Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Song

From Variety:

Of the dozens or even hundreds of singers and songwriters that Bob Dylan extols in his new  book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” there is one that seems to stand out even more than the others, so effusive is Dylan’s praise. This performer, he writes, is “downright incredible” and “lived in every moment of every song he sang… His performance is just downright incredible. There is nothing small you can say about it… When he stood and sang, he owned the song and he shared it and we believed every single word. What more could you want from an artist?”

The artist in question: Perry Como, naturally.

As a Dylan fan from the early '60s, I can tell you that one can never be sure when Bob is serious and when he is putting us on.

Will I buy this book?  Is the sky blue? I was about to write, "Is the Pope Catholic?" But that doesn't work anymore, with Bergoglio the Benighted at the helm of a sinking ship. 

Addendum (1/24)

'Termitic' and 'benighted' are adjectives I have repeatedly applied to 'Pope' Francis. No doubt some of you find that offensive. I intend no disrespect for the office, but I do have serious moral and intellectual reservations about its current occupant. And you should too. See this Telegraph piece which begins:

Gay “clubs” operate openly in Catholic seminaries, the institutions that prepare men for the priesthood, the late Pope Benedict XVI has claimed in a posthumously published book scathing of Pope Francis’s progressive agenda. 

In a blistering attack on the state of the Catholic Church under his successor’s papacy, Benedict, who died on Dec 31 at the age of 95, said that the vocational training of the next generation of priests is on the verge of “collapse”.

He claimed that some bishops allow trainee priests to watch pornographic films as an outlet for their sexual urges.

Benedict gave instructions that the book, What Christianity Is, should be published after his death.

Christmas Eve at the Oldies

Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales

The following selections and commentary courtesy of Edward Buckner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LndB94i2F_0

“Dieux Parmi Nous” (God among us) by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. The glorious final movement from Messiaen's nine-part La Nativité is performed by Richard Gowers on the organ of King's College Chapel, Cambridge. It is a tradition in England for the family to listen to the carols from King’s on Christmas Eve, and for the women to talk over it. [Ed's remark cannot be sexist if it is true.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YamipW44v4c

“Toccata on 'Veni Emmanuel'” by the English composer Andrew Carter. The origin of the melody was a mystery for some time but it was recently found in a 15th-century manuscript in the National Library of France. Keep an eye out for the organist’s socks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SixnHKwyrjI

“Jesus Christ the Apple Tree" by English composer Elizabeth Poston. During World War II Poston is supposed to have worked as a secret agent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq8mgyBUJgk

“Nativity Carol” by English composer John Rutter. Rutter is hated by many as verging on kitsch, but “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without this magnificent carol”. Judge for yourself.  [A little kitsch never hurt anybody.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXOaTOylx0c

“This Christmas Night” by Australian composer Malcolm Williamson. Williamson worked as a nightclub pianist when he moved to London, but soon converted to Roman Catholicism. He became the Master of the Queen's Music in 1975.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XQwLp9d5eg

“A Babe is Born” by Welsh composer William Mathias. His anthem “Let the people praise Thee, O God” was written for the July 1981 royal wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and thus heard by 1 billion people. The tenor part is difficult for us tenors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1wHyMR_SCA

“O Come, All Ye Faithful” (Adeste Fideles) from our wonderful Westminster Abbey. The origin of the melody is unknown, but was first published by John Francis Wade in his collection Cantus Diversi. Watch out for the lovely descant at ‘Sing choirs of angels’.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tunes from Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973)

Ronettes,  Be My Baby (opening sequence).

Rolling Stones, Tell Me (Keitel's entrance).

Rolling Stones, Jumpin' Jack Flash (De Niro's entrance).

Smokey Robinson, Mickey's Monkey

Derek and the Dominoes, I Looked Away

Marvelettes, Please Mr. Postman

Little Caesar and the Romans, Those Oldies but Goodies

Johnny Ace, Pledging My Love

Paragons, Florence 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tom Merton, Baez, Dylan, and Ry Cooder

Thomas Merton, though 51 years old in 1966, was wide open to the '60s Zeitgeist – all of it.  The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Six, p. 93, entry of 10 July 1966:

Borrowed  a record player and  played Joan Baez over again — and now really know "Silver Dagger" (before I had the melody confused with "East Virginia"). One record I like more and more is Bob Dylan's Highway 61 [Revisited].  

On p. 324, Merton references Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man. YouTuber comment:

One of the greatest songs ever written. I just love it. It describes so accurately the feelings we had back in the 60s. Everything was strange and new and brilliant. Music was everywhere, all with different sounds and lyrics. Dylan was right in the middle of it. There are so many good songs on his albums. If you aren't familiar with him you should listen to some of his stuff.

In the same volume of Merton's journal we find "A Midsummer Diary for M" and on p. 305:

All the love and death in me are at the moment wound up in Joan Baez's song, "Silver Dagger." I can't get it out of my head, day or night. I am obsessed with it. My whole being is saturated with it. The song is myself — and yourself for me, in a way.

Ry Cooder, He'll Have to Go. The old 1960 Jim Reeves country crossover hit.

Ry Cooder, Good Night Irene.  Leadbelly.  Eric Clapton's rendition at a 1982 English Christmas party. 

Ry Cooder, Yellow Roses. The old Hank Snow tune.

Ry Cooder, Maria Elena. An old standard from circa 1932.

Ry Cooder, Paris, Texas. Excellent evocative video.  Great YouTuber comment:

Man I have been gone way too long. I miss America, the open road, the wild west. I remember staying in hotels with just a dozen rooms or so, and only maybe four of them in operation. Twenty seven bucks and bed springs so squeaky we had to make love on the floor. Walking out to the pay phone, a billion stars in the sky, I need to try and find my way back again.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Torch Songs

"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.   YouTuber comment: "Late 1959. I was in 4th grade, listening to KFWB Los Angeles."  Same here. Same year, same grade, same station, KFWB, Channel 98! Color Radio! My favorite deejay was B. Mitchel Reed.  I learned 'semolian' and 'mishigas' from him. His real surname is 'Goldberg,' which means mountain of gold. I will say no more lest I provoke my alt-Right correspondents.  

Timi Yuro, Hurt. When I first heard this I was sure she was black. I was wrong. She's Italian, and her real name is Rosemarie Timotea Auro. What pipes!

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

Sentimental you say? What would life be without sentiment? You say it's overdone? You suffer from an excess of cool. It's Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, and feel. Tonight we feel, tomorrow we think.  About sentimentality and everything else under the sun.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Rock and Roll Apologetics

A curious sub-genre of meta-rock devoted to the defense of the devil's music.

The Showmen, It Will Stand, 1961 

Bob Seger, Old-Time Rock and Roll

But does it really "soothe the soul"? Is it supposed to?  For soul-soothing, I recommend the Adagio movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Adagio molto e cantabile.

Rolling Stones, It's Only Rock and Roll (but I Like It)

Electric Light Orchestra, Roll Over, Beethoven.  Amazingly good.  Roll over, Chuck Berry!

Danny and the Juniors, Rock and Roll is Here to Stay

Chuck Berry and Friends, Rock and Roll Music

Off-topic bonus cut:  The Chantels, Look in My Eyes, 1961.  YouTuber comment: "Emanating from the Heart Chakra. Something pop songs rarely do anymore. Feel it?" The popular music of this period had human meaning, coming from the heart and speaking to the heart, even when it passed over into schmaltz and sentimentality.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Cool Tunes and More Mose

Ramsey Lewis Trio, The In Crowd

Dave Brubeck, Take Five

Corsairs, Smoky Places

Harry Nilsson, Everybody's Talkin'

B. B. King, Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out 

Sam Cooke, Fool's Paradise

Thelonius Monk, In Walked Bud

Mose Allison, Your Mind's on Vacation

Mose Allison, I Don't Worry About a Thing

Mose Allison, Don't Get Around Much Anymore

Too cool for you? Try this.

Mose Allison, The Song is Ended

Saturday Night at the Oldies: October Jazz

The 15th already! October's a bird that flies too fast. Time herself's such a bird. I would freeze her flight, but not that of

Charley 'Bird' Parker, Ornithology

Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen, Charlie Parker

Kerouac and Allen, October in the Railroad Earth

Jack Kerouac, San Francisco

Mose Allison, Parchman Farm.

This one goes out to Tom Gastineau, keyboard man in our band Dudley Nightshade, who introduced me to Mose Allison in the late '60s. Tom went on to make it, more or less, in the music business. I caught Allison at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California, a couple or three times before I headed East in August of '73.  Heard him on the East Coast as well at a joint in Marblehead, Mass. with a girlfriend  I dubbed 'Springtime Mary'  which was Kerouac's name for his girlfriend Mary Carney.

Mose Allison, Young Man's Blues

Mose Allison, I Ain't Got Nothing but the Blues

Dave Brubeck, Blue Rondo al a Turk

Herbie Hancock, Watermelon Man

Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour

Episode Thirty Two: Moon.  The harvest moon is big and bright these October nights.  

Informed commentary by a lover of and major contributor to musical Americana. Hear how much you've missed and how much young Bobby Zimmerman sopped up through long and cold Hibbing nights listening to the radio.

Around 50:00 Dylan commences reading  the Slim Gaillard passage from Kerouac's On the Road and then cues up a Gaillard number.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Marital Advice

Before you even think of getting married, make sure you have plenty of money.

Then shop around.

Consider who will become your mother-in-law.

If you want to be happy,  don't worry too much about physical beauty. 

If she has a cheatin' heart, hit the road, Jack.

But then again you might be better off without a wife.

………………………..

Bonus cut: Lauro Nyro, Wedding Bell Blues

Saturday Night at the Oldies: September Songs

September's on the wane.  A transitional month leading from hot August to glorious October, Kerouac month in the MavPhil 'secular liturgy.'

Dinah Washington, September in the Rain

Rod Stewart, Maggie May. "Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you/It's late September and I really should be back at school."

Carole King, It Might as Well Rain Until September

And while we have Miss King cued up, lend an ear to One Fine Day.

The 'sixties forever! We were young, raw, open, impressionable, experience-hungry; we lived intensely and sometimes foolishly.  We felt deeply, and suffered deeply. Youth has its truth. And our popular music put to shame the crap that came before and after. Or so we thought. And so we still think. Would I want to live though the 'sixties again? Hell no, I am having too good a time enjoying it memorially at a safe distance.  Youth has its truth, but if you can make it into old age with health and intellect intact, and a modicum of the lean green, you are winning the game. 

Django Reinhardt, September Song

George Shearing, September in the Rain

Walter Huston, September Song 

Van Morrison, September Night

Brothers Four, Try to Remember. I do remember when I was "a tender and callow fellow." 

Billie Holliday, September Song

Addendum

This from a London reader:

Thanks for linking to the George Shearing ‘September’. I had forgotten he grew up in London (in Battersea, just down the road from me). I love the Bird-like flights on the piano. Indeed I think he wrote ‘Lullaby of Birdland’. Another Londoner is Helen Shapiro who does a great version of ‘It might as well rain until September.’  Great alto voice, never made it in the US as far as I know. There is an  account of her conversion to Christianity here.

I was first hipped to Shearing by Kerouac who referred to him in On the Road.  I too love the 'Bird'-like flights on the piano. The allusion is to Charley 'Bird' Parker, also beloved of Kerouac.  Helen Shapiro is new to me, thanks. She does a great job with the Carole King composition.  Believe it or not, King's version is a demo. That's one hell of a demo. A YouTuber points out that Shapiro was not part of the 1964 'British Invasion.'  I wonder why.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Wall of Sound

No dark songs this Saturday Night. Some upbeat numbers to take our minds off the depredatory Left and their depredations. Here are some of my favorite Phil Spector productions.  It wouldn't have been the 'sixties without him. I avert my eyes from his later misadventures and remember him for his contributions to the Boomer soundtrack, than which, no doubt, no greater can be conceived.

Crystals, Uptown, 1962.

Crystals, He's a Rebel

Ronettes, Be My Baby

Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron

Curtis Lee, Pretty Little Angel Eyes.

Great dance video. Curtis Edwin Lee, one-hit wonder, hailed from Yuma, Arizona.  He died at 75 years of age on 8 January 2015.  Obituary here. His signature number became a hit in 1961, reaching the #7 slot on the Billboard Hot 100. When I discovered that the record was produced by the legendary Phil Spector, I understood why it is so good.  After the limelight, Lee returned to Yuma for a normal life. This tune goes out to wifey, with love.  When I first espied those angel eyes back in '82, I had the thought, "Here she is, man, the one for you. Go for it!" And I did, and its been very good indeed. Forty years and counting.

Ben E. King, Spanish Harlem, 1960.

Crystals, Then He Kissed Me

Beach Boys, Then I Kissed Her. With a tribute to Marilyn M.

Paris Sisters, I Love How You Love Me, 1961.

Ronettes, Walkin' in the Rain

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Dark Songs for Dark Times

Buffalo Springfield, For What It's Worth

Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues

Bob Dylan, It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bad Moon Rising

The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again

Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter

Bob Dylan, Masters of War

Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet. But it's getting there . . .