Category: Music

Enjoy.  In order of  appearance: Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Baez impersonating Bob Dylan, Ramblin' Jack Elliot.

This one goes out to Diane L. in recollection of our date on this day 31 years ago in Cambridge, Mass. "Now and then there's a fool such as I." Part of the folly, no doubt, is in keeping alive these memories of past inamorata. Here is Bob Dylan's quirky but satisfying version from the Basement Tapes circa 1970.

If you like Arvo Pärt, you should like the work of American composer Alan Hovanhess.  Here is the Third Movement of "Concerto for Two Pianos."

Written by Jack Rhodes and Dick Reynolds and made popular by the Springfields in 1962, "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" was first recorded in 1956 by Wanda Jackson.  The Springfields' version features Dusty Springfield before she went solo and some very nice guitar work.  Wanda Jackson's is a country rendition with slightly different lyrics.  Most versions such as Linda Ronstadt's follow the Springfields' pattern. 

The late Dusty Springfield was part of the 'British Invasion' of 1964.  Here is her signature number.

This moldy oldie from the musty mausoleum by Tommy Dorsey dates back to the '30s.  It features, in the words of a YouTube commenter, "The melancholy moan of the dark Depression years."  This is the sort of lugubrious melodic maundering our parents and grandparents could relate to.  Given the present economic downturn it seems apropos, though I rather doubt we are headed for anything like the Great Depression.   I was put in mind of the song by the Twilight Zone episode "Static" which features it.

Jorma Kaukonen's Embryonic Journey from The Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow LP, 1967.

Bent Fabric, Alley Cat, 1962.

The Village Stompers, Washington Square, 1963.

Kenny Ball, Midnight in Moscow, 1962.

David Rose, The Stripper, 1962.

Acker Bilk, Stranger on the Shore, 1962.

Dick Dale and the Deltones, Misirlou, 1963.  If surf music had a father, Dick Dale was the man.

The Chantays, Pipeline, 1963.  A nice college boy effort, but the definitive version is the Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughan cover.

Floyd Cramer, Last Date, 1960.

Michael Bloomfield, Albert's Shuffle, 1968.  Definitive proof that a white boy can play the blues.

This strange Peggy Lee number is a candidate for the office of philosophically deepest popular song. If memory serves, it made the charts Stateside in the late 1960's. But it is the sort of song one would have expected to hear in a cabaret in Berlin in the decadent 1920's. 'Ockham' tells me that it is a Leiber and Stoller composition, and indeed it is. Surprising, given the other songs they wrote. It smacks of Weill-Brecht more than of Leiber-Stoller.

Bette Midler's version.

Nihilism was never so pleasantly packaged.

 A reader complained that I had discontinued Uncle Wild Bill's Saturday Night at the Oldies. (I'm torn between making this a pure, hard-core philosophy site and 'adulterating' the philosophy with  bloggity-blog self-indulgent content.) So I'll start it up again.  Here is a riveting  song by the late Harry Chapin (1942-1981). I heard it the other day on the radio while driving and was reminded what a great writer and performer he was.  Excellent live version here. The last verses are particularly moving:

And she walked away in silence,
It's strange, how you never know,
But we'd both gotten what we'd asked for,
Such a long, long time ago.

You see, she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly.
She took off to find the footlights,
And I took off for the sky.
And here, she's acting happy,
Inside her handsome home.
And me, I'm flying in my taxi,
Taking tips, and getting stoned,
I go flying so high, when I'm stoned.