Last Night, 1961, The Mar-Keys.
Last Date, 1960, Floyd Cramer.
Save the Last Dance for Me, 1960, The Drifters.
At Last, Etta James.
Last Thing on My Mind, Doc Watson sings Tom Paxton
Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, Simon and Garfunkel.
Last Man Standing, Ry Cooder
Last Call, Dave van Ronk. "If I'd been drunk when I was born, I'd be ignorant of sorrow."
Bonus: Last Chance Harvey.
No day without political incorrectness! And no night either.
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 Le't'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. Can't find the Joanie Sommers original, but this is an adequate cover. "I want a cave man!" 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.
Merry Christmas everybody. Pour yourself a drink, and enjoy.
Cheech and Chong, Santa Claus and His Old Lady
Canned Heat, Christmas Boogie
Leon Redbone and Dr. John, Frosty the Snowman
Beach Boys, Little St. Nick. A rarely heard alternate version.
Ronettes, Sleigh Ride
Elvis Presley, Blue Christmas
Charles Brown, Please Come Home for Christmas
Wanda Jackson and the Continentals, Merry Christmas Baby
Chuck Berry, Run Rudolph Run
Eric Clapton, Cryin' Christmas Tears
Judy Collins, Silver Bells
Ry Cooder, Christmas in Southgate. Don't miss this one. Great video.
Bob Dylan, Christmas Bells
Who could possibly follow Dylan's growl except
Tom Waits, Silent Night. Give it a chance.
A surprising number of Christmas songs were written by Jews.
The Llewyn Davis character in the brilliant Coen Bros. film suggests, I don't say represents, Dave van Ronk. So let's start with some tunes (not necessarily the renditions) from the movie done by the Mayor of MacDougal Street.
Dink's Song. Marcus Mumford and Oscar Isaac version. Punch Bros. live version. Carolyn Hester. Odetta. Dylan.
Tom Paxton, The Last Thing on My Mind
Justin Timberlake, et al. Five Hundred Miles. PPM version. Journeymen version.
Please Mr. Kennedy clip
To Scottsdale this drizzly dreary dark December morning to see the Coen Bros. latest on its opening hereabouts, Inside Llewyn Davis. A tale of two kitties is a sub-motif that symbolizes the self-destructive folksinger's troubles, but it would take a couple more viewings for me to figure it out.
The film gripped me and held me its entire running length, but then I lived through that era and I know the music and its major and minor players. Figuring out the the cinematic references and allusions is part of the fun. Tom Paxton, Albert Grossmann, Jim and Jean, The Clancy Brothers, Bob Dylan . . . they are all there — or are they?
A distinction is made between purely fictional objects (native objects) and immigrant objects: historical individuals that have been imported into fiction from reality. Many of the characters in the Coen Bros. film seem to belong to a third category. They are not wholly unreal like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or lightly fictionalized individuals like many of the characters in Kerouac's novels, but fictional surrogates of real-life individuals. For example, there is a character who suggests Tom Paxton, but could not be said unambiguously to represent him, pace Dave van Ronk's ex-wife who writes, in a critical review, "The character who represents Tom Paxton has a pasted-on smile and is a smug person who doesn't at all resemble the smart, funny, witty Tom Paxton who was our best man when we married."
Ann Hornaday's Washington Post review ends brilliantly:
In many ways, “Inside Llewyn Davis” plays like a waking nightmare of creeping anxiety and dread, as the era’s grandmaster of brazen self-invention arrives unseen in New York while Llewyn’s self-defeating near-misses pile up like so much street-sullied snow. But this soulful, unabashedly lyrical film is best enjoyed by sinking into it like a sweet, sad dream. When you wake up, a mythical place and time will have disappeared forever. But you’ll know that attention — briefly, beautifully — has been paid.
The era's grandmaster of brazen self-invention is of course Bob Dylan, who blew into town that bitter winter of '61 and who in a few short years brought about a sort of Hegelian Aufhebung of the folk era: its simultaneous cancellation, preservation, and transmogrification into the heart of the '60s as represented by the trilogy of Dylan at his most incandescent: Bringing it It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde.
It's all Over Now, Baby Blue from the the first-mentioned album perhaps sounds the theme of cultural shift.
A lonely soldier cleans his gun and dreams of Galveston.
Marty Robbins messes with the wicked Felina in El Paso and comes to an untimely end.
Dean Martin is down and out in Houston.
George Hamilton IV pines after Abilene.
Johnny Cash spies a young cowboy all wrapped in white linen in The Streets of Laredo.
Patsy Cline sings of old San Anton' in San Antonio Rose.
Mr. Bill made a mistake the other night on The O'Reilly Factor when he said that the British skiffle group Mungo Jerry's sole Stateside hit, In the Summertime, is from '67. Not so, as I instantly recalled: it is from the summer of 1970. I remember because that was the summer I first read Kant, ploughing through The Critique of Pure Reason. I sat myself down under a tree in Garfield Park in South Pasadena with the Norman Kemp Smith translation and dove in. I couldn't make head nor tail of it. But I persisted and eventually wrote my dissertation on Kant.
Now why is Mr. Bill's mistake worth mentioning? Because, to paraphrase Santayana, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And we wouldn't want to repeat the '60s.
Knickerbockers, Lies
Eagles, Lying Eyes
Castaways, Liar, Liar
Hank Williams, Your Cheatin' Heart
Bobby Bare, Lullabies, Legends, and Lies
First, "The Wrote and the Writ" by Johnny Flynn, an artist I've just discovered. I chose it because of the syncopated guitar and the outstanding lyrics.
Second, "Right Moves" by Idaho's own Josh Ritter. Ritter been one of my favorites for about six years. He isn't instrumentally out of this world like some of the other artists here, but he's a great songwriter. It's hard to find a representative song for him for a first exposure, but this seems like a safe bet.
Third, "Simple as This" by Jake Bugg, another new discovery. Great lyrics.
Fourth, "Don't Need No" by Punch Brothers. I've seen these guys live and they are amazing.
Fifth, "Big Parade" by Lumineers. These guys are from Denver and actually, they are quite popular now. So not everything on this list is obscure.
Kate Wolf and Don Lange, Rock Salt and Nails
Beatles, Thank You, Girl
Cream, I'm So Glad
Suzi Quatro, Glad All Over
Jeff Beck, Glad All Over, same title different song, cover of old Carl Perkin's rockabilly number
Billie Holiday, Glad to be Unhappy
Hoyt Axton, Joy to the World
Ludwig van B., Ode to Joy
Ode to Joy scene from Immortal Beloved
You can't say my tastes aren't eclectic.
Small world.
I met a very interesting man last Sunday, Boniface Thayil. He showed up at our little chess club wanting to learn the game. So I gave him his first lesson. He knew nothing, not even the names of the pieces, let alone how they move. Now he knows a little something. I hope he shows up again tomorrow.
We got to talking. His dark complexion prompted me to ask whether he is Pakistani or perhaps from India. He said he was from the state of Kerala in India, came to Seattle, Washington as a young man, earned a degree in chemical engineering, and had been employed in Chicago. His intelligence and wide interests prompted me to learn more about him via Google. The search pulled up one Kim Thayil. The name rang a bell. A while back I had read about Soundgarden and some Seattle 'metal' bands. So I clicked on this link.
"Kiss Alive was the second album I ever bought, and the first record that made me realize things could be a lot louder and more violent than the Beatles. It emphasized volume and guitar over harmony, melody and lyrics; all the stuff I never listened to anyway," he told Mudhoney's Mark Arm.
Assembling various facts, it seemed possible that Kim was the son of Boniface, so I e-mailed the latter and found out that the former was.
Here is a Soundgarden tune as performed by Johnny Cash, Rusty Cage. Good song. I like it. Here is the rather more 'metallic' Soundgarden version.
Here is some of Kim Thayil's guitar work. The quotation above explains why I can't relate to much of this stuff. Some examples of the guitar work that speak to me follow. It is a generational thing, no doubt. It seems to come from the heart and speak to the soul whereas the metal stuff is more akin to industrial noise. "Music to pound out fenders by." (Ed Abbey) Sorry, boys. De gustibus, et cetera. There is no arguing sensibility. Argument comes too late.
Mike Bloomfield, Albert's Shuffle
Buddy Guy, Eric Guy, et al., Sweet Home Chicago
Joe Satriani, Sleep Walk Satriani can tear up the fingerboard, but note how he restrains himself to deliver a beautiful melody and say something musically.
Steely Dan, Reelin' in the Years Amazing guitar work starting at 1:58 and at 3: 38.
Ventures, Memphis. Mighty fine guitar-slingin' by both lead players.
Addendum (11/17)
Martin e-mails:
Hi Bill. Longtime blog follower, here.
Song to Woody. This version from the 1970 New Morning sessions, but not included on that album. Originally heard on Dylan's first album.
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. This version too from the 1970 New Morning sessions. First heard on the 1966 Highway 61 Revisited album. Ramblin' Jack Elliot delivers a haunting version.
When I Paint My Masterpiece. Another Self Portrait, Bootleg Series. vol. 10. The Band's version.
Intro to Another Self Portrait, Bootleg Series. vol. 10.
I told myself that, come November, I'd put Jack back in his box until next October. But Kerouac month has bled over into November probably because seeing the movie Big Sur got me all stoked up again.
Here is Herbert Gold's review of the book (Saturday Review, 22 September 1962).
And here is nastly slap at Jack from a writer not much better, Edward Abbey: "Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama's lap from alcohol and infantilism."
Cactus Ed on Updike:
John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing–like a faery breath!–upon the glass.
Kerouac's Big Sur opens with a reference to a song:
The church is blowing a sad windblown "Kathleen" on the bells in the skid row slums as I wake up all woebegone and goopy, groaning from another drinking bout and groaning most of all because I'd ruined my "secret return" to San Francisco by getting silly drunk while hiding in the alleys with bums and then marching forth into North Beach to see everybody altho Lorenz Monsanto and I'd exchanged huge letters outlining how I would sneak in quietly, call him on the phone using a code name like Adam Yulch or Lalagy Pulvertaft (also writers) and then he would secretly drive me to his cabin in the Big Sur woods where I would be alone and undisturbed for six weeks just chopping wood, drawing water, writing, sleeping, hiking, etc., etc.
What is this song "Kathleen"? Reading on (emphasis added):
But instead I've bounced drunk into his City Lights bookshop at the height of Saturday night business, everyone recognized me (even tho" I was wearing my disguise-like fisherman's hat and fishermen coat and pants waterproof) and "t'all ends up a roaring drunk in all the famous bars the bloody "King of the Beatniks" is back in town buying drinks for everyone — Two days of that, including Sunday the day Lorenzo is supposed to pick me up at my "secret" skid row hotel (the Mars on 4th and Howard) but when he calls for me there's no answer, he has the clerk open the door and what does he see but me out on the floor among bottles, Ben Fagan stretched out partly beneath the bed, and Robert Browning the beatnik painter out on the bed, snoring… So says to himself "I'll pick him up next weekend, I guess he wants to drink for a week in the city (like he always does, I guess)" so off he drives to his Big Sur cabin without me thinking he's doing the right thing but my God when I wake up, and Ben and Browning are gone, they've somehow dumped me on the bed, and I hear "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen" being bellroped so sad in the fog winds out there that blow across the rooftops of eerie old hangover Frisco, wow, I've hit the end of the trail and cant even drag my body any more even to a refuge in the woods let alone stay upright in the city a minute —
"I'll Take you Home Again, Kathleen" sounds like an Irish ballad but was actually written by an American, Thomas P. Westendorf, in 1875. Kerouac might have first heard it in the 1940s.
Josef Locke's rendition from the late '40s.
Arizona's own Marty Robbins' version
Louisiana Jazz Band version
The Platters, too, give it a try.
Given the shenanigans in Washington, D. C., you would naturally expect me to begin with . . . wait for it . . . . Shut Down!
Then I Kissed Her is the Beach Boys' response to the Crystal's Then He Kissed Me. Nice job, boys, but nothing can hold a candle to Phil Spector's wall of sound.
Apparently, Brian Wilson was obsessed with the Ronette's Be My Baby, another Phil Spector production. Wilson's response was Don't Worry Baby.
Brian Wilson wrote great melodies, e.g., Please Let Me Wonder, In the Back of My Mind, God Only Knows.
And the BBs were famous for their harmonies. When I Grow Up to be a Man. I'm so Young, Help Me Rhonda.
Thanks, boys, for over 50 years of Good Vibrations.
Finally, here is Phil Spector holding forth on John Lennon, Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese, and Brian Wilson.
