Category: Music

"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.  Timi Yuro, Hurt.  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.

Some covers are as good as if not better than the originals.  Some examples, with the original first.  Thanks to our old friend 'williamofockham' for uploading the Morissette number as well as for suggesting the McLachlan and Simon covers.

Beatles, Blackbird.  Sarah McLachlan cover.  Carly Simon cover.

Sam Cooke, Wonderful World.  Simon-Garfunkel-Taylor cover. 

Bob Dylan, Blowing' in the Wind.  Alanis Morissette cover.

Jimmy Jones, Handy Man.  James Taylor cover.

Chantays, Pipeline.  Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughan cover.  Blows the original clean out of the water!

Shirelles, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?  This version is untouchable, though covered by many, including Carole King, its composer (with Gerry Goffin).

Chiffons, One Fine Day.  Another untouchable oldie from 1963 penned by Goffin-King.  Carole King does a better job with this one.

 I Love L. A.    And his masterpiece sung by Judy Collins.

In  Walked Bud.  Every hip stud really dug Bud soon's he hit town, takin' that note nobody wrote and puttin' it down.  Epistrophy.

Personal Jesus.  Hurt.  The Mercy Seat.  I See a Darkness.  If you can relate to these powerful songs, then you can appreciate the superficiality and ignorance of the human heart of the New Atheism.  Only the spiritually moribund could put up a poster like this:

Ed Feser, yesterday, hit upon a brilliant and true insight: "The New Atheist is none other than Nietzsche’s Last Man in rationalist drag."

There may or may not be a God.  But "Stop worrying and enjoy life"  is exactly the sort of thing  Nietzsche's  Last Man would say.  I think Feser would agree that the poster to the left supports his insight.

Leonard Cohen, Passing Through.  Leonard Cohen and Judy Collins, Suzanne.

Ray Barretto, El Watusi, 1963.  I remember when it first came out, but you young whippersnappers may remember it from Carlito's Way.   Don't ask me what it means.  The Orlons, Wah-Watusi, 1962.

Entangled deep in the psyche of every true American is a deep love of the open road.  Here are some tunes to be enjoyed while seated at the helm of a solid chunk of Detroit iron, while 'motorvatin' over some lonesome desert highway in the magic west of buttes and mesas, with four on the road, one in the hand, and the other wrapped around a fine cigar or a cup of steaming java.

Woody Guthrie, Hard Travelin'.  Hank Williams, Lost Highway.  Spade Cooley, Detour.  Leonard Cohen, Passing Through.  Bob Dylan, Highway 51 Blues.  Robert Johnson, Crossroad Blues.  Eric Clapton, Crossroads. Nelson Riddle, Route 66.  Chuck Berry, Get Your Kicks on Route 66.  Johnny Cash, I've Been Everywhere.  The Doors, Roadhouse Blues.  Johnny Cash, Highway 61 Revisited.  Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited.

Steve Allen and Jack Kerouac, A reading from On the Road.

You're getting a double dose this Saturday, muchachos — to make up for last Saturday.  These go out to S.S. Slim.  We begin on a humorous note with James Darren's hit from 1961, Goodbye Cruel World.  And then to a rather more somber number of the same name by Pink Floyd.  But neither can hold a candle to Tom Waits, Shiver Me Timbers.

Leavin' my family, I'm leavin' my friends
My body's at home but my heart's in the wind
Where the clouds are like headlines on a new front page sky
Tears are salt water and the moon's full and high

And I know Martin Eden is gonna be proud of me
Many before me who've been called by the sea
To be up in the crow's nest and singin' my say
And shiver me timbers I'm a-sailin' away

The fog's liftin' and the sand's shiftin' and I'm driftin' on out
Ol' Captain Ahab ain't got nothin' on me
So come on and swallow me, don't follow me, I'll travel alone
Blue water's my daughter an' I'm skippin' like a stone

And please call my missus and tell her not to cry
My goodbye is written by the moon in the sky
And nobody knows me, I can't fathom my stayin'
And shiver me timbers, I'm a-sailin' away

The fog's liftin' and the sand's shiftin' and I'm driftin' on out
Ol' Captain Ahab ain't got nothin' on me
So come on and swallow me, don't follow me, I'll travel alone
Blue water's my daughter an' I'm skippin' like a stone

And I'm leavin' my family, and I'm leavin' my friends
My body's at home but my heart's in the wind
Where the clouds are like headlines on a new front page sky
And shiver me timbers, I'm a-sailin' away.

I'm So Glad to join you, My Best Friend, as we follow Mr. Tambourine Man on an Embryonic Journey to hear the Chimes of Freedom as we Break on Through to the Other Side.

My training over and my carbo-loading done, I am now in the psych-up phase for tomorrow's Lost Dutchman marathon.  Will I be able to go the distance?  At the outset, I'll Take It Easy but then Take It to the Limit.  I will have no trouble with the first 20 miles, but the last 10 K I will be Running on Empty.  Question is whether I will be Willin' to keep on movin'?

And while we're on the running them, let's not forget Del Shannon's Runaway, Roy Orbison's Running Scared, and Dion DiMucci's Runaround Sue.  And then there's that Crystals number the refrain of which sounds like 'They do run, run.'

And tomorrow  being St Valentine's Day, three for my wife.  An old Sam Cooke number, a lovely Shirelles tune, and my favorite from the Seekers.

Here are my six favorite broadly religious songs in the rock/pop genre.  Clapton & Winwood, In the Presence of the Lord.  And now three by the 'philosophical' Beatle.  (If Ringo Starr is the 'regular guy' Beatle, and Paul McCartney the 'romantic' Beatle, and John Lennon the 'radical' Beatle, then George Harrison is the 'philosophical/religious' Beatle.  My Sweet Lord.  All Things Must Pass.  Give Me Love.

And now two by the protean Bob Dylan.  Father of Night.  Gotta Serve Somebody.

Finally, two powerful anti-drug songs.  Hoyt Axton, The Pusher. Steppenwolf version from "Easy Rider."  Buffy Sainte- Marie, Codeine.

Last time the theme was 'rainy' songs.  To balance things out, here are some 'sunny' songs.  Donovan, To Try For the Sun.  Forgot what a great tune that is.  Might have been the mid-60's since I last heard it.  And then there's the moody Sunny Goodge Street by the same artist.  The Beatles, Here Comes the Sun. 

Jimi Hendrix, Third Stone From the Sun from his first album.  A bit of psychedelia from '67.  It's good to see that Mose Allison is still at it, at age 83.  Here is his quirky verson of "You Are My Sunshine."  I used to catch Mose at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California, at the end of the '60s.  Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan try to do a duet of the same song.  If you can't stomach either of those versions, there is always Doris Day.

Cream, Sunshine of Your Love.  Bobby Hebb, Sunny (1966).  I had to reach my long arm far back into the musty mausoleum of moldy oldies for this Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee version of the old standard, The Sunny Side of the Street (1941). 

Finally, The Sun Also Rises, a tune that I heard in 1968 and have had in my head for four decades but haven't heard again until just now. For the last 42 years I have been trying without success to remember the name of the band and locate the tune.  'Fever Tree' it is, an obscure group that I heard together with Canned Heat at an L.A. club in '68.  If you remember them, I'll buy you a beer. 

Here in the Zone and elsewhere in the West we are getting a much-needed soaking. And that puts me in mind of my favorite rain songs. 

Fire and Rain is particularly appropriate for California: first the wildfires strip the land of vegetation, then the rains come and bring on mudslides.  Didn't James Taylor have an album called Mudslide Slim? 

Dee Clark, Raindrops.  Cascades, Rythm of the Rain (1963). 

The Beatles' Rain 'blew my mind' back in '66.

And of course there is the lovely Gordon Lightfoot composition, Early Morning Rain, here performed in 1966 by PP&M.  Dylan's version is also very nice.

Speaking of America's troubadour, we cannot omit his Hard Rain, written in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Dylan was a great writer of topical songs because he knew how to make them poetic and not too obvious.

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35?  Dylan's worst song.  Doesn't deserve a link.  But his "Buckets of Rain" (from Blood on the Tracks) is another story.  Here is Maria Muldaur's version.  Remember her?  And Dave van Ronk's.

 The question is posed in this 1955 Clovers number.  But perhaps you are more familiar with the Bobby Vee cover.  Elvis Presley learns that appearances can deceive.  Marty Robbins succumbs to temptation and begs his Mary for forgiveness.  An aging Mitch Ryder gets it up one more time in this rousing version of Devil with the Blue Dress.