 'Bird' Parker, also beloved of Kerouac.  Helen Shapiro is new to me, thanks. She does a great job with the Carole King composition.  Believe it or not, King's version is a demo. That's one hell of a demo. A YouTuber points out that Shapiro was not part of the 1964 'British Invasion.'  I wonder why.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: An Alternative Dylan Top Ten

As promised last week. 

Baby Let Me Follow You Down, 1962. From Bob's first album. Lord almighty it is good to hear this again. Dylan played better guitar and harmonic in the early days.  The surging, full-throated harp beats the sometimes-annoying tweets and toots of his later harmonic playing.  Dylan opens by telling us that he learned this song from Rick [Eric] von Schmidt when he met him one day in "the green pastures of Harvard University." Was he thinking of Woody Guthrie's Pastures of Plenty, 1944? Dylan's effort  apparently derives from von Schmidt's Baby Let Me Lay it on You. 

Here is a real gem of a find: Bob Dylan Jamming with Eric von Schmidt, May, 1964.  Eric von Schmidt, Envy the Thief. Back to the Dylan top ten.

Blowin' in the Wind. From the Freewheelin' album, Bob's second. His best civil rights anthem. Topical but allusive.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. Also from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.  Said to have been written during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. I remember it like it was yesterday.  Joan Baez's transcendently beautiful cover. Forgive me if I gush a bit. I'm enjoying a Saturday night cocktail: Tequila + Aperol. Straight up.

Positively Fourth Street. The ultimate put-down song.

With God on Our Side. From the third album.

Spanish Harlem Incident. Fourth album, We'll make do with the Byrds' cover. Not that it isn't good.

Its All Over Now, Baby Blue. Fifth album, probably my favorite.  This one goes out to Charaine H., and our bittersweet relationship.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, baby blue.

It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding. Going to a Dylan concert in those days was like going to church. Absolute silence except for the man on stage standing alone singing his own songs and accompanying himself on guitar and harp. We hung on every word.

It Take a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry. From Dylan's 6th album, Highway 61 Revisited.

I Want You. Blonde on Blonde, Dylan's 7th.

All Along the Watchtower, John Wesley Harding.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: My Bob Dylan Top Ten

Hector C. asked me to name my top ten favorite Dylan songs. With pleasure.

Don't Think Twice.  I first heard this in the Peter, Paul, and Mary version circa 1962 or '63. Deeply moved by it, I bought the 45 rpm single and noted that the song was written by one B. Dylan. I pronounced the name to myself as 'Dial in' and had a sense that this songwriter was about to speak to me and my life.  And here he is still speaking to my 'lived experience' 60 years later.

She Belongs to Me

Chimes of Freedom.  With Joan Osborne, NOT Joan Baez!  Byrds' version.  No Dylan, no folk rock.

My Back Pages

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Farewell Angelina. Joanie's version. No Baez, no Dylan. She took the scruffy kid under her wing and introduced him to her well-established audience.  

Visions of Johanna

Just Like a Woman.  Better than the Blonde on Blonde version.  

Tambourine Man

Few songs capture the 'magic' of the '60s like this one. But you had to have been there, of a certain impressionable age, with the right disposition, with an open mind, and an open heart, idealistic, a seeker, and at least a little alienated from the larger society and the quiet desperation and dead usages of parents and relatives . . . .

YouTuber comment:  "This Bob Dylan song brings me to tears and I don't know why. I'm 76 years old and remember when it was new. It still is." Comment on the comment:  "This is a nostalgic feeling for the passing of the time. A saudade of a time whose dreams seem  real. I know about it. I'm 71."

Not Dark Yet. YouTuber comment: "All my life, Dylan has been able to touch my soul. This is undoubtedly one of his best."

An alternative Dylan top ten next week.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: More Musical Duos and Some Duets

Richard and Mimi Farina, Pack Up Your Sorrows

Mimi and Richard Farina, Reno, Nevada

Ian and Sylvia, Early Morning Rain

Ian and Sylvia, You Were on My Mind

Joan Baez and Mimi Farina, Catch the Wind

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind

Dick and Dee Dee, The Mountain High, 1961

Dick and Dee Dee, Tell Me, 1962. Where were you in '62?

Santo and Johnny, Sleep Walk. Every garage band from here to Cucamonga did a version of this tune.

Joe and Eddie, There's a Meeting Here Tonight. I'll bet you don't remember this one, Dave Bagwill.

Les Paul and Mary Ford, Vaya con Dios, 1953

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Musical Duos

Saturday night, time to punch the clock and pour yourself a stiff one. Me, I'm drinking a  Jack and Coke. How about you?

Mickey and Sylvia, Love is Strange, 1956

Nino Tempo and April, Deep Purple, 1963. The lyrics are pure sweet kitsch. But what's wrong with a little kitsch and sentimentality? Up yours, Theodor Adorno.

Everly Brothers, When Will I be Loved?

Righteous Brothers, Little Latin Lupe Lu

Simon and Garfunkel, I am a Rock.  I have my books and my poetry to protect me!

Ike and Tina Turner, It's Gonna Work Out Fine, 1961. I went to see the preacher man.

Sonny and Cher, I Got You, Babe, 1965.  Don't let them say you hair's too long!

Jan and Dean, Dead Man's Curve, 1963. Walk not back from Dead Man's Curve.

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, 1949. This one goes out to Hillary Clinton.

Peter and Gordon, I Go to Pieces

Peter and Gordon, Summer Song

Chad and Jeremy, Yesterday's Gone

Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo, Last Tango

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some California Tunes from a Happier Time

Sir Douglas Quartet, Mendocino, 1969. This one goes out to Mendocino Joe.

Eric Burdon and the Animals, Monterey. This one goes out to Monterey Tom. 

Eagles, Hotel California.  Some of finest guitar-slinging of the '70s.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lodi

GG Kettel, San Francisco Bay Blues. Ferrara, Italy, 2007

Scott Mackenzie, San Francisco

Johnny Bond, Hot Rod Lincoln. San Pedro, Grapevine Hill. 

Doors, L. A. Woman

Beach Boys, California Girls

Mamas and Papas, California Dreamin'

Dave Bagwill comments (4 July):

Bill, listening to that Beach Boys tune tonight brought back a vivid memory.

 

Back when I lived in the Bay Area, and the Oakland A's were winning lots of ball games - Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Reggie Jackson (who made a throw from deep right field, at the fence, on a line to third base -on the base, in fact - catching a runner who had tagged at second base), Rick Monday et. al. - I attended a Saturday afternoon double-header with a friend from the bank.

 

It was a perfect day for baseball, and the stands were sold out; it felt great, until the first music pumped out of that stupendous sound system - and then it felt even better. 'California Girls' started playing, and just the first two or three beats was enough to electrify the crowd into a spontaneous rising and a thunderous roar of happiness.

 

It was just great to be an American, and that song was a huge part of the 'gestalt' = weather, a ball game, hot dogs, friendship, the flag, a sense of security and fellowship. And Sal Bando hit two home runs in the first game.

Bob Dylan at 80: A Sober Assessment

Graham Cunningham:

It pains me a little to say it, given my own past devotion, but some cold perspective is needed here. Bob Dylan was—from 1962 to the early 1980s—an extraordinary singer-songwriter and, in terms of quantity of great material, simply without equal. For the last 40 years, though, he has mostly been trading on the reputation he built in those years. There are exceptions to this judgment, yes, but not many: the 1983 Infidels album, a few tracks on the 1997 Time Out of Mind, and “Things Have Changed” from the soundtrack of the 2000 film Wonder Boys, for example.

Did Dylan deserve the Nobel Prize for Literature that he won in 2016? I’m not sure; he’s probably not sure, either. He was consistently good for about 20 years, an amazingly long time for a rock star. And he can take credit for spawning a whole musical genre. Many other songwriters in the same musical territory, such as Paul Simon or Bruce Springsteen, have, at their best, been as good or almost as good—but not nearly so often, or for so long.

The truth is, Bob Dylan, now 80, will never get “back on form.” Aging rock stars don’t do that; no one does. One of the most quoted lyrics of “Murder Most Foul” informs us that “It’s 36 hours past Judgment Day.” Dylan has been unquestionably the most influential songwriter of his era; no one can take that away from him. But as a long-time fan, I can’t help but wish that he had hung up his songwriting boots decades ago. His musical stature could then have remained closer to that of artists who die young, unsullied by the inevitable failures that must come to all careers—even one as extraordinary as his.

Holy Saturday Night at the Oldies

Herewith, six definite decouplings of rock and roll from sex and drugs.

Norman Greenbaum, Spirit in the Sky

Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus. This is one powerful song.

Clapton and Winwood, Presence of the Lord. Why is Clapton such a great guitarist? Not because of his technical virtuosity, his 'chops,' but because he uses them to say something.

George Harrison, My Sweet Lord

George Harrison, Hear Me Lord

George Harrison, All Things Must Pass.  Harrison was the Beatle with depth. Lennon the radical, McCartney the romantic, Starr the regular guy.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Torch Songs

"A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, where one party is either oblivious to the existence of the other, or where one party has moved on." (Wikipedia)

Sarah Vaughn, Broken Hearted Melody.   YouTuber comment: "Late 1959. I was in 4th grade, listening to KFWB Los Angeles."  Same here. Same year, same grade, same station, KFWB, Channel 98! Color Radio! My favorite deejay was B. Mitchel Reed.  I learned 'semolian' and 'mishigas' from him. His real surname is 'Goldberg,' which means mountain of gold. I will say no more lest I provoke my alt-Right correspondents.  

Timi Yuro, Hurt. When I first heard this I was sure she was black. I was wrong. She's Italian, and her real name is Rosemarie Timotea Auro. What pipes!

Billie Holliday, The Very Thought of You

Roy Orbison, In Dreams

Peggy Lee, Oh You Crazy Moon 

Ketty Lester, Love Letters 

Etta James, At Last  

Lenny Welch, Since I Fell for You

Sentimental you say? What would life be without sentiment? You say it's overdone? You suffer from an excess of cool. It's Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, and feel. Tonight we feel, tomorrow we think.  About sentimentality and everything else under the sun.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: A Little Harmless Escapism from the Horrors of the Present

Freddy Fender, Cielito Lindo.  Tex-Mex version of a very old song.

Arizona's own Marty Robbins, La Paloma.  Another old song dating back to 1861. 

Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger, 1963. 1963 was arguably the best of the '60s years for pop compositions. 

Emmylou Harris, Hello Stranger. Same title, different song.  This one goes out to Mary Kay F-D. Remember the Fall of 1980, Mary Kay? 

Get up, rounder/Let a working girl lie down/ You are rounder/And you are all out and down.

Carter Family version from 1939.

Joan Baez, Daddy, You've Been on My Mind. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Bruce  Langhorne's guitar.

Joan Baez, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar.

Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time. 

Carolyn Hester, I'll Fly Away.  Dylan on harp, a little rough and ragged. Langhorne on guitar? Not sure.

Joan Baez and her sister, Mimi Farina, Catch the Wind. Fabulous.

Joan Baez, Boots of Spanish Leather.  Nanci Griffith also does a good job with this Dylan classic. 

Betty Everett, You're No Good, 1963.  More soulful than the 1975 Linda Ronstadt version.

The Ikettes, I'm Blue, 1962. 

Lee Dorsey, Ya Ya, 1961.  Simplicity itself. Three chords. I-IV-V progression. No bridge.

New Year's Eve at the Oldies: 'Last' Songs for the Last Night of the Year

Happy New Year, everybody.  

Last Night, 1961, The Mar-Keys.

Last Date, 1960, Floyd Cramer. It was bliss while it lasted. You were so in love with her you couldn't see straight. But she didn't feel the same. You shuffle home, enter your lonely apartment, pour yourself a stiff one, and put Floyd Cramer on the box.

Save the Last Dance for Me, 1960, The Drifters.

At Last, Etta James.

Last Thing on My Mind, Doc Watson sings the Tom Paxton tune. A very fine version.

Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, Simon and Garfunkel. 

Last Call, Dave van Ronk.  "If I'd been drunk when I was born, I'd be ignorant of sorrow."

(Last night I had) A Wonderful Dream, The Majors. The trick is to find in the flesh one of those dream girls. Some of us got lucky.

This night in 1985 was Rick Nelson's last: the Travelin' Man died in a plane crash.  Wikipedia:

Nelson dreaded flying but refused to travel by bus. In May 1985, he decided he needed a private plane and leased a luxurious, fourteen-seat, 1944 Douglas DC-3 that had once belonged to the DuPont family and later to Jerry Lee Lewis. The plane had been plagued by a history of mechanical problems.^[104] In one incident, the band was forced to push the plane off the runway after an engine blew, and in another incident, a malfunctioning magneto prevented Nelson from participating in the first Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois.

On December 26, 1985, Nelson and the band left for a three-stop tour of the Southern United States. Following shows in Orlando, Florida, and Guntersville, Alabama, Nelson and band members took off from Guntersville for a New Year's Eve extravaganza in Dallas, Texas.^[105] The plane crash-landed northeast of Dallas in De Kalb, Texas, less than two miles from a landing strip, at approximately 5:14 p.m. CST on December 31, 1985, hitting trees as it came to earth. Seven of the nine occupants were killed: Nelson and his companion, Helen Blair; bass guitarist Patrick Woodward, drummer Rick Intveld, keyboardist Andy Chapin, guitarist Bobby Neal, and road manager/soundman Donald Clark Russell. Pilots Ken Ferguson and Brad Rank escaped via cockpit windows, though Ferguson was severely burned.

It's Up to You.

Bonus: Last Chance Harvey.

Last but not least: Auld Lang Syne.

Happy New Year, everybody.  

Last Night, 1961, The Mar-Keys.

Last Date, 1960, Floyd Cramer. It was bliss while it lasted. You were so in love with her you couldn't see straight. But she didn't feel the same. You shuffle home, enter your lonely apartment, pour yourself a stiff one, and put Floyd Cramer on the box.

Save the Last Dance for Me, 1960, The Drifters.

At Last, Etta James.

Last Thing on My Mind, Doc Watson sings the Tom Paxton tune. A very fine version.

Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, Simon and Garfunkel. 

Last Call, Dave van Ronk.  "If I'd been drunk when I was born, I'd be ignorant of sorrow."

(Last night I had) A Wonderful Dream, The Majors. The trick is to find in the flesh one of those dream girls. Some of us got lucky.

This night in 1985 was Rick Nelson's last: the Travelin' Man died in a plane crash.  Wikipedia:

Nelson dreaded flying but refused to travel by bus. In May 1985, he decided he needed a private plane and leased a luxurious, fourteen-seat, 1944 Douglas DC-3 that had once belonged to the DuPont family and later to Jerry Lee Lewis. The plane had been plagued by a history of mechanical problems.^[104] In one incident, the band was forced to push the plane off the runway after an engine blew, and in another incident, a malfunctioning magneto prevented Nelson from participating in the first Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois.

On December 26, 1985, Nelson and the band left for a three-stop tour of the Southern United States. Following shows in Orlando, Florida, and Guntersville, Alabama, Nelson and band members took off from Guntersville for a New Year's Eve extravaganza in Dallas, Texas.^[105] The plane crash-landed northeast of Dallas in De Kalb, Texas, less than two miles from a landing strip, at approximately 5:14 p.m. CST on December 31, 1985, hitting trees as it came to earth. Seven of the nine occupants were killed: Nelson and his companion, Helen Blair; bass guitarist Patrick Woodward, drummer Rick Intveld, keyboardist Andy Chapin, guitarist Bobby Neal, and road manager/soundman Donald Clark Russell. Pilots Ken Ferguson and Brad Rank escaped via cockpit windows, though Ferguson was severely burned.

It's Up to You.

Bonus: Last Chance Harvey.

Last but not least: Auld Lang Syne.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Marlene Dietrich, Die Fesche Lola. 'Fesche' means something like smart, snazzy.

Ich bin die fesche Lola, der Liebling der Saison!
Ich hab' ein Pianola zu Haus' in mein' Salon
Ich bin die fesche Lola, mich liebt ein jeder Mann
doch an mein Pianola, da laß ich keinen ran!

Kinks, Lola. From the days when 'tranny' meant transmission.  

Marlene Dietrich, Muss I Denn

Elvis Presley, Wooden Heart 

Lotte Lenya, Moon of Alabama

Doors, Roadhouse Blues

Tom Petty, Lost Highway. The old Hank Williams tune. "And now I am lost, too late to pray. Lord, I've paid the cost on the lost highway."  This goes out to all you 'deplorables' out there.

Bette Midler, Mambo Italiano.  Video of Sophia Loren.

Marlene Dietrich, Die Fesche Lola. 'Fesche' means something like smart, snazzy.

Ich bin die fesche Lola, der Liebling der Saison!
Ich hab' ein Pianola zu Haus' in mein' Salon
Ich bin die fesche Lola, mich liebt ein jeder Mann
doch an mein Pianola, da laß ich keinen ran!

Kinks, Lola. From the days when 'tranny' meant transmission.  

Marlene Dietrich, Muss I Denn

Elvis Presley, Wooden Heart 

Lotte Lenya, Moon of Alabama

Doors, Roadhouse Blues

Tom Petty, Lost Highway. The old Hank Williams tune. "And now I am lost, too late to pray. Lord, I've paid the cost on the lost highway."  This goes out to all you 'deplorables' out there.

Bette Midler, Mambo Italiano.  Video of Sophia Loren.

Saturday NIght at the Oldies: The Forgotten and the Underplayed

Betty Everett, You're No Good, 1963.  More soulful than the 1975 Linda Ronstadt version.

The Ikettes, I'm Blue, 1962. 

Lee Dorsey, Ya Ya, 1961.  Simplicity itself. Three chords. I-IV-V progression. No bridge.

Paul Anka, A Steel Guitar and a Glass of Wine, 1962.

Carole King, Crying in the Rain, 1963.  The earnest girl-feeling of young Carole makes it better than the Everly Bros.' more polished and better executed version.  

Don Gibson, Sea of a Heartbreak.  A crossover hit from 1961.  It's a crime for the oldies stations to ignore this great song. Joe Brown's cover is also good.

Ketty Lester, Love Letters, 1961.  Gets some play, but not enough.

Eric Clapton, Good Night Irene. This one goes out to Ed Buckner.

Betty Everett, You're No Good, 1963.  More soulful than the 1975 Linda Ronstadt version.

The Ikettes, I'm Blue, 1962. 

Lee Dorsey, Ya Ya, 1961.  Simplicity itself. Three chords. I-IV-V progression. No bridge.

Paul Anka, A Steel Guitar and a Glass of Wine, 1962.

Carole King, Crying in the Rain, 1963.  The earnest girl-feeling of young Carole makes it better than the Everly Bros.' more polished and better executed version.  

Don Gibson, Sea of a Heartbreak.  A crossover hit from 1961.  It's a crime for the oldies stations to ignore this great song. Joe Brown's cover is also good.

Ketty Lester, Love Letters, 1961.  Gets some play, but not enough.

Eric Clapton, Good Night Irene. This one goes out to Ed Buckner.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Wall of Sound

Here are some of my favorite Phil Spector productions.  It wouldn't have been the 'sixties without him. I avert my eyes from his later misadventures and remember him for his contributions to the Boomer soundtrack.

Crystals, Uptown, 1962.

Crystals, He's a Rebel

Ronettes, Be My Baby

Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron

Curtis Lee, Pretty Little Angel Eyes.

Great dance video. Curtis Edwin Lee, one-hit wonder, hailed from Yuma, Arizona.  He died at 75 years of age on 8 January 2015.  Obituary here. His signature number became a hit in 1961, reaching the #7 slot on the Billboard Hot 100. When I discovered that the record was produced by the legendary Phil Spector, I understood why it is so good.  After the limelight, Lee returned to Yuma for a normal life. This tune goes out to wifey, with love.  When I first espied those angel eyes back in '82, I had the thought, "Here she is, man, the one for you. Go for it!" And I did, and its been very good indeed.

Ben E. King, Spanish Harlem, 1960.

Crystals, Then He Kissed Me

Beach Boys, Then I Kissed Her. With a tribute to Marilyn M.

Paris Sisters, I Love How You Love Me, 1961.

Ronettes, Walkin' in the Rain

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Sibelius, Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, Opus 39

Leonard Bernstein conducts.

20th century classical music with human meaning.  My favorite part is the Andante movement, starting around 13:00.

Commentary by Robert Reilly: Jean Sibelius' Music of the Logos.

Sibelius said, “There is music in the whole universe.” He believed in the “Music of the Spheres,” the classical Greek view that held that the mathematical relationships among the heavenly bodies are the same as those of music. The heavens are literally harmonious. He said, “I believe that there are musical notes and harmonies on all planets.” This included planet earth. Sibelius’s experience of the world was essentially musical.

[. . .]

Though Sibelius was not religious in a conventional sense, he was a deep believer. “The essence of man’s being,” he said, “is his striving after God.” He saw art as hieratic and composition as a vocation. In words that could hardly go more directly to the heart of the matter, he said, “It [composition] is brought to life by means of the Logos, the divine in art. That is the only thing that really has significance.”

Saturday Night at the Oldies: September Songs

September already.  A transitional month leading from hot August to glorious October, Kerouac month in the MavPhil 'secular liturgy.'

Dinah Washington, September in the Rain

Rod Stewart, Maggie May. "Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you/It's late September and I really should be back at school."

Carole King, It Might as Well Rain Until September

Django Reinhardt, September Song

George Shearing, September in the Rain

Walter Huston, September Song 

Addendum

This from a London reader:

Thanks for linking to the George Shearing ‘September’. I had forgotten he grew up in London (in Battersea, just down the road from me). I love the Bird-like flights on the piano. Indeed I think he wrote ‘Lullaby of Birdland’. Another Londoner is Helen Shapiro who does a great version of ‘It might as well rain until September’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De0_zZ7qQDA. Great alto voice, never made it in the US as far as I know. There is an  account of her conversion to Christianity here.

I was first hipped to Shearing by Kerouac who referred to him in On the Road.  I too love the 'Bird'-like flights on the piano. The allusion is to Charley 'Bird' Parker, also beloved of Kerouac.  Helen Shapiro is new to me, thanks. She does a great job with the Carole King composition.  Believe it or not, King's version is a demo. That's one hell of a demo. A YouTuber points out that Shapiro was not part of the 1964 'British Invasion.'  I wonder why.

Saturday Nght at the Oldies: The Ten Most Violent Democrat-Run Cities

New York, New York. "Start spreading the news . . ."

L. A. Woman

Born in Chicago

Houston

Streets of Philadelphia

Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again. "The post office has been stolen and the mail box is locked." Prescient!

Detroit City

Dallas Alice

By the Time I Get to Phoenix

Lady Came from Baltimore

Like crime? Vote Democratic!

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

I have only recently come to appreciate what a great song this Jackson Browne number from 1976 is. After the 'sixties faded, I gave myself an education in classical and jazz and lost touch with the rock scene. The video presents the thoughtful lyrics.   The Gary U. S. Bonds cover from 1981 is also unbelievably good.

The Weight. Robertson sat down one day to write a song and peering into his Martin guitar read, "Martin Guitars, Nazareth, Pennslylvania." This inspired the line, "I pulled into Nazareth, feelin' about half-past dead."

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Nothing hippy-trippy or psychedelic about these '60s musicians. Pure Americana. Rooted, autochthonic.

I Shall Be Released. The synergy benefited both the Bard and the Band. They helped him move farther from the mind and closer to the earth.

I post what I like, and I like what I post. It's a nostalgia trip, and a generational thing. There's no point in disputing taste or sensibility, or much of anything else. It's Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, stop thinking, and FEEL!

Traveling Wilburys, End of Line, Extended Version

Who, Won't Get Fooled Again. Lyrics! 

Gary U. S. Bonds, From a Buick Six. Sorry, Bob, but not even you can touch this version.

Bob Dylan, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes  a Train to Cry.  Cutting Edge Bootleg version.

Bob Dylan, Just Like a Woman.  This Cutting Edge take may be the best version, even with the mistakes. I'll say no more, lest I gush.

Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. The Bard never loses his touch. May he die with his boots on.

Bob Dylan, Corrina, Corrina. And you say he can't sing in a conventional way?

Bob Seger, Old-Time Rock and Roll

But does it really "soothe the soul"? Is it supposed to?  For soul-soothing, I recommend the Adagio movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Adagio molto e cantabile.

The Flying Burrito Brothers, To Ramona.  A beautiful cover of a song from Dylan's fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan.  

YouTuber comment: "I'd hate to think where we would be without Mr. Zimmerman's songwriting. So many covers done by so many great artists." And I say that if it weren't for Zimmi the Great American Boomer Soundtrack would have a huge, gaping hole in it.

John Fogerty and the Blue Ridge Rangers, You're the Reason

The Springfields, Silver Threads and Golden Needles

Dusty Springfield before she was Dusty Springfield.

Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Roving Gambler.  'Ramblin' Charles Adnopoz' lacking the requisite resonance for a follower of Woody Guthrie, this Jewish son of a New York M.D. wisely changed his name. 

Joan Baez, Rock Salt and Nails

Patsy Cline, She's Got You

Marianne Faithfull,  Ruby Tuesday.  Moodier than the Stones' original.  She does a great version of Dylan's Visions of Johanna. But nothing touches the original. It moves me as much as it did back in '66.  YouTuber comment: "An early morning cup of coffee, smoking a fattie, listening to this insane genius . . . does it get any better? And if so, how?"

Tom Waits, The Ghosts of Saturday Night.  One of the best by this latter-day quasi-Kerouac.

Marlene Dietrich, Die Fesche Lola. 'Fesche' means something like smart, snazzy.

Ich bin die fesche Lola, der Liebling der Saison!
Ich hab' ein Pianola zu Haus' in mein' Salon
Ich bin die fesche Lola, mich liebt ein jeder Mann
doch an mein Pianola, da laß ich keinen ran!

Kinks, Lola. From the days when 'tranny' meant transmission.  

Marlene Dietrich, Muss I Denn

Elvis Presley, Wooden Heart 

Lotte Lenya, September Song

Lotte Lenya, Moon of Alabama

Doors, Roadhouse Blues

Bette Midler, Mambo Italiano.  Video of Sophia Loren.

Marlene Dietrich, Die Fesche Lola. 'Fesche' means something like smart, snazzy.

Ich bin die fesche Lola, der Liebling der Saison!
Ich hab' ein Pianola zu Haus' in mein' Salon
Ich bin die fesche Lola, mich liebt ein jeder Mann
doch an mein Pianola, da laß ich keinen ran!

Kinks, Lola. From the days when 'tranny' meant transmission.  

Marlene Dietrich, Muss I Denn

Elvis Presley, Wooden Heart 

Lotte Lenya, September Song

Lotte Lenya, Moon of Alabama

Doors, Roadhouse Blues

Bette Midler, Mambo Italiano.  Video of Sophia Loren.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Carmelita, Juanita, and the Wicked Felina

Warren Zevon, Carmelita.  Stay clear of heroin and Pioneer chicken, both.

Flying Burrito Brothers, Juanita. Lyrics:

'No  affection' were the words that stuck on my mind
When she walked out on me for the very last time.
Oh mama sweet mama can you tell me what to say?
I don't know what I've done to be treated this way.

In a cold dirty room that's where I found myself
With a bottle of wine and some pills off the shelf.
Oh mama sweet mama can you tell me what to say?
I don't know what I've done and I'm feeling so ashamed.

Then an angel appeared she was just 17
In a dirty old gown (town?) with a conscience so clean
Oh mama sweet mama can you tell me what to say?
She's brought back the life that I once threw away.

Delightfully ambiguous:  Is Juanita the girl who walked out or the one who saved him?  Or both?

Marty Robbins, El Paso.  "Cradled by two loving arms that I'll die for/One little kiss and Felina, good-bye."

Bonus cut: Devil Woman

Albert Camus: He's a Rebel!

You'll enjoy it. If you don't,  you are not MavPhil material.

Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, tr. A. Bower, Vintage 1991, p. 15, French original published by Gallimard in 1951:

Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.

Good advice if one can take it without false heroism and existentialist hyperventilation.

Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, tr. A. Bower, Vintage 1991, p. 15, French original published by Gallimard in 1951:

Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.

Good advice if one can take it without false heroism and existentialist hyperventilation.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Celebrating Freedom and Independence

Not to mention resistance and defiance. Hats off to President Trump for last night's magnificent speech in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. And a happy Fourth to all patriots. 

Great minds on "All men are created equal."

Johnny Cash, I Won't Back Down. Tom Petty wrote it, with Jeff Lynne.

Byrds, Chimes of Freedom.  One of Dylan's greatest anthems.

Byrds, I Wasn't Born to Follow

Good YouTuber comment: "I keep searching for that door back into the summer of '69, I lost it somewhere long ago." 

Tim Hardin, A Simple Song of Freedom

Crystals, He's a Rebel

Rascals, People Got to be Free

Bob Dylan, I Shall Be Free. This is the first time I've heard this particular delightful 1962 outtake.  A real period piece in the style of Woody Guthrie with appearances by Marilyn Monroe, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren, John F. Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean's great granddaughter, fallout shelters . . . .

Cream, I Feel Free  

Johnny Horton, The Battle of New Orleans

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Politically Incorrect Tunes

No day without political incorrectness! And no night either.

But I suppose I should issue a TRIGGER WARNING to the 'safe space' girly-girls and pajama boys.  

Do not click on any of these links!  I am not responsible  for your psychic meltdown.

Ray Stevens, Ahab the Arab.  Here is the original from 1962. 

In the lyrics there are references to two hits from the same era, Chubby Checker's The Twist (1960) and Lonnie Donegan's British skiffle number  Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavor?  On second thought, the reference is to Checker's Let's Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer (1960).

Larry Verne, Mr. Custer (1960). "What am I doin' here?"

And now a trio of feminist anthems.

Marcie Blaine, Bobby's Girl.  "And if I was Bobby's girl, what a faithful, thankful girl I'd be." 

Carol Deene, Johnny Get Angry.   Joanie Sommers did it first.  "I want a cave man!"  Nice kazoo work.  k. d. lang's parody. 

Little Peggy March, I Will Follow Him.  "From now until forever."

Meanwhile the guys were bragging of having a girl in every port of call.  Dion, The Wanderer (1961). Ricky Nelson, Travelin' Man. (1961)

Addendum:  I forgot to link to two Ray Stevens numbers that are sure to rankle the sorry sensibilities of  our liberal pals: Come to the USA, God Save Arizona.  If you are a liberal shithead do not click on these links!  But if  if you have any sense you will enjoy them.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Marital Advice

First, make sure you have plenty of Money

Then Shop Around.

Consider who will become your Mother-in-Law. 

If you want to be happy, don't worry too much about physical beauty. 

If she has a cheatin' heart, hit the road, Jack.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Wall of Sound

Here are some of my favorite Phil Spector productions.  It wouldn't have been the 'sixties without him. I avert my eyes from his later misadventures and remember him for his contributions to the Boomer soundtrack.

Crystals, Uptown, 1962.

Crystals, He's a Rebel

In the thinly-populated supermarket this afternoon, I was struck by all the sheep dutifully wearing their ridiculous and useless masks.  So easily manipulated; so easily controlled by 'experts' and power-hungry pols. Masks are what the pandemic pussies have in common with the left-wing fascist Antifa thugs.

Ronettes, Be My Baby

Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron

Curtis Lee, Pretty Little Angel Eyes.

Great dance video. Curtis Edwin Lee, one-hit wonder, hailed from Yuma, Arizona.  He died at 75 years of age on 8 January 2015.  Obituary here. His signature number became a hit in 1961, reaching the #7 slot on the Billboard Hot 100. When I discovered that the record was produced by the legendary Phil Spector, I understood why it is so good.  After the limelight, Lee returned to Yuma for a normal life. This tune goes out to wifey, with love.  When I first espied those angel eyes back in '82, I had the thought, "Here she is, man, the one for you. Go for it!" And I did, and it has been very good indeed.

Ben E. King, Spanish Harlem, 1960.

Crystals, Then He Kissed Me

Beach Boys, Then I Kissed Her. With a tribute to Marilyn M.

Paris Sisters, I Love How You Love Me, 1961.

Ronettes, Walkin' in the Rain

Here are some of my favorite Phil Spector productions.  It wouldn't have been the 'sixties without him. I avert my eyes from his later misadventures and remember him for his contributions to the Boomer soundtrack.

Crystals, Uptown, 1962.

Crystals, He's a Rebel

In the thinly-populated supermarket this afternoon, I was struck by all the sheep dutifully wearing their ridiculous and useless masks.  So easily manipulated; so easily controlled by 'experts' and power-hungry pols. Masks are what the pandemic pussies have in common with the left-wing fascist Antifa thugs.

Ronettes, Be My Baby

Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron

Curtis Lee, Pretty Little Angel Eyes.

Great dance video. Curtis Edwin Lee, one-hit wonder, hailed from Yuma, Arizona.  He died at 75 years of age on 8 January 2015.  Obituary here. His signature number became a hit in 1961, reaching the #7 slot on the Billboard Hot 100. When I discovered that the record was produced by the legendary Phil Spector, I understood why it is so good.  After the limelight, Lee returned to Yuma for a normal life. This tune goes out to wifey, with love.  When I first espied those angel eyes back in '82, I had the thought, "Here she is, man, the one for you. Go for it!" And I did, and it has been very good indeed.

Ben E. King, Spanish Harlem, 1960.

Crystals, Then He Kissed Me

Beach Boys, Then I Kissed Her. With a tribute to Marilyn M.

Paris Sisters, I Love How You Love Me, 1961.

Ronettes, Walkin' in the Rain

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Help

Canned Heat, Help Me.

"Help me consolate my weary mind." I love that 'consolate.' Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson at his best.  I saw him and the boys at the Kaleidoscope in Hollywood in 1968.  Wilson was a tortured soul and ended up a member of the 27 Club. He quit the sublunary sphere on 3 September 1970.

Aficionados of that time and place will want to read Canned Heat: The Twisted Tale of Blind Owl and the Bear.

Johnny Cash, Help Me.

Beach Boys, Help Me, Rhonda

Hank Williams, I Can't Help it If I'm Still in Love with You 

Ringo Starr, With a Little Help from My Friends

Elvis Presley, Can't Help Falling in Love

Andrea Bocelli does a great live job with it.

Highwaymen, Help Me Make it Through the Night

While we have the Highwaymen cued up, let's enjoy Ghost Riders in the Sky

Joni Mitchell, Help Me

Hank Locklin, Please Help Me, I'm Falling

Here is Skeeter Davis' answer to Hank.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Songs of Freedom and Liberty

Metallica, Don't Tread on Me

Rascals, People Got to Be Free

Tom Petty, I Won't Back Down

Johnny Cash, I Won't Back Down

Merle Haggard, The Fightin' Side of Me

The Who, Going Mobile

Richie Havens, Freedom

Cream, I Feel Free

Joan Baez, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Arlo Guthrie, City of New Orleans

My Country 'tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Lesser-Known Dylan Songs

Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door. The Bard's been at it a long, long time, and his body of work is as vast and as variegated as America herself. We old fans from way back who were with him from the beginning are still finding gems unheard as we ourselves enter the twilight where it's not dark yet, but getting there. But it is a beautiful fade-out from a world that cannot last.

Why Bob Dylan Matters

Remember Me. With beautiful shots of Suze Rotolo.  See Suze Rotolo and the Songs She Inspired. 

Farewell. 

High Water. (For Charley Patton)

High water risin', risin' night and day
All the gold and silver are being stolen away
Big Joe Turner lookin' East and West
From the dark room of his mind
He made it to Kansas City Twelfth Street and Vine
Nothing standing there
High water everywhere

High water risin', the shacks are slidin' down
Folks lose their possessions and folks are leaving town
Bertha Mason shook, it broke it
Then she hung it on a wall
Says, "You're dancin' with whom they tell you to Or you don't dance at all"

It's tough out there High water everywhere
I got a cravin' love for blazing speed got a hopped up Mustang Ford
Jump into the wagon, love, throw your panties overboard
I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind
I'm no pig without a wig I hope you treat me kind
Things are breakin' up out there
High water everywhere.

High water risin', six inches 'bove my head
Coffins droppin' in the street Like balloons made out of lead
Water pourin' into Vicksburg, don't know what I'm going to do
"Don't reach out for me," she said "Can't you see I'm drownin' too?"
It's rough out there.

High water everywhere
Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
"You can't open your mind, boys To every conceivable point of view"
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the High Sheriff "I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don't care."

High Water everywhere
Well, the cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies
I'm preachin' the word of God I'm puttin' out your eyes
I asked Fat Nancy for something to eat, she said, "Take it off the shelf
As great as you are a man,
You'll never be greater than yourself"
I told her I didn't really care.

High water everywhere
I'm getting' up in the morning I believe I'll dust my broom
Keeping away from the women
I'm givin' 'em lots of room
Thunder rolling over Clarksdale, everything is looking blue
I just can't be happy, love
Unless you're happy too
It's bad out there
High water everywhere.

All I Really Want to Do. 

Eternal Circle

Only a Hobo

Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

Bob Dylan's Dream

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Marie/Maria/Mary

Beautiful names celebrated in song.

Elvis Presley, Marie's the Name of His Latest Flame

George Harrison and friends, Absolutely Sweet Marie.  By the way, this self-certified Dylanologist can attest that in the first line it is 'railroad GAUGE,' not 'railroad gate.'  'Gauge' is a measure of the width of the track; that's what our boy can't jump.  This one goes out to Marie Benson, from the summer of '65. Where are you tonight, sweet Marie?  

Bachelors, Marie

R. B. Greaves, Take a Letter, Maria

Placido Domingo, Ave Maria (Schubert)

Jimi Hendrix, The Wind Cries 'Mary'

Association, Along Comes Mary.  Back in '66 I didn't appreciate how good the lyrics are. 

And finally Mary takes Marty Robbins back after his tryst with the Devil Woman.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Decoupling Rock and Roll from Sex and Drugs

Five examples:

Norman Greenbaum, Spirit in the Sky

Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus. This is one powerful song.

Clapton and Winwood, Presence of the Lord. Why is Clapton such a great guitarist? Not because of his technical virtuosity, his 'chops,' but because he has something to say.

George Harrison, My Sweet Lord

George Harrison, All Things Must Pass. Harrison was the Beatle with depth.  Lennon was the radical, McCartney the romantic, and Ringo the regular guy.

Good YouTuber comment: "Immortal song, even if all things must pass . . . " 

Why Typos Don't Matter Much and the Musical Watershed that was the 'Fifties

This is a re-post from 21 September 2011. I dust it off in dedication to my friend Dr. Vito Caiati, historian and old-school scholar who is excessively worried about typographical errors in his missives to me.

Don't get me wrong: love and respect for our alma mater, the English language, our dear mother, mistress and muse, demands that we try to avoid errors typographical and otherwise. But let's not obsess over them.

Transmission of sense is the name of the game, and if that has occurred, then communication has taken place.

................................

An old friend from college, who has a Masters in English, regularly sends me stuff like this which I have no trouble understanding:

I trust that you ahve emelreis of going pacles with your presnts in cars before the days when the shapr devide came and deliniated clearly the music that our presnts like and the stuff that was aethetically unreachabable to many of thier generation. That was a haunting melody, The Waywared Wind, and it spoke of an experiencethat was really more coon to a ahlf generation away from the WWII generation. It was actually a toad bod for its time. Same year bourght us Fale Storms come Donw From YOur Ivorty Towe, the great pretender, and other romantic and innocent songs. But it also brought Hound Dog, which shocked the blazes out of my parents and all of their peers. It was even sexual. It was just animal. And, no it was not specificailly Negrol; it was worse it was p;oor white trash with side burns on a motocycle. It woldn't matterif the B Side of every platter ahd been one of those great gospel tunes those guys did; that stuff was not urban, mainline, Protestant stuff, but anekly backwoods stuff where there are stills and 13-year-olf brides, that the Northern boys had heard about in the WWII barracks and hoped that they would never have hear about again as they went back to either their Main Line P:rotestant or Catholic urban llive, whether they belonged to a country het or not or woudl have to wait a while, say until their GI Bill college educations started enabling them to play golf. But that was still a good summer of rthe last of the sweet songs that memebers of several gneratons could enjoy together

Talk about spontaneous prose! No grammatical or spelling hang-ups here.  My friend is an old Kerouac aficionado too, and this is one of the more entertaining of his missives.   Is it the approach of October that frees and inspires his pen?  My friend's a strange bird, and the above just came straight out of his febrile pate; he didn't compose it that way to prove that typographical errors are compatible with transmission of sense.

A curious watershed era it was in which  the sweet and tender was found cheek-by-jowl with the explicitly referenced raw hydraulics of sexual intercourse.  Take Little Richard, perhaps the chief exponent, worse than old Swivel Hips, of the devil's music.  "Good Golly Miss Molly," he screamed, "she sure likes to ball/When you're rockin' and a rollin' can't you hear yo mama call."  That was actually played on the radio in the '50s.  To ball is to have sex, and 'rock and roll' means the same thing.  And so there were Southern rednecks who wanted the stuff banned claiming that R & R music was "was bringing the white man down to the level of the nigger."

I maintain that the best R & R manages to marry the Dionysian thrust with the tender embrace, the animalic with the sweetly romantic.  The prime example?  Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman.  One thing I love about Orbison is that instead of saying 'Fuck!,' like some crude rap punk, he says, 'Mercy!'  Another little indicator of how right my friend is in his analysis above.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Sweetheart of the Rodeo

We may credit Bob Dylan with inventing both folk rock and country rock. A major contribution to latter genre was The Byrd's 1968 Sweetheart of the Rodeo, their sixth album.  Where there's country, there's Christianity.

The Christian Life

I am a Pilgrim

You're Still on My Mind

HIckory Wind

You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

Pretty Boy Floyd. The old Woody Guthrie tune.

Life in Prison

Blue Canadian Rockies

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Gambler He Broke Even

As you know, Kenny Rogers has died at the age of 81.  

A few days ago, on my way back from a traipse in the local hills, I encountered a couple the female half of which suffers from Parkinson's. Being the over-clever fellow that I am, I asked her what condition her condition was in, thereby alluding to a curious '60s number. Her husband caught the allusion and hipped me to a fact hitherto unknown to me, namely, that the band in question, The First Edition, was headed by Kenny Rogers before he went country.  He was quite the genre-hopper. Before the acid-rock tune. he sang with the New Christy Minstrels, a 'sanitized' and 'wholesome' collegiate folk outfit. Here is "Green Green" with upbeat Barry Maguire in the lead. This was before Maguire got all topical and protesty and dark with Eve of Destruction in the summer of '65.

I never listened to much Kenny Rogers, but of course I know and like his signature number, now a permanent bit of Americana that taps into the myths that move the red-blooded among us. I mean The Gambler:

And when he finished speakin'
He turned back toward the window
Crushed out his cigarette

And faded off to sleep

 

And somewhere in the darkness
The gambler he broke even
But in his final words
I found an ace that I could keep

 

You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run

 

You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done.

 

Bonus cuts:

 

Clancy Bros., Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie

 

Byrds, Eight Miles High.  Referenced in the 'condition' tune.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fever, Flu, Sickness, Old Age, and Death

Chill out toilet paper hoarders. Pour yourself a sizable shot of tequila and chase it with a Corona. You gotta die some time, WuFlu or no WuFlu.  No day without political incorrectness.  And no day without cultural appropriation, including the transpecies variety:

Peggy Lee, Fever

The Band, Chest Fever

Johnny Rivers, Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu

Bobby Blue Bland, St. James Infirmary

Bobby Blue Bland, Goin' Down Slow. This ought to be Joe Biden's theme song.

Hank Williams, Lovesick Blues

Dr. Feelgood, Down at the Doctors

Dire Straits, Industrial Disease

Son House, Death Letter Blues

Blind Willie McTell, You Was Born to Die

Bob Dylan, In My Time of Dying

Bob Dylan, Fixin' to Die

Bob Dylan, See that My Grave is Kept Clean. "Did you ever hear that coughin'/coffin sound? Means another poor boy is under ground."

Bob Dylan with Eric Clapton, Not Dark Yet

Bob Dylan, Knockin' on Heaven's Door

The Pretender

I have only recently come to appreciate what a great song this Jackson Browne number from 1976 is. After the 'sixties faded, I gave myself an education in classical and jazz and lost touch with the rock scene. The video presents the thoughtful lyrics.   The Gary U. S. Bonds cover from 1981 is also unbelievably good.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Robbie Robertson and the Band

True 'sixties veterans will enjoy the Band documentary Once Were Brothers.  And if you don't, then you are not a true 'sixties veteran.  (This is known in the trade as the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy.  I prefer to call it the No True Muslim Fallacy.)

New Yorker article about the movie.

The Weight. Robertson sat down one day to write a song and peering into his Martin guitar read, "Martin Guitars, Nazareth, Pennslylvania." This inspired the line, "I pulled into Nazareth, feelin' about half-past dead."

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Nothing hippy-trippy or psychedelic about these '60s musicians. Pure Americana. Rooted, autochthonic.

I Shall Be Released. The synergy benefited both the Bard and the Band. They helped him move farther from the mind and closer to the earth.

Up on Cripple Creek

Chest Fever

Don't Do It

When I Paint My Masterpiece

The Shape I'm In

Forever Young

Lost Distance Operator

Orange Juice Blues

Bonus Cut: Rick Danko and Paul Butterfield, Java Blues

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

I post what I like, and I like what I post. It's a nostalgia trip, and a generational thing. There's no point in disputing taste or sensibility, or much of anything else. It's Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, stop thinking, and FEEL!

Traveling Wilburys, End of Line, Extended Version

Who, Won't Get Fooled Again. Lyrics! 

Gary U. S. Bonds, From a Buick Six. Sorry, Bob, but not even you can touch this version.

Bob Dylan, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes  a Train to Cry.  Cutting Edge Bootleg version.

Bob Dylan, Just Like a Woman.  This Cutting Edge take may be the best version, even with the mistakes. I'll say no more, lest I gush.

Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. The Bard never loses his touch. May he die with his boots on.

Bob Dylan, Corrina, Corrina. And you say he can't sing in a conventional way?

Moody Blues, Wildest Dreams. Nostalgia City.

Johnny Cash, I've Been Everywhere, Man

Soggy Bottom Boys, Man of Constant Sorrow

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Love and Murder

We'll start with murder.  David Dalton (Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion 2012, pp. 28-29, hyperlinks added!):

Most folk songs had grim, murderous content (and subtext). In Pretty Polly a man lures a young girl from her home with the promise of marriage,and then leads the pregnant girl to an already-dug grave and murders her.  In Love Henry a woman poisons her unfaithful lover, observed by an alarmed parrot that she also tries to kill. So it was a bit bizarre that these songs should become part of the sweetened, homogenized new pop music.

[. . .]

The original folk songs were potent, possessed stuff, but the folk trios had figured out how to make this grisly stuff palatable, which only proved that practically anything could be homogenized. Clean-cut guys and girls in crinolines, dressed as if for prom night, sang ancient curse-and-doom tales.  Their songs had sweet little melodies, but as in nursery rhymes, there was a dark gothic undercurrent to them -- like Ring Around the Rosies, which happens to be a charming little plague song.

The most famous of these folk songs was the 1958 hit Tom Dooley, a track off a Kingston Trio album which set off the second folk revival [the first was in the early '40s with groups like the Weavers] and was Dylan's initial inspiration for getting involved in folk music.  [I prefer Doc Watson's version.] And it was the very success of the syrupy folk trios that inspired Dylan's future manager to assemble one himself: Peter, Paul and Mary.  They would make Dylan, the prophet of the folk protest movement, a star and lead to consequences that even he did not foresee.  Their version of Blowin' in the Wind would become so successful that it would sound the death knell for the folk protest movement.  Ultimately there would be more than sixty versions of it, "all performing the same function," as Michael Gray says, of "anesthetizing Dylan's message."

Be that as it may, it is a great song, one of the anthems of the Civil Rights movement.  Its power in no small measure is due to the allusiveness of its lyrics which deliver the protest message without tying it to particular events.  It's topical without being topical and marks a difference between Dylan, and say, Phil Ochs.

And now for some love songs.

Gloria Lynne, I Wish You Love.  A great version from 1964.  Lynne died at 83 in 2013.  Here's what Marlene Dietrich does with it.

Ketty Lester, Love Letters.  Another great old tune in a 1962 version.  The best to my taste.

Three for my wife.  An old Sam Cooke number, a lovely Shirelles tune, and my favorite from the Seekers.

Addenda:

1. Keith Burgess-Jackson quotes Jamie Glazov on the hatred of Islamists and leftists for St. Valentine's Day.  Another very interesting similarity between these two totalitarian movements.  Recalling past inamorata of a Saturday night while listening to sentimental songs  -- is this not the height of bourgeois self-indulgence when you should be plotting ways to blow up the infidel or bring down capitalism?  But we who defend the private life against totalitarian scum must be careful not to retreat too far into the private life.  A certain amount of activism and engagement is necessary to keep the totalitarians in check.

2. On Thomas Merton: “All the love and all the death in me are at the moment wound up in Joan Baez’s ‘Silver Dagger,’” the man wrote to his lady love in 1966. “I can’t get it out of my head, day or night. I am obsessed with it. My whole being is saturated with it. The song is myself — and yourself for me, in a way.”

Don't sing love songs, you'll wake my mother
She's sleeping here right by my side
And in her right hand a silver dagger,
She says that I can't be your bride.

All men are false, says my mother,
They'll tell you wicked, lovin' lies.
The very next evening, they'll court another,
Leave you alone to pine and sigh.

My daddy is a handsome devil
He's got a chain five miles long,
And on every link a heart does dangle
Of another maid he's loved and wronged.

Go court another tender maiden,
And hope that she will be your wife,
For I've been warned, and I've decided
To sleep alone all of my life.

A Cure for Infatuation?

One of the very best is marriage. 

Infatuation is a form of idolatry that cannot last long in a marriage. Marriage cures it. That's an argument for marriage. There was no cure for Don Quixote's romantic fantasies because their object, the fair Dulcinea del Toboso, existed only in his imagination.*

But while infatuation lasts, it is blissful. One is made silly, often harmlessly so. One walks on air and can think of nothing but the beloved. The moon hits your eye like a bigga pizza pie. The world starts to shine like you've had too much wine. So smitten was I in the early days of my relationship to the woman I married that I sat in my carrel at the university one day and just thought about her for eight hours straight when I was supposed to be finishing an article on Frege. Life is both love and logic. But sometimes hot love trumps cold logic.

The best marriages begin with the romantic transports of infatuation, but a marriage lasts only if the Rousseauian transports are undergirded by good solid reasons of the big head without interference from the heart or the little head. The love then matures. Real love replaces illusory idealization. The big head ought to be the ruling element in a man.

It takes an Italian to capture the aforementioned romantic transports, and Dean Martin (Dino Crocetti) does the job well in the schmaltzy That's Amore. 

Il Mio Mondo is a good expression of the idolatry of infatuation.  Cilla Black's 1964 rendition of the Italian song is You're My World.

But whence the idealization, the infatuation, the idolatry?  And why the perennial popularity of silly love songs? What we really want in the deepest depths of the heart no man or woman can provide.  That is known to all who know their own hearts and have seen through the idols.  What we want is an infinite and eternal love.  This infinite desire may have no object in reality. Arguments from desire are not rationally compelling.

But given the fact of the desire, a fact that does not entail the reality of its object, we have what we need to explain the idealization, the infatuation, and the idolatry of the sexual other. We substitute an immanent object for Transcendence inaccessible.

_____________________________

*The great novel of Miguel Cervantes is a work of fiction. And so both Don Quixote/Quijote and Dulcinea are fictional characters. But the first is posited as real within the fiction while the other is posited as imaginary, as Don Quixote's fiction, even if based upon the posited-in-the-fiction real Aldonza Lorenzo. Herewith a bit of grist for the mill of the philosophy of fiction. The real-imaginary distinction operates within an imaginary construct.

 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Rock and Roll Apologetics

A curious sub-genre of meta-rock devoted to the defense of the devil's music.

The Showmen, It Will Stand, 1961 

Bob Seger, Old-Time Rock and Roll

But does it really "soothe the soul"? Is it supposed to?  For soul-soothing, I recommend the Adagio movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Adagio molto e cantabile.

Rolling Stones, It's Only Rock and Roll (but I Like It)

Electric Light Orchestra, Roll Over, Beethoven.  Amazingly good.  Roll over, Chuck Berry!

Danny and the Juniors, Rock and Roll is Here to Stay

Chuck Berry and Friends, Rock and Roll Music

Off-topic bonus cut:  The Chantels, Look in My Eyes, 1961.  YouTuber comment: "Emanating from the Heart Chakra. Something pop songs rarely do anymore. Feel it?" The popular music of this period had human meaning, coming from the heart and speaking to the heart, even when it passed over into schmaltz and sentimentality.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Songs of Self-Satisfaction and Braggadocio

Frank Sinatra, My Way. A little too self-congratulatory, don't you think? 

Bob Wills, I'm a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas.  "Purty lil gurl tried to put me on the bum, had to burn her down with a Thompson gun. I'm a ding dong daddy from Dumas babe, ya ought to see me do my stuff."

Chicago, I'm a Man

Youtuber comment: "I'll be 68 in June, but when I hear this song time rockets back in a heartbeat. 'Our' music was absolutely phenomenal. Today's music can't hold a candle to it. But then again, you'd have to have been there to understand."

Peggy Lee, I'm a Woman

Willie Dixon and Robbie Robertson, Seventh Son

Mississippi Sheiks, Sitting on Top of the World

Joan Baez, Satisfied Mind

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. When your name is 'Bob Dylan' you have your pick of sidemen. A great band. "The walls of pride, they're high and they're wide. You can't see over, to the other side."

Joe Brown, Sea of  Heartbreak.  Nothing touches Don Gibson's original effort, but this is very satisfying version.

Elvis Presley, Little Sister 

Carole King, You've Got a Friend

Buddy Guy, et al., Sweet Home Chicago. Looks like everyone is playing a Strat except for Johnny Winter.

Ry Cooder, He'll Have to Go.  A fine, if quirky, cover of the old George Reeves hit from 1959.

Marty Robbins, El Paso. Great guitar work.

"Don't Go Out in the Dark," Said I

"It's not dark yet," said she.

"But it's getting there," I replied.

She missed the allusion.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ambulo ergo Sum

Dionne Warwick, Walk On By

Leroy Van Dyke, Walk On By.  Same title, different song.

Patsy Cline, Walkin' After Midnight

Gus Cannon, Walk Right In, 1929.  Is that a kazoo I hear? Rooftop Singers' 1962 version.

Rufus Thomas, Walking the Dog, 1965

Ventures, Walk Don't Run. The boys are aging nicely.  A big hit back in 1960.

Everly Brothers, Walk Right Back

Four Seasons, Walk Like a Man. Sing like a castrato.  Walk or wop?

Bangles, Walk Like an Egyptian.  Cultural appropriation! We need more of it. No day without political incorrectness. Walk like an Egyptian and smoke a cigar.

Johnny Cash, I Walk the Line

Ronnettes, Walkin' in the Rain

Left Banke, Walk Away Renee

Robert Johnson, Walkin' Blues.  

Jimmy Rogers, Walkin' By Myself.  Butterfield and Bloomfield with the latter's solo at 3:42 ff.

James Soriano sends this:

You may have seen this, but there is sonic evidence of the voice of a  late 19th century castrato on YouTube.  Alessandro Moreschi (1858 –1922) sings the Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria" in a 1904 recording.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjvfqnD0ws

 

Whatever the circumstances of his castration, Moreschi was the soprano at St. John Lateran by the time he was 13 years old.