Category: Music

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Travel, Travail, Transition

Johnny Cash, I've Been Everywhere, man, crossed the deserts bare, man/I've breathed the mountain air, man/Of travel I've had my share, man/I've been everywhere.
Pete Seeger, Passing Through.  "Yankee, Russian, white or tan, Lord a man is just a man/We're all brothers and we're only passing through."
Soggy Mountain Boys, I am a Man of Constant Sorrow
Peter, Paul, and Mary, 500 Miles
EmmyLou Harris, Wayfaring Stranger
Ralph Stanley, Will the Circle be Unbroken
Karla Bonoff, The Water is Wide.  Is there a better treatment?
Tom Waits, Shiver Me Timbers.  If you've read Jack London's Martin Eden, you will figure out what this song is about.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Politically Incorrect Tunes

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. Laing'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.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Levon Helm and Dick Clark

Both passed on this last week, Helm at 71, Clark at 82.  Here is part of a fine tribute to Helm:

He was a river of American popular music. Whatever you call it, roots music, Americana, R&B, rockabilly, gospel, country soul, he kept its rhythm and sang it as well as any American musician ever has. We heard all of it in that soulful howl of his lamenting the missing Ophelia and the soul-crushed Confederate soldier, and the temptations and ravages of the road.

[. . .] We’re a hell of a musical country. We’re a people with a soundtrack. The wind whistling through the pines and jackhammers tearing up concrete, guitars and fiddles in the subway, hip-hop on the corner, blues down the alley, “a saxophone in some far off place,” a flute in the desert.

Whatever levees we build between us, by color, class, creed or politics, the river overflows them. In the city, out in the country, on the plains or in the projects, we pine and dream and cry and love to some strain of American music that is connected to every other strain of American music. Levon showed us that, and made us want to sing along with him on his ramble.

Up on Cripple Creek
Chest Fever
The Weight
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.  A great piece of Americana.  "Like my father before me, I'm a working man/Like my brother before me, I took a rebel stand . . . ." Joan Baez's interpretation.
I Shall Be Released. With Dylan and a number of other luminaries.
Evangeline. With EmmyLou Harris.
When I Paint My Masterpiece.  Tune written by Dylan.

"They'll be rockin' on Bandstand, Philadelphia, PA" in Chuck Berry's Sweet Little Sixteen is a reference to Dick Clark's American Bandstand.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Death and Resurrection

Johnny Cash, Ain't No Grave
Johnny Cash, Redemption
Mississippi John Hurt, You've Got to Walk that Lonesome Valley
B. B. King, See That My Grave is Kept Clean
Blind Boy Grunt (Bob Bylan), Gospel Plow
Bob Dylan, Fixin' to Die
Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus
Johnny Cash, Hurt
Johnny Cash, Final Interview.  He speaks of his faith starting at 5:15.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 45e: "Go on, believe! It does no harm."

‘Foolish’ Songs for April Fool’s Day

Last night I foolishly failed to save my drafts of my Saturday Night at the Oldies post replete with a load of links to songs, and a temporary TypePad outage banished the post to cyber-oblivion.  Well, here are some of them, da capo, in celebration or bemoanment of human folly the chief instance of which is romantic love.  Who has never been played for a fool by a charming member of the opposite sex?

Elvis Presley, A Fool Such as I
Ricky Nelson, Poor Little Fool.  Those "carefree devil eyes" will do it every time. 
Brenda Lee, Fool #1
The Shirelles, Foolish Little Girl
Ricky Nelson, Fools Rush In.  "Fools rush in/Where wise men never go/But wise men never fall in love/So how are they to know?" 
Sam Cooke, Fool's Paradise. Sage advice
Elvin Bishop, Fooled Around and Fell in Love
Kingston Trio, Some Fool Made a Soldier of Me
Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Fool
Tony Bennett and Bill Evans, My Foolish Heart
Bill Evans, Foolish Heart

Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘Strange’ Songs

In three categories:  Rock, Religion, Romanticism.

Cream, Strange Brew
Doors, People are Strange
Doors, Strange Days
Mickey and Sylvia, Love is Strange

Stanley Bros., Rank Strangers
Emmy Lou Harris, Wayfaring Stranger

Frank Sinatra, Strangers in the Night  To be is to do (Socrates).  To do is to be (Sartre). Do be do be do (Sinatra).
Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger
Acker Bilk, Stranger on the Shore

Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘Green’ Songs

I was going to cover 'strange' songs tonight, but then I remembered it is St. Patrick's Day. 

Remember The New Christy Minstrels?  Here is Barry Maguire belting out their 1963 hit,
Green, Green."  It was sanitized, well-scrubbed hootenany stuff like this that caused a lot of my generation to pick up guitars and then find our way back to the more authentic material.  Check out this video of a live performance at an Arizona university.  This was before the '60s became the '60s. But by '65 the cultural as opposed to the calendrical  '60s had arrived with a vengeance and the same Barry Maguire came out with The Eve of Destruction.  Topical songs and social protest came to displace songs about Tom Dooley and workin' on the railroad . . . .

Joan Baez, Green, Green Grass of Home.  Red Foley does a great job with this 'green' song.

Hoyt Axton, Greenback Dollar. Here is the Kingston Trio's cleaned-up collegiate version.  Fretkillr's  killer amateur version is modelled on Hoyt Axton's.

Hoyt Axton, Greensleeves

Jim Lowe, Green Door, 1956.

Roy Buchanan, Green Onions.  A guitar-slinger's version.

Finally, a song about the lean green.

And now to bed.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Guns and Gun Violence

Jr. Walker and the All Stars, Shotgun
Beatles, Revolver (the whole album!)
Hoyt Axton, Pistol Packin' Mama.  Al Dexter wrote the song and had a hit with it in '43.
Lloyd Price, Stagger Lee, 1959.  "Stagger Lee went home and got his .44 . . ."  Mississippi John Hurt's version.
The Leaves, Hey Joe.  "Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?"
Gene Pitney, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962
Johnny Western, The Ballad of Palladin.  Theme song of "Have Gun Will Travel." Duane Eddy's cheesy version.
Tom Waits, Sixteen Shells from a Thirty-Aught Six
Phil Ochs, The Men Behind the Guns
Joan Baez, Rock Salt and Nails.  "If the ladies was squirrels with high bushy tails/I'd fill up my shotgun with rock salt and nails."
No, I will not link to Sonny and Cher's "Bang, Bang"!

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Superstition

Stevie Ray Vaughan, Superstition
Howlin' Wolf, I Ain't Superstitious.  "Well, I ain't superstitious, but a black cat just crossed my trail."
Elvis Presley, Good Luck Charm
Leon Redbone, When You Wish Upon a Star
Blind Lemon Jefferson, Rabbit Foot Blues, 1926
Screamin' Jay Hawkins, I Put a Spell on You.  Don't miss this one!
Albert King, Born Under a Bad Sign
Eagles, Witchy Woman
Santana, Black Magic Woman
Lovin' Spoonful, Do You Believe in Magic?
Marty Robbins, Devil Woman
Mitch Ryder, Devil with the Blue Dress
Elvis Presley, Devil in Disguise

That makes 13! Time to pack it in.