Category: Music

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Youth and Old Age

Let's get off to a rousing start with The Who's famous generational anthem, aptly entitled My Generation.  "Things they say seem so cold, I hope I die before I get old."  Rather on the sweeter side, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys wonder what it'll be like when I Grow Up to be a Man.  The same wonderful harmonies are also in evidence in this great Beach Boys cover of  I'm So Young. 

Ricky Nelson, Young World.  Sonny James, Young Love.  Lovin Spoonful, Younger Girl.  Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, Young Girl.  Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Little Children.  Janis Ian, Society's Child.  Social commentary from a precocious 16 year old in '67.  Joan Baez sings Bob Dylan's, Forever Young.

But the young become old . . .

Bob Seger, Old Time Rock and Roll. "Call me a relic, call me what you will/Say I'm old-fashioned, say I'm over the hill/Today's music ain't got the same soul/ I like that that old time Rock and Roll." Neil Young, Old Man.  Howlin' Wolf, Goin' Down Slow.  "I've had my fun, if I don't get well no more."  Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet (but it's gettin' there). George Harrison, All Things Must Pass.  Bob Dylan, See that My Grave is Kept Clean.

R.I.P. Kitty Wells (1919-2012), Making Believe (1955). Heartaches by the Number.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Woody Guthrie & Sons: Arlo, Adnopoz, Zimmerman

Tomorrow being Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday, tonight we revisit some of his tunes and some of those he influenced.  First a wry number from the man himself: Philadelphia Lawyer. A tale of an East Coast lawyer, a Hollywood maid, and a gun-totin' Reno cowhand name of Wild Bill, with "ten notches carved on his gun."  "Now tonight back in old Pennsylvania/Amongst her beautiful pines/There's one less Philadelphia lawyer/In old Philadelphia tonight."

Percy's Song, written by Bob Dylan, is well-performed by Guthrie's son, Arlo.  It is in the Guthrie tradition of left-leaning social protest.  A mean judge metes out an unjust sentence.  Arlo's City of New Orleans is a classic slice of Americana, and a great song, right up there with Don McLean's American Pie and Woody's This Land is Your Land. There is a element of silly socialist utopianism in the latter, but also something genuine and worthwhile.

Lacking as it does the proper American cowboy resonance, 'Elliot Charles Adnopoz' was ditched by its bearer who came to call himself 'Ramblin' Jack Elliot.'  Born in 1931 in Brooklyn to Jewish parents who wanted him to become a doctor, young Adnopoz rebelled, ran away, and became a protege of Woody Guthrie.  If it weren't for Ramblin' Jack, Guthrie would be nowhere near as well-known as he is today. 

Pretty Boy Floyd.  "As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam/You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from their home."  No?  An example of the knee-jerk tendency of lefties invariably to  take the side of the underdog regardless of whether right or wrong.  It's as if weakness justifies. 

Ramblin' Jack does a haunting version of Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.  It grows on you. Give it a chance.  Cigarettes and Whisky and Wild Woman.  Soul of a Man. Dylan's unforgettable,  Don't Think Twice.

And now the bard himself,the most distinguished Jewish  'son' of Woody Guthrie, who absorbed a hundred influences and made something new, Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota.  Song to Woody.  It Take a Lot to Laugh.  Video of Dylan's meeting with Guthrie as the latter lay dying of Huntington's Chorea in a New Jersey hospital.  I Shall Be Released.  Rollin' and Tumblin.'  Not Dark Yet.  "Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear/It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there."

Finally, one more from Woody.  Hard Travelin. 

All Along the Watchtower

The Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5-9:

     Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye
     princes, and prepare the shield. For thus hath the Lord said unto
     me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. And he saw a
     chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a
     chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with such heed. . .
     . And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of
     horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen,
     and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the
     ground.

Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower:

     "There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
     "There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
     Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
     None of them along the line know what any of it is worth." 

     "No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
     "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
     But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
     So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

     All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
     While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
     Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
     Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

The absurdist sensibility of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde gave way, after the July 1966 motorcycle accident, to a renewed seriousness. Life is no joke. We've been  through that. No more talking falsely now, the hour is getting late.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Jimmy Elledge (1943-2012) and Some Other One-Hit Wonders

Jimmy Elledge, Funny How Time Slips Away.  Born January 8, 1943 in Nashville, Elledge died June 10, 2012 after complications following a stroke.  The song, written by Willie Nelson, made the #22 slot on Billboard Hot 100 in 1961, and sold over one million copies. Elledge never had another hit. As a YouTube commenter pointed out, that does sound like Floyd Cramer tickling the ivories.  A great song.  I always thought it was a female singing.

Rosie and the Originals, Angel Baby, 1960.  Perfect for cruising Whittier Boulevard in your '57 Chevy on a Saturday Night.

Claudine Clark, Party Lights, 1962

Contours, Do You Love Me? 1962

Norma Tanega, Walkin' My Cat Named 'Dog,' 1966.   A forgotten oldie if ever there was one.  If you remember this bit of vintage vinyl, one of the strangest songs of the '60s, I'll buy you a beer or a cat named 'dog.' One.

Bruce Channel, Hey! Baby, 1962

Barbara George, I Know, 1962

And now a couple more forgotten one-hit wonders who get almost no play on the oldies stations which is exactly why you need Uncle Wild Bill's Saturday Night at the Oldies:

Bob Luman, Let's Think About Livin'  Trivia question: The song contains references to three contemporary songs.  Name them.

Larry Finnegan, Dear One, 1962 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: (Anti-)Drug Songs

Buffy Sainte-Marie, Cod'ine

Hoyt Axton, The Pusher

Dave Van Ronk, Cocaine Blues 

Velvet Underground, Heroin

Warren Zevon, Carmelita

Harry 'The Hipster' Gibson, Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs Murphy's Ovaltine?

Dubiously classified as drug songs:

Peter, Paul, and Mary, Puff the Magic Dragon

Doors, The Crystal Ship

Tim Hardin, Red Balloon.  Volume is poor, so try the Small Faces version. 

Donovan, Mellow Yellow.  Supposedly about cigarettes filled with dried banana peels.  I tried one of these mellow yellow joints  in Hollywood, Cal, in '67.  It had no psychoactive effect I could discern.

Beatles, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  Supposedly about LSD. 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Rodney King and Henry Hill

Tonight I permit myself a bit of Schadenfreude (or is it righteous satisfaction?) at the passing of the 'motorist' Rodney King and the 'businessman' Henry Hill.  Calling King a 'motorist' as so many knee-jerk liberal journalists did from 1991 on is like calling the mafioso Hill a 'business man.'  In 'honor' of these two sorry specimens of (in)humanity, I propose the following for your listening pleasure.

Rodney 'Can We All Just Get Along?' King

Bobby Fuller Four, I Fought the Law and the Law Won

Andrew Sisters, Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar

Beatles, I'm a Loser

Roger Miller, Dang Me

Johnny Bond, Hot Rod Lincoln

Roger Miller, King of the Road

Jackie DeShannon, What the World Needs Now

Henry Hill

Sam Cooke, Fool's Paradise.  What a great song!  Unfortunately Cooke did not take his own advice, and died young in consequence.

Hank Williams, Lost Highway

Byrds, Life in Prison

Merle Haggard, The Fugitive

Derek and the Dominoes, Layla (Piano Exit)

George F. Will and the Beach Boys Meet Alexius Meinong

"The Beach Boys Still Get Around." Excellent sociocultural analysis by George Will.  Opening paragraph:

Three hours before showtime, Brian Wilson says: “There is no Rhonda.” Sitting backstage at Merriweather Post Pavilion, gathering strength for the evening’s 48-song, 150-minute concert, Wilson was not asked about her, he just volunteered this fact. The other members of the Beach Boys seem mildly surprised to learn that the 1965 song “Help Me, Rhonda” was about no one in particular.

The philosopher of language in London Ed should find the above intriguing.  The song was about no one in particular in that Brian Wilson had no actual person in mind as Rhonda.  But surely the song was about three people, one named 'Rhonda,' another girl referred to only by an antecedent-less 'she,' and the singer.  "Since she put me down, I was out doin' in my head."  There is a sense in which these are three particular, numerically distinct, persons. 

If you deny that, aren't you saying that the song is not about anybody?  And wouldn't that be wrong?

Of course, the persons in  question are incomplete objects.  They violate the property version of the Law of Excluded Middle.  We know some of Rhonda's properties but not all of them.  We know that she looked "so fine" to the singer.  And we know that she caught the singer's eye.  But we don't know her height, the color of her eyes or her blood pressure.  With respect to those properties she is indeterminate.  Same with the other girl.  We know she was going to be the singer's wife, and he was going to be her man, but not much else.

Now nothing incomplete can exist.  So the three persons are three particular nonexistent objects, and the song is about three persons in particular.

I wrote this just to get London Ed's goat.  The record will show that I myself eschew Meinongianism.

Saturday Night at the Oldies Deferred: Dick Dale, King of the Surf Guitar

Last night's desert storm knocked out my Internet connection . . . .

Before the Beach Boys, who debuted 50 years ago in '62, there was Dick Dale, the father of surf music and my first guitar hero.  He took a Fender Stratocaster and played it upside down and backwards, fretting with this right hand and plucking with his left.  The first surf song was his 1961

Let's Go Trippin. But what really got me practicing on my Fender Mustang, my first electric guitar, was

Misirlou.  The Del-Tones in this video ought to be renamed 'The Soporific Sidemen.'  Here is the "Pulp Fiction" version. Continuing in the Middle Eastern vein:

Hava Nagila.  Surfing, So Cal, and hot rods naturally go together.  So surf music gradually morphed into car music, e.g.,

Nitro.  Dale teams up with the rather more versatile and technically proficient Stevie Ray Vaughan (who merely plays his guitar without raping it) for absolutely the best version of The Chantay's

Pipeline.  Psychedelia put an end to surf music.  The epitaph "You will never hear surf music again" is delivered by Jimi Hendrix at 4:33 of

Third Stone From the Sun. 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Performers Who Ditched Their Italian Surnames, Part II

Part I is here.

But first one  who didn't.  An early manager suggested to Frank Sinatra that he adopt the stage name 'Frankie Satin.'  Sinatra would have none of that bullshit.  He did things his way.  That's Life. 

Joseph Di Nicola (Joey Dee and the Starlighters), Peppermint Twist, with an intro by Dwight D. Eisenhower!  This video shows what the dude looked like. Resembles a super short Joe Pesci.  What Kind of Love is This?

Margaret Battavio (Little Peggy March), I Will Follow Him.

Frank Castelluccio (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons), Can't Take My Eyes Off of You. Deer Hunter version.  Dawn. Walk Like a Man.   

Anthony Dominic Benedetto (Tony Bennett), The Way You Look Tonight

Alfred Arnold Cocozza (Mario Lanza), O Sole Mio.  Here is what Elvis made of the tune.

Francis Thomas Avallone (Frankie Avalon), Venus.

Fabiona Forte Bonaparte (Fabian), his songs are too schlocky even for my catholic tastes.

Addendum 6/10):  London Ed repots that there is nothing too musically schlocky for his place, so go there to hear one of Fabian's numbers.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Doc Watson

The Grim Reaper is gaining speed as he picks off the makers of the music that so impressed us in our impressionable years.  In recent weeks Levon Helm of The Band and Robin Gibb of The Bee Gees have passed on. And just a few days ago, Doc Watson, master of the flat pick.  So pour yourself a drink and enjoy some great guitar playing as the sun sets on another Saturday.

Tom Dooley
Last Thing on My Mind.  Tune written by Tom Paxton.  Paxton's 1966 version. 2008 version.
Cat Came Back
Tennessee Stud
Settin' on Top of the World

If you don't like my peaches
Don't you shake my tree
Get out of my orchard
Let my peaches be
And now she's gone
And I don't worry
Lord I'm settin'
On top of the world.

Robert Paul Wolff: “The Left Has Had All the Good Songs”

Anarchist philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, over at The Philosopher's Stone, writes,

While I was making dinner, Susie put on a CD of Pete Seegar [sic] songs. I was struck once again by the oft-remarked fact that for half a century, the left has had all the good songs. That cannot be irrelevant.

By the way, the old commie's name is 'Seeger' not 'Seegar.'  In the ComBox, some guy confuses him with Bob Seger! The Left has had all the good songs over the last 50 years?  Nonsense.  Here are 50 counterexamples.

The really interesting case is Bob Dylan.  The Left can of course claim the early topical songs such as Only a Pawn in Their Game and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.  (Not that we contemporary conservatives don't take on board all that was good in these critiques of racism and Jim Crow.)  But it wasn't long before Dylan distanced himself from politics and leftist ideology, a distancing documented in My Back Pages.  And then came the absurdist-existentialist-surrealist phase represented by the three mid-'sixties albums, Bring It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.  After that, the motorcycle accident and another attitude adjustment culminating in a couple of masterful albums, John Wesley Harding and New Morning, in which religious and conservative themes come to the fore.

I'll give just one example, Sign on a Window, from the October 1970 album, New Morning.  The song concludes:

Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife, catch  rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me 'Pa'
That must be what it's all about
That must be what it's all about.

To appreciate the full conservative flavor of this song, listen to it in the context of  "Masters of War" from the protest period and It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) from the absurdist-existentialist-surrealist period.

Bob Dylan Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom

He deserves it for the hundreds of unforgettable songs ineliminable from the soundtrack of so many of our lives over the past 50 years: 1962-2012.

"Blowin' in the Wind" is the most famous of his anthems.  You may be surprised to learn that London Ed uploaded this outstanding rendition by Alanis Morissette.  Another of Dylan's great anthems is "Chimes of Freedom" here sung by the Byrds, and here by Dylan and Baez, or is it Dylan and Osbourne? (I say it's Baez)

And speaking of Baez, here she is singing Daddy, You've Been on My Mind. 

The man himself, She Belongs to Me.  I Want You.  I could go on, and on, and on.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Performers Who Ditched Their Italian Surnames, Part I

Before Bobby Darin became Bobby Darin he rejoiced under the name, Walden Robert Cassotto.  Dream Lover.  18 Yellow Roses. You're the Reason I'm Living.

Bobby Rydell started out Robert Ridarelli.  Forget Him.  Volare. "Letsa fly . . . ."

No, his name wasn't Dino Martino, it was Dino Paul Crocetti.  Schmaltzy as it is, That's Amore captures the Nagelian what-it's-like of being in love.  Houston.

Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero, better known as Connie Francis. Never on Sunday.  I prefer the understated Melina Mercouri version.

Timoteo Aurro = Timi Yuro.  When I first heard her back in the day, I thought she was black.  What a voice!  What's the Matter, Baby?  Her signature number: Hurt.

Laura traded in 'Nigro' for Nyro.'  Wedding Bell Blues. And When I Die.