The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

November 15, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

The Soundtracker’s face is red yet again.  And it’s not just because of the chillty Ida-generated winds whistling up the Chesapeake.  It’s because he’s on the road with his laptop while this week’s Soundtrack is warm and dry at home on his desktop.  Soundtrack will return next week.  In the meantime, as a placeholder please accept the following…..

This weekend’s Reward featured Linda Ronstadt.  Her first hit —and what many still consider her most identifying song— was 1967’s “Different Drum” recorded while she was part of the Stone Poneys.

For the album version, she was the only Poney in the place — the backup musicians were studio pickups.  The string-driven arrangement, which has become all but iconic, can —and should— be heard here.

Here’s a performance at a live gig.  It’s thinner and less satisfying than the studio version, but it’s always engaging to watch Linda Ronstadt in action.

“Different Drum” was written by Mike Nesmith in his pre-Monkee incarnation.  He sang it as an encore in 1992 at the Britt Festival in Oregon:

Well you and I
Travel to the beat of a different drum
Can’t you tell by the way I run
Every time you make eyes at me

you cry, you moan
And say it’ll work out
But honey child I’ve got my doubts
You can’t see the forest for the trees

Now don’t get me wrong
It’s not that I knock it
It’s just that I am not in the market
For a girl who wants to love only me
And I’m not saying that you’re not pretty
All’s I saying’s I’m not ready
For any person place or thing
To try and pull the reins
In on me

Well I feel pretty sure
That you’ll find a man
Who will take a lot more than I ever could or can
And you’ll settle down with him
And I know that you’ll be happy

So goodbye
I’m a-leavin’
I see no sense in you cryin’ and grieven’
We’ll both live a lot longer
If you live without me

Ten years after she broke into the charts with “Different Drum,” Linda Ronstadt was on the cover of Time magazine’s 27 February 1977 issue.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

November 8, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 3 Comments 

On Sundays, The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time Richard Nixon became President in 1969.

SUSPICIOUS MINDS (MARK JAMES) performed by ELVIS PRESLEY

“Suspicious Minds,” which topped the nation’s pop charts forty years ago at the beginning of November 1969, was Elvis Presley’s first Number One hit in seven years — and the last one in his lifetime.  From its opening bars it is clearly a great song.  In 1999 it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame (“recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance”); and it is Number 91 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  It is also one of the Soundtracker’s particular favorites — for what that’s worth.

By 1969 Elvis was in serious need of a rebranding.  The heyday of his record hits and concert tours was now almost a decade in the past.  And his Hollywood cottage industry churning out money-making but increasingly vapid movies had begun to pall.

The Elvis formula carefully developed and rigidly applied by the Dutch-born Svengali “Colonel” Tom Parker was out of sync with the major developments in popular music and in society in general during the ferment of the 1960s.

At the end of 1968 Elvis pulled himself together and performed on a TV special sponsored by the Singer Sewing Machine Company.  Now known as the Singer Special or the Comeback Special, this hour presented a newly sleek and relevant Elvis.  It also created some serious performance pressures regarding its follow up.

Back and better than ever: Elvis wore black leather for his Christmastime TV special in December 1968.

Colonel Parker looked to Las Vegas as the next step.  He made a deal with the new International Hotel for a month-long engagement —two shows a night seven days a week— beginning in July.  The building was under construction even while the ink was drying on the contract.

If you build it they will come: In April 1968 Elvis signed up for a month of shows at the new International Showcase in the new International Hotel.  At 2000 seats, the International Showcase would be Las Vegas’ biggest venue.

Elvis’ only studio album in the last seven years had been 1967’s hymnal How Great Thou Art.  For his new album Elvis decided to break out of the Colonel’s comfortable Nashville routine by choosing Chips Moman’s American Sound Studios in Memphis.  Although American Studios were located in the worst part of Memphis, they featured all the latest developments in the technique and technology of sound recording.  “What a funky, funky place,” was Elvis’ first reaction.

Back home again: Elvis and Chips Moman at Moman’s American Sound Studios where “Suspicious Minds,” “In the Ghetto,” and “Kentucky Rain” were recorded in January 1969.

The “American Studios sessions” are now part of the Elvis legend; as Rolling Stone remarked, they “helped return the King to his throne.”  It was during those twelve days in January 1969, with a short break to fight a cold, that Elvis cut the thirty-six tracks that yielded two LPs that went platinum, and four singles, three of which went gold.

The sessions were as spectacular as the behind-the-scenes rangling over publication rights and turf in general was acrimonious.   Tempers raged; at one point Moman suggested just erasing the tapes and calling it quits.  Finally an RCA executive, recognizing that “Suspicious Minds” could be a monster hit, intervened.  The tapes were turned over, the LPs were pressed, and the album —From Elvis in Memphis— was released in August.  (Stephen Rudko’s authoritative account of all this Memphis Sturm und Drang —“Reinventing Elvis: The American Studio Sessions”— can be found here.)

We can go on together: The Sweet Inspirations (clockwise from top, Sylvia Shemwell, Cissy Houston, Myrna Smith, Estelle Brown) backed up Elvis on the recording of “Suspicious Minds” and during the July gig at the International Hotel in Las Vegas.  Inspiration Cissy Houston later recalled that after each show “we would jam with him for an hour, singing gospel.  He really loved it, had a feel for it, and was tickled to have four ‘church sisters’ backing him up.”   In addition to backing up Elvis and the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and Solomon Burke, the Sweet Inspirations released several hit albums of their own between 1968 and 1979.

The advantages of Moman’s artistry and American Studios’ equipment are evident on “Suspicious Minds”  — which was recorded on EST (Elvis Standard Time) between 4 and 7 am.  In Nashville, Elvis’ recordings were straightforward renderings of the studio product and sound.  In Memphis, Moman was able to lay down rough tracks, as well as sweeten things in post production.  The memorable horns and the now iconic fade at 3:33 that heightens the intensity of the finale, are examples of Elvis’ Momanization.  The terrific backup singers were the Sweet Inspirations, who also served as his opening act.

Elvis debuted the song during his Las Vegas gig in July.  Devotees of the song will find the tempo too fast, the mixing too thin, and Elvis’ disrespect (“shove it up your nose”) disappointing  But connoisseurs of the King will see him back on stride on top.

“Suspicious Minds” was written by Mark James, one of Chips Moman’s songwriters at American Studios.  In 1968 Moman, who saw the song’s potential, produced a record with the composer as performer.  Moman realized the the limitations of the James recording but recognized the song’s potential.  As soon as he heard that Elvis would be coming to Memphis he brushed off the arrangements and presented it as a hit in waiting.

Mark James’s other hits included “Hooked on a Feeling,” written for his Texas high school classmage B. J. Thomas.  And “Always on My Mind,” James’ 1973 B-side for Elvis’ “Separate Ways” became a Number One hit, and won the Grammy for Song of the Year, when Willie Nelson covered it in 1982.

Elvis’ success with “Suspicious Minds” inspired Dee Dee Warwick’s convincing R&B cover that broke the Hot 100 in 1971.

For the compleat Elvis fan: In the words of the catalog: “This stylish and funky Elvis fridge magnet features a classic image of Elvis from his ‘68 Comeback Special. Simply press the face of the magnet to hear Suspicious Minds.”

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

November 1, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

The Soundtracker has been on the road this week — in fact in Yorba Linda, where the Nixon Library was looking particularly  fine under balmy blue skies.

As on each visit to the Library, the Soundtracker joined other visitors watching the film and examining the exhibits before moving outside into the warm sunshine.  The surface of the Reflecting Pool mirrored the soaring Queen Palms as we walked to the Pat Nixon Rose Garden, which is in fragrant bloom.

We went through the Presidential Helicopter and then visited the Birthplace — the small house Frank Nixon built in 1909 where RN was born in 1913.  And, in the shadow of that house, we stood quietly before the simple black granite stones marking the last resting places of the President and Mrs. Nixon.

One of the highlights of this visit was Sonny West’s lecture and book signing.  Mr. West is a warm and engaging fellow who knows his way around a good story.   Recruited by his cousin Red West, Sonny joined Elvis’ entourage shortly after the three of them were fresh from the service (Marine Corps, Air Force, and Army, respectively).  And aside from his still obvious physical prowess, it’s easy to see why Elvis enjoyed his bodyguard’s company.

Sonny was with Elvis during the memorable meeting with RN in the Oval Office on 21 December 1970.  His account adds some fascinating —and very amusing— details to that well known story.  He covered some of them in  his interview with Sandy Quinn, which was posted here on TNN.

A YouTuber called Dr. K. —and I’m pretty sure it’s the other Dr. K.— made a clever time-lapse video of the photographs of the famous President-King encounter.

Thanks to David Stokes’ dedication and work, TNN will now have a podcast presence — and the first TNN podcast is Sonny West’s speech at the Nixon Library.

Lightning fast: Sonny West talked with Elvis fans and signed copies of his new book Still Taking Care of Business after his speech at the Nixon Library.

Oh yes — what I started out to say is that The Soundtrack Of Our Lives will return here next week with the Number One song forty years ago in 1969.  And that song was —and what could be more fitting?— was Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds.”

FYI to TNN readers:  In 2010 the Nixon Foundation plans to republish Bud Krogh’s book The Day Elvis Met Nixon. Bud, of course, was the staff assistant who drew the assignment when Elvis showed up unexpectedly at the Northwest Gate to deliver a letter he had written to RN.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

October 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

Every Sunday, The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time Richard Nixon was elected President in 1968.

I CAN’T GET NEXT TO YOU (NORMAN WHITFIELD + BARRETT STRONG) performed by THE TEMPTATIONS

Dennis Edwards: I can turn the grayest sky blue.
Melvin Franklin: I can make it rain, whenever I want it to.
Eddie Kendricks: I can build a castle from a single grain of sand.
Paul Williams: I can make a ship sail on dry land.

Dennis: But my life is incomplete and I’m so blue. ‘Cause I can’t get next to you.

I can’t get next to you, babe.
I can’t get next to you.
I can’t get next to you, babe.
I can’t get next to you.

Dennis: I can fly like a bird in the sky.
Eddie: And I can buy anything that money can buy.
Paul: I can turn a river into a raging fire.
Melvin: I can live forever if I so desired.

Eddie: Unimportant are all the things I can do. ‘Cause I can’t get next to you.

I can’t get next to you, babe. 
No matter what I do,
I can’t get next to you.

Dennis: I can turn back the hands of time, you better believe I can.
Otis Williams: I can make the seasons change, just by waving my hand.
Eddie: I can change anything from old to new.
Paul: The things I want to do the most, I’m unable to do.

Dennis: Unhappy am I with all the powers I possess. ‘Cause girl you’re the key to my happiness.
Eddie: And I can’t get next to you.

Forty years ago this week, the Number One song in America was The Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next To You.”  At that point the group comprised Dennis Edwards (who had replaced David Ruffin as the lead singer in mid-’68), Melvin Franklin, Eddie Kendricks, Otis Williams, and Paul Williams (no relation).

The song was written by Motown writers and producers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, and produced by Whitfield.   Their song “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” had been a Number One hit for Marvin Gaye at the beginning of 1969.

Getting Close To You: at the piano, composer Barrett Strong, with lyricist-producer Norman Whitfield.

In 1970, Al Green’s cover of the song —which broke into the Hot 100— presented a more subdued interpretation.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

October 18, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

The Soundtracker is on a rainy weekend road trip checking out the homes of four of Virginia’s eight presidents: Madison’s Montpelier, Monroe’s Highland, Wilson’s Manse, and, of course, Monticello.

The Soundtrack will return next week.  In the meantime, here’s a 1969 placeholder: Jay and the Americans’ cover of Doc Pomus’ 1960 hit “This Magic Moment.”

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

October 11, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 1 Comment 

Every Sunday, The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time Richard Nixon became President in 1969.

TAKE IT EASY (JACKSON BROWNE + GLENN FREY) performed by THE EAGLES

Jackson Browne was on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1975.

Jackson Browne wrote “Take It Easy” in 1971 with the idea of including it on his debut LP which was about to be recorded.  Typical of the Jackson oeuvre, it cast a detached but perceptive eye on the singer’s (not unenviable) situation.

Well I’m running down the road
Tryin’ to loosen my load
Ive got seven women on my mind.
Four that wanna own me,
Two that wanna stone me,
One says she’s a friend of mine.
Take it easy, take it easy
Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.
Lighten up while you still can
Don’t even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
And take it easy.

Well I’m running down the road
Tryin’ to loosen my load
Got a world of trouble on my mind.
Lookin’ for a lover
Who won’t blow my cover
She’s so hard to find.
Take it easy, take it easy
Don’t let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy.
Come on baby, don’t say maybe
I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me.

Browne played the song-in-progress for his friend and  housemate Glenn Frey (the other housemate was singer-songwriter J. D. Souther — that must have been quite a crib.)   Frey was in the course of preparing the first album of his band, the Eagles.  He immediately recognized that “Take It Easy” wasn’t just a hit, but a song whose chromatics and sentiments would be particularly suited to the Eagles’ senses and sensibilities.   He also “Eagleized” it —lightened its existential load, one might say— by adding a second verse that provided a memorably vivid and earthy image and elongating the “e” in “easy.”

Well I’m a standing on a corner
In Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin’ down to take a look at me.
Come on, baby, don’t say maybe
I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me
We may lose and we may win
Though we will never be here again
So open up, I’m climbin’ in,
So take it easy.

As Frey told an interviewer in 1993: “As far as I was concerned, being visual — to start with a picture — was the first and most important aspect of lyric-writing. You can look at the list of Eagles songs from ‘Take It Easy’ through ‘Hotel California,’ and in the first four lines, we put you someplace: ‘On a dark desert highway…’ or, ‘I’m runnin’ down the road, tryin’ to loosen my load…’. Openings of songs are very important, so I’ve always considered myself to be a visual songwriter.”

Such a fine sight to see: the Eagles in London in 1972 (from left, Bernie Leadon, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Randy Meisner )where their first, eponymous, LP was recorded at Olympic Studios.

Browne gave the Eagles the song and they began playing it during their sets in Aspen and Los Angeles.   By the time the song was recorded in London, it had taken on a distinct country tinge.

In concert in 1973, Frey, Randy Meissner, and Bernie Leadon segued into “Take It Easy” with an a cappella snatch of the folk classic “Silver Dagger”:

“Take It Easy” was the first track on the first side of Eagles, which was released in June 1972. The album was a success (and is now Number 374 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time); and the song was a hit — reaching Number 12 on Billboard’s Hot 100.   In 1995, it was chosen by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

Frey later introduced “Take It Easy” by saying “Here’s hot it all began….”  It was the song that, in a manner of speaking, put the spin on the Eagles.   In a 1992 interview, Frey told Bob Costas that “Take It Easy” was “America’s first image of our band with the vistas of the Southwest and the beginnings of what became Country-Rock.”

Jackson Browne recorded “Take It Easy” the next year —1973— when he chose it as the first track on his second album —For Everyman (#457 of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums).

There are no early Jackson Browne “Take It Easy” videos on YouTube, but a later, somewhat jauntier, performance conveys the folkier spirit of the ‘73 album track:

The connections between Jackson Browne, the Eagles, and Linda Ronstadt during those halcyon and heady days in the late ’60s and early ’70s are many and deep.  It was Ronstadt’s manager John Boylan who created the Eagles by assembling four prime session musicians to back her up on the road and in the studio.  They can be heard on her 1970 debut album Silk Purse.

Here is a terrific version of “Take It Easy” featuring that Ur country folk rock crowd: the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt.  In addition to adding some interesting harmonies (with Linda’s voice ringing distinctively clear and true), the cutaways —although somewhat scrubbed up for TV purposes—  convey the peaceful easy feeling of that particular ’70s vibe.

STANDING ON A CORNER IN WINSLOW ARIZONA

Well I’m a standing on a corner
In Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin’ down to take a look at me.

The town of Winslow, Arizona, eagerly and cleverly embraced the quarter hour’s worth of fame conferred by Glenn Frey’s “Take It Easy” verse and turned that otherwise unprepossessing urban venue —Kinsley Avenue and the northwest corner of Second Street— into an hommage to the song.

A life-size bronze statue by Ron Adamson presents a dude leaning against a lamp post holding a guitar.  In John Pugh’s trompe-l’oeil mural on the wall behind him, the “reflection” of a flat bed Ford —with a hot blonde behind the wheel— can be seen in the store window.

For the last decade there has been an annual Standing On The Corner Festival at a park a few blocks up the street (the area is under major construction these days).   Note: The holidays are just around the corner, and real fans know that Standing On The Corner merch makes great stocking stuffers.

Jackson Browne’s extensive catalog is easily available (as on Amazon).  As is the Eagles’ (as on Amazon).

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

October 4, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

Every Sunday, The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time Richard Nixon became President in 1969.

YOU BELONG TO ME written by CHILTON PRICE, PEE WEE KING, REDD STEWART

As the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” continues to monopolize the Number One spot on the Billboard 1969 Hot 100 for the next fortnight, we will have an opportunity to examine some other popular music from back in the day.

Fifty-seven years ago this week, the Number One song in America was Jo Stafford’s cover of “You Belong To Me” — a recording that played an early part in the Soundtracker’s own introduction to popular music.

Preparing last weekend’s Weekend Reward —the “Tennessee Waltz”— stirred some mighty fond memories.  In 1952, when the I was just becoming interested in the songs I was hearing on the radio, my grandfather began walking with me on Saturday mornings to our local record store and allowing me to choose one 78-RPM disc.  These weekly  walks —which we started referring to as “the meeting”— only lasted a few years before he died, but they are still vividly recalled; as are many of the records I selected — the beginnings of a collection that now covers more than half a century.   And two of the earliest, and most fondly remembered, are Patti Page’s “Tennessee Waltz” and Jo Stafford’s “You Belong To Me.”

“You Belong to Me” has proven to be a song for all seasons.  Its haunting major-minor melody and plaintive lyrics have been amenable to the differing styles of different decades, and the song —in addition to being a standard— has been a perennial hit, from Jo Stafford’s big band ballad megahit to Bob Dylan’s stripped-down acoustic masterpiece.

“You Belong To Me” composer Chilton Price (left), photographed with Canadian singing coach Theresa Weatherbee.  On Tuesday morning, in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Frankfort, Ms. Price will be awarded a Kentucky Governor’s Award in Arts.

In the early 1950s, Chilton Price was a young woman working as the music librarian at her hometown radio station — Louisville’s WAVE.  When bandleader Pee Wee King and his vocalist Redd Stewart came through, she showed them some songs she had written and asked their advice.  The pros arranged and recorded the songs, and the result of this fortuitous collaboration was the 1951 Number One hit “Slow Poke,” and 1952’s ”You Belong To Me.”  Although both songs were really all Price’s, the three shared the writing credit.

“You Belong To Me” had been written during World War Two, and by the early ’50s, the song’s unfolding geography had become romantic rather than poignant.  In fact, it was perfectly timed for the first stirrings of America’s post-war interest in commercial air travel.

Here’s the song, with its original country flavor, as performed by two-thirds of the creative team that produced it: Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart with the Golden West Cowboys:

In 1952 Jo Stafford gave the song the big band big ballad treatment and her record spent almost a month in the Number One spot — where it was ensconced fifty-seven years ago this week.  1952 was the year of “You Belong To Me” — in addition to the Stafford smash,  covers of the song by Patti Page and Dean Martin also reached the Top Ten.

See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch the sunrise from a tropic isle
Just remember darling all the while
You belong to me

See the market place in old Algiers
Send me photographs and souvenirs
Just remember when a dream appears
You belong to me

I’ll be so alone without you
Maybe you’ll be lonesome too, and blue

Fly the ocean in a silver plane
See the jungle when it’s wet with rain
Just remember till you’re home again
You belong to me

Ten years later , a Jersey City doo wop group called the Duprees released a cover that rose to Number 7 on the pop charts:

In 1994 Quentin Tarantino took an outtake from Bob Dylan’s 1992 album Good As I Been To You and used it on the soundtrack of his film Natural Born Killers.  I was bowled over by this brilliantly barebones deconstruction the first time I heard it, playing away beneath the gory claptrap.  And I still think it’s one of the most moving pop recordings I’ve ever heard — it never fails to get the goosebumps going.

“You Belong To Me” entered the Twenty-First Century via the soundtrack for the animated film Shrek.  Jason Wade, the frontman of Lifehouse, provided a very popular but, at least to the Soundtracker’s ears, a very pale Dylanesque rendition that, in the bridge, barely bothers to touch base with Chilton Price’s song.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

September 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

PETER, PAUL & MARY

Mary Travers died on 16 September.  Although, technically, she was only one third of Peter, Paul & Mary, in this case the third was greater than the sum of the parts.  Peter and Paul were immensely talented.  But Mary’s voice, her looks, and her mystique made her the memorable one.   Her strong, urgent, plangent voice stands out on the Soundtrack of Our Lives in the 1960s, commanding respect and demanding that attention be paid.

She was born in Louisville, but she grew up in Greenwich Village.  Her parents were journalists and labor organizers, and by the time she was in her teens, Mary was absorbing the music and the politics of the Village coffee houses.  Pete Seeger lived in the same  building as the Travers family, and while she was still in high school her singing group —the Song Swappers— supplied backup for some Seeger records.

Although she was occasionally coaxed to step on stage to sing alone, her close to paralyzing stage fright might have put paid to a serious career — save for the timely intervention of Albert Grossman.

Grossman was a Chicago manager and impresario.  As a showcase for his acts he opened the Gate of Horn, a club whose small size and unprepossessing basement location were quickly overshadowed by its legendary reputation.  He specialized in folk acts; in 1959 he was a co-founder of the Newport Folk Festival.  One of his clients was a young Cornell graduate named Peter Yarrow.

The Fury and the Sound: uber-manager Albert Grossman (left) and master-arranger Milt Okun — the team that created PP&M.

Grossman watched the growing success of groups of essentially buttoned-down frat boys —like the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, the Limeliters, the Highwaymen, and the Chad Mitchell Trio— whose repertoire included folky material.  And there were a number of waif-like or well-scrubbed young female performers emerging —like Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina, Carolyn Hester, and Judy Collins—  whose vibe was early Birkenstock.

And Albert Grossman also saw the one thing that would be required to take folk mainstream: Glamour.

So, like a casting agent, he set out to find another relatively nerdish goateed dude like Yarrow, to supply a mildly edgy but totally non-threatening coffee house vibe, as the non-distracting background for a tall, striking, blonde of absolutely staggering beauty (and, incidentally, with a very good voice).  For the former role he found Noel Paul Stookey.  And for the latter, he found Mary Travers, who met all his criteria and also had a great voice.

And, thanks to Grossman’s marketing insight, her stage fright was irrelevant; because all she had to do was stand there and sing.  She would be the purposely silent vessel of every fan’s fantasy.

David Hajdu, whose Positively Fourth Street chronicles the early days of the folk movement in Greenwich Village, observed that “She had a kind of sexual confidence combined with intelligence, edginess and social consciousness — a potent combination.  If you look at clips of their performances, the camera fixates on her.  The act was all about Mary.”

Grossman teamed PP&M up with the singer, producer, arranger Milt Okun.  It was an inspired pairing.  Okun had cut his teeth with Harry Belafonte, and he understood how to make meaningful material commercial.

The new group, known as Peter, Paul & Mary (Noel Stookey adopted his middle name to make things more alliterative) made their debut at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village in 1961.

Their first album, released on the Warner label in May 1962, was the eponymous Peter, Paul and Mary. There were  a few original Yarrow/Stookey songs, but the standouts were Will Holt’s “Lemon Tree,”  Hedy West’s “500 Miles,” Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” and the Seeger-Lee Hays anthem “If I Had a Hammer.”

Where it all started: The Bitter End opened in 1961 at 147 Bleecker Street in the heart of Greenwich Village. PP&M made their debut there that year.

“If I Had a Hammer” was written in 1949 and recorded by the Weavers.  It remained popular but unexceptional  as an all-purpose agitpropy  anthem until PP&M covered it and introduced it to America via Billboard’s Top Ten.  The song won PP&M the 1962 Grammys for Best Performance by a Vocal Group and Best Folk Recording.

Their second album, 1963’s Moving, contained a song co-written by Yarrow and Lenny Lipton, and a fellow Cornell undergrad.  It reached Number Two on the Top Ten, and has become one of the most widely-covered, beloved, and controversial songs in the pop canon: “Puff.”

Some time later, Lenny Lipton —who went on to become a writer, filmmaker, and inventor— addressed the urban legends that quickly surrounded poor Puff:

It was in the spring of 1959 that I wrote the poem that became the song Puff, the Magic Dragon.  I was a freshman at Cornell.  I had been at the library at Willard Straight Hall, the Student Union building, and I’d read a sentimental poem about a dragon by Ogden Nash.  As I walked down State Street to the apartment of Peter Yarrow – who became the “Peter” of Peter, Paul and Mary, and who set my poem to music – I thought to myself, “I can do better than Ogden Nash’s poem about a dragon.”  Maybe I did.

Puff, the Magic Dragon has been interpreted – usually misinterpreted – time and again by many people.  When a work is out there people are free to interpret it any way they want.  I think Puff, the Magic Dragon is about a little boy and a dragon.

Immediately after the Peter, Paul and Mary’s recording came out in 1962, Dorothy Kilgallen, who was a columnist in a New York newspaper (it might have been the Daily News) wrote a piece saying that Puff, the Magic Dragon was about marijuana, hah-hah-hah-poke-in-the-ribs.

When I wrote Puff I didn’t know from marijuana.  We’re talking about Cornell in 1958.  People were going to hootenannies – they weren’t smoking joints.  It was Pete Seeger and “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore,” not  ”One Toke Over the Line Sweet Jesus.”

This clip —from a concert in Sydney in 1964— gives a good idea of the division of labor in PP&M.  Peter, who was in fact the leader, was the studly anchorman; Paul was the klass klown; and Mary was Mary nuff said.  (There is an element of you-really-had-to-be-there to the opening banter; for the impatient the song kicks in around 1:58.)

“Puff” and its tremendous success, didn’t do much to endear PP&M to the increasingly suspicious —and jealous— purists who saw them selling out the  folk movement’s heritage for a mess —admittedly a really big mess— of pottage.   Their repertoire was dismissed as derivative; their exquisitely honed harmonies were dissed as homogenized.  On stage, Joan Baez joked about “Peter, Paul and Misery.”

But nothing succeeds like success.  And, besides, their progressive bona fides couldn’t be questioned.  They sang for Dr. King at his March on Washington.  And they marched in Selma.

Their third LP, In the Wind, was released late in ’63. It represented a major turning point in four careers — those of Peter, Paul, and Mary, and that of Bob Dylan.  Among its tracks were two of his songs — “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and the one for which it was named: “Blowin in the Wind.”

They had released “Blowin’ in the Wind” as a single 45-RPM in July —in time for Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.  It sold three hundred thousand copies the first week and reached Number Two on the Billboard Hot 100.  Thanks to it, PP&M once again retired the Grammys for Best Vocal Performance by a Group and Best Folk Recording

To this point, Dylan’s own two albums on Columbia had attracted a small, if ardent, following. But his weird voice and sparse arrangements were still very much an acquired taste. Joan Baez, already engaged in the famous affair that she later chronicle in “Diamonds and Rust,” was singing his songs and bringing him onstage at her gigs (sometimes very much to the disapproval of her fans).

But it was PP&M’s cover of “Blowin’ in the Wind” —just at the time when Dr. King and the civil rights movement was riveting America’s attention— that made the trio one of the handful of major national mainstream acts, and made Dylan the premier folk artist both as writer and performer.

1964’s live album In Concert opened with another Dylan song that captured the American mood and became another PP&M signature: “The Times They Are A-Changin’”  Again, their smooth harmonies ameliorated the song’s bitter diagnosis and painful prescription.

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

PP&M’s repertoire continued to include original compositions, traditional ballads, and songs by established folkies like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Ewan MacColl.  But they also began to feature new young talents, and the mass audience they provided helped launch or advance the careers of artists like Tom Paxton, Fred Neil, John Denver, Laura Nyro, and Gordon Lightfoot.

On the 1965 album A Song Will Rise, PP&M introduced “For Lovin’ Me” by a young Canadian singer-song Gordon Lightfoot.

Gordon Lightfoot’s 1964 song “Early Morning Rain” —recorded on PP&M’s 1965 album See What Tomorrow Brings— is one of my favorite PP&M songs.  The arrangement favors Paul, who manages to capture and convey the emptiness and loneliness of this hobo train song updated to the realities of late 20th Century transportation.

In 1967 PP&M included John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane” as a track on their Album 1700.   Two years later —at the end of 1969— the song was released as a 45-RPM single and became PP&M’s biggest hit.  It was also their last; they disbanded at the end of 1970 in order to pursue solo projects.

Denver originally called the song “Oh Babe I Hate To Go,” but Milt Okun —who was now also his producer— convinced him to change the title.  In this clip —which was filmed the end of October ‘69  at the Cellar Door in Washington DC  for a locally-produced PBS series called Something To Sing About— the composer sings along

The extensive PP&M catalog —including the various solo albums by each member after the group disbanded, and the several reunion albums that ensued— is easily available (as on Amazon).

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

September 20, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 1 Comment 

Every Sunday, The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time Richard Nixon became President in 1969.

SUGAR, SUGAR (ANDY KIM + JEFF BARRY) performed by THE ARCHIES

The Number One spot on the Billboard Hot 100 at end of the summer of 1969 shifted from the sublime to the ridiculous on 20 September.  After four weeks at the top,  the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” was replaced by the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar” — a bubblegum song by a group that didn’t actually exist.

The Stones’ talent was so prodigious that the B-side —the B-side! — of “Honky Tonk Woman” was “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”  (albeit a 45-RPM single-friendly truncated version without the participation of the London Bach Choir that so distinguished the album track on the LP Let It Bleed).

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was already a classic when, in 1983, Lawrence Kasdan used it (in the version without the London Bach Choir) with memorable ironic effect on the soundtrack of The Big Chill.

But the Stones were, admittedly, were a hard act for anyone to follow, and I intended no disrespect to the extravagantly successful pop confection “Sugar, Sugar” or the formidable creative talents behind it.

Although Wikipedia aptly describes “Sugar, Sugar” as “the canonical example of bubblegum pop musical genre,” Billboard voted it the number one record of 1969, and even includes it —at #63000 on its list  of the 100 All Time Top Songs:

On the Sept. 20, 1969, Hot 100, the top five comprised Three Dog Night, Johnny Cash, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Rolling Stones and, at No. 1, a group that actually never existed. The Archies comic strip, created in 1942, became a hit Saturday morning TV show created by Don Kirshner-who had guided the Monkees. The bubble-gum bauble remained at the peak for four weeks and sold 3 million copies. Obviously its melody had legs: A year later, Wilson Pickett recorded a cover of “Sugar, Sugar,” which reached No. 25 on the Hot 100. The Archies were hardly a one-hit wonder; among their four top 40 hits, follow-up “Jingle Jangle” reached No. 10 later that year.

Here is the maddeningly catchy song as it appeared each week under the opening credits of The Archie Show on CBS:

Sugar, honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you’ve got me wanting you.
Honey, sugar sugar
You are my candy girl,
And you got me wanting you

I just can’t believe the lovliness of loving you,
(I just can’t believe it’s true)
I just can’t believe the one to love this feeling to
(I just can’t believe it’s true)

Sugar, honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you
Honey, sugar sugar
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you

When i kissed you girl I knew how sweet a kiss could be
(I know how sweet a kiss could be)
Like the summer sunshine pour you sweetness over me
(Pour your sweetness over me)

One of the big TV hits of 1968 was CBS’ The Archie Show — a cartoon series based on the Archie comics. Archie and Jughead, Betty and Veronica, and the students of Riverdale High had been mainstays of America’s comic book racks since 1941; and after their creator Bob Montana returned from the war in 1946, they began appearing daily on the funny pages.  Since 1943, they had been given voice on the radio, so TV was the logical next frontier.

In various forms —The Archie Comedy Hour (1969), Archie’s Funhouse (1970), Archie’s TV Funnies(1971), etc.— the gang’s adventures continued on the small screen for several years. The cartoon characters played in a band —The Archies— and the show’s music franchise was phenomenally lucrative.

In 1969, uber producer Don Kirshner asked Ron Dante to sing on the Archies’ demo record of a new song written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim.  The demo was so good that Dante got the gig. Another Kirshner songwriter, Toni Wine, became Betty and/or Veronica and provided female backup.  In fact, the finished product represented a virtual Who’s Who of the Kirshner empire.  Songwriters Kim and Barry sang along as backup, as did Mrs. Barry, the late Ellie Greenwich.  Ray Stevens, who was on the cusp of his major career as a performer and TV star, supplied the hand clapping that propelled the arrangement.

Unfortunately there is no available YouTube video or mp3 audio version of Wilson Pickett’s version; it is on his album of Greatest Hits.

YouTube does offer a terrific —but unidentified— rendition from an October 1969 TV show:

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

September 13, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 1 Comment 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

HONKY TONK WOMEN (MICK JAGGER + KEITH RICHARDS) performed by THE ROLLING STONES

The number one song at the end of the summer of ‘69 (for the four weeks from 23 August – 13 September) was the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women.”  Rolling Stone lists it as Number 114 of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The cover art on the 45-rpm sleeve of “Honky Tonk Women.”  The B-Side was “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (which beat the A-Side by 14 places, coming in as Number 100 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time).

As far as “Honky Tonk Women” is concerned, Richie Unterberger just about nailed it on allmusic.com:

“Honky Tonk Women” was the last and one of the greatest of the Rolling Stones’ classic 1960s singles, reaching number one in 1969. Most Rolling Stones classics are based around a primal blues-rock riff, and in “Honky Tonk Women,” there could have been several: the clipped circular one at the beginning of the song, the responsive ones that echo Mick Jagger’s vocal through the verses, or the ones played by a combination of guitars and horns in the instrumental break.

Also crucial to the musical greatness of the track was Charlie Watts’ funky, no-frills drumbeats, which lead off the song and ricochet throughout the song with great authority but absolutely no bombast.

Although “Honky Tonk Women” is rock & roll, there’s a lot of country and blues influence, perhaps even more country than blues. That Southern country quality is drawn out by Jagger’s drawling vocals, projecting a sense of slight drunkenness and nonchalant angling for a good time. The chorus is one of the easiest to sing along with in any Rolling Stones song, and sounds a bit like mates at a bar or pub getting together for a bit of a shout.  Melodically, it is also one of the most country-like sections of the tune; it’s not too hard to imagine it being performed, at a slower tempo and with steel guitar, by some Hank Williams-like performer.

In fact, did do a far more country-oriented variation on the song, “Country Honk,” on their 1969 album Let It Bleed, although it was much inferior to the arrangement on the “Honky Tonk Women” single. The barroom atmosphere of “Honky Tonk Women” has, naturally, made it a favorite for innumerable bar bands since the late ’60s as an obvious song to get the customers in a good flirtin’, drinkin’, singalong mood.

The Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” was released on 4 July 1969 and premiered the next day at a free concert in London’s Hyde Park.  The gig had also been intended to introduce  Mick Taylor — the band’s replacement for guitarist Brian Jones, who had been fired (or dumped or fill in the blank depending on your school of thought or conspiracy here) the month before.  Jones’ death on 3 July cast a shocking pall over the event, which was now dedicated to him.  A cardboard cutout of the deceased Stone dominated the stage as Mick Jagger read excerpts from Shelley’s “Adonais” and hundreds of white butterflies were released.   Free copies of the 45-rpm single were given to everyone who stayed to help clean up after the few hundred thousand fans had split.

Keith Richards later described the song’s origins goofing off in —of all places– the Mato Grasso.

“Honky Tonk Women” started in Brazil.  Mick and I, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg who was pregnant with my son at the time. Which didn’t stop us going off to the Mato Grasso and living on this ranch.

It’s all cowboys. It’s all horses and spurs. And Mick and I were sitting on the porch of this ranch house and I started to play, basically fooling around with an old Hank Williams idea.  ’Cause we really thought we were like real cowboys. Honky tonk women.  And we were sitting in the middle of nowhere with all these horses, in a place where if you flush the john all these black frogs would fly out.  It was great.  The chicks loved it.

Anyway, it started out a real country honk put on, a hokey thing. And then couple of months later we were writing songs and recording. And somehow by some metamorphosis it suddenly went into this little swampy, black thing, a blues thing.

Really, I can’t give you a credible reason of how it turned around from that to that.  Except there’s not really a lot of difference between white country music and black country music.  It’s just a matter of nuance and style.

I think it has to do with the fact that we were playing a lot around with open tunings at the time. So we were trying songs out just to see if they could be played in open tuning. And that one just sunk in.”

So the song’s country roots were as deep as Hank Williams’ 1952 classic  ”Honky Tonk Blues.”  But the version heard on the August 1969-released 45-rpm single, and on the September-released LP Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits, Vol. 2) —with its memorable cowbell introduction— was much more hard core blues rock:

I met a gin soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis,
She tried to take me upstairs for a ride.
She had to heave me right across her shoulder
‘Cause I just can’t seem to drink you off my mind.

It’s the honky tonk women
Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues.

I laid a divorcee in New York City,
I had to put up some kind of a fight.
The lady then she covered me with roses,
She blew my nose and then she blew my mind.

It’s the honky tonk women
Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues.

Some sources say that the change in approach came with Brian Jones’ being fired from the band in June (followed by his death in his swimming pool on 3 July.  (For the Soundtracker’s own brief —and clueless— encounter with Brian Jones, see “Soundtrack 11″ (“Chain of Fools” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”).   Mick Taylor —Jones’ replacement— brought a different kind of style and tone to the instrument and the material.  (The song’s demo record, with different lyrics for the second verse, doesn’t help much because it presents a sort of midway point between the two versions.)

The composers’ original intentions were expressed on a new recording of the song —now called “Country Honk”— which was released at the end of the year (5 December) on the group’s eighth studio LP Let It Bleed.  Among the most immediately obvious changes: the cowbell is gone; a fiddle (played by the already legendary Byron Berline) is added; and the first verse changed location from Memphis to Jackson:

I’m sittin’ in a bar tippling a jar in Jackson
And on the street the summer sun it shines
There’s many a bar-room queen
I’ve had in Jackson
But I just can’t seem to drink you off my mind

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

August 9, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 1 Comment 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

IN THE YEAR 2525 (EXORDIUM AND TERMINUS) (DENNY ZAGER + RICK EVANS) performed by ZAGER AND EVANS

When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, back on Earth the Number One song on the Billboard Hot 100 was (and would be for a remarkable six weeks through 23 August) a warning against the tyranny of technology called “In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus).”

The song had been written in 1964 and recorded on a minor label in 1967, but it took extensive radio airplay in Odessa, Texas, to attract distribution giant RCA’s attention.  The resulting single, with its amalgam of portentous science fiction, nascent techno-dread, and latinate erudition —all accompanied by perfervid strings— struck a sympathetic chord and rocketed to the top of the charts.  Even after four decades —when at least a couple of the developments predicted have materialized— it is still undeniably, and strangely, compelling.

In The Year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
Ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got not nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you

In the year 6565
Ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

In the year 7510
If God’s a-comin’ he ought to make it by then
Maybe He’ll look around Himself and say
Guess it’s time for the Judgement day

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again

In the year 9595
I’m kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing

Now it’s been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man’s reign is through
But through eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it’s only yesterday

In the year 2525…..

Denny Zager and Rick Evans started performing as a duo while they were students at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln.  Their followup to “In the Year 2525″ was a folksy curiosity called “Mr. Turnkey” — a detached account of a rapist’s attempt at expiation via mini-crucifixion.  It’s hard to figure out why that never topped the charts and/or why Zager and Evans faded from the scene.

More Terminus than Exordium: RCA thought that Zager and Evans would be the Next Big Thing, but “In the Year 2525″ would be their only hit. Billboard, which in 1969 had compared Zager and Evans to the Beatles, later described them as ”the biggest one hit wonder of any artist at any time in recording history.”

For the next few weeks, the Soundtracker will either be on the road or lost in contemplation of the meaning of “In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)” — or, possibly, on the road and lost in contemplation of the meaning of “In the year 2525 (exordium and Terminus).”   Either way, the Soundtrack of our Lives will return, refreshed and undoubtedly enlightened, after Labor Day — just in time to note “Honky Tonk Women” toppling “In the Year 2525″ from the Number One spot.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

August 2, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 2 Comments 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

THE NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL

This weekend celebrates the 50^th anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival.  It was founded by George Wein (who five years earlier, in 1954, had founded the Newport Jazz Festival), whose business partner was the folk-manager-impressario-legend-still-in-the-making Albert Grossman.

Originally intended to be a showcase for traditional folk artists, the Newport Folk Festivals became a catalyst for civil rights awareness and activism; they played pivotal roles in the emergence of folk music as both a reflection of, and a motivation in, the lives of college students during the 1960s.  The Folk Festivals were also responsible for the increasingly serious attention that the music, the artists, and their causes, received from the mainstream media during those critical years.

During the mid and late 1950s an homogenized and hybrid form of folk music had become popular.  It embraced artists like Harry Belafonte — whose second album —1956’s Belafonte— included folk classics like “Waterboy” and pop songs like “Unchained Melody.”  It also featured one of his biggest hits —Evelyn Danzig and Jack Segal’s 1949 “Scarlet Ribbons”— that quickly achieved semi-folk status because it sounded semi-folkish.

Joan Baez later recalled that, while she was immersing herself in the tradition of spirituals and Child ballads, she kept her Belafonte and Kingston Trio albums hidden as guilty pleasures at the back of her record collection.

The real folk music revival began in 1957 with the emergence of the Kingston Trio around the Stanford campus.  Their hits included 1958’s Number One “Tom Dooley,” “A Worried Man,” “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?,” and “Greenback Dollar.”  Within a few years they had surpassed Frank Sinatra as Capitol Records’ most profitable artists.

In 1959 they scored with “M.T.A.” — their cover of Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes’ 1948 song “Charlie on the MTA.”

In the wake of the Kingston Trio’s success, groups like the Limeliters, and the New Christy Minstrels were formed.  The Brothers Four and the Lettermen, in the Kingston mold,  also included folk songs in their repertoires.

The 1959 Newport Festival celebrated authenticity over commercialism.  It showcased the leaders and exemplars of  the American folk and blues traditions, including Pete Seeger, Martha Schlamme, Leon Bibb, Odetta, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Earl Scruggs, and Oscar Brand.

The popular musician and singer-songwriter Bob Gibson was also on the bill. He brought onstage with him Joan Baez — an 18-year old professor’s daughter who had been singing in coffee houses around Harvard Square. They sang two songs together: “We Are Crossing River Jordan” and “Virgin Mary Had One Son.”  The purity and intensity of her voice —what a revelation that must have been on that first hearing!— is still thrilling half a century later.

The two-day event (11-12 July)  showcased twenty-eight acts at several venues, and it ended with everyone involved getting soaked — the fans by an almost biblical downpour, and the sponsors by a seriously underachieving box office.

In 1960 the program was still roots-based. In addition to Seeger, Gibson, and the Ramblers, the featured performers included John Lee Hooker, Cisco Houston, Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl. At the end of that summer, the non-producing Folk Festival and the over-commercialized Jazz Festival ran into problems and both of them went bust.

In 1962 the two Festivals were revived —now as non-profit corporations. The godfathers of the revived Folk Festival were George Wein, along with singer-activists Pete Seeger and Oscar Brand, and Israeli actor-singer Theodore Bickel.

Wein (born 1925), Seeger (1919), and Bikel (1924) are, happily, all still alive and active. And every Saturday night, Oscar Brand (1920) still hosts the longest-running show on radio: WNYC’s Folksong Festival which debuted on 9 December 1945.

Vienna-born Theodore Bickel (his family fled the Nazis in 1938 and settled in Palestine). In addition to being a collector and connoisseur of world folk music, he became a internationally famous stage and film actor. On Broadway he created the role of Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music; and he has played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof more than any other actor.

Bikel and  Seeger performed together on an episode of Seeger’s 1965 TV show Rainbow Quest.

By 1963 the Folk Festival was flourishing — with more than one hundred performers and a score of workshops spread all over the city. One of those one hundred was Bob Dylan, whose 1962 eponymous debut album had featured a mix of traditional and original material.  His second album —The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, released two months before the Festival— included a bumper crop of original songs: “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Girl from the North Country,” “Masters of War,” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” among many others. With close to 50,000 people attending, and the profits topping $50,000, the Newport Folk Festival was now decisively on the map.

At the end of the 1963 Festival, Bob Dylan invited some of the other acts on stage to join him singing “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

By 1964 folk music had become a lively commercial enterprise — not least thanks to Vanguard Records’ release of compilation LPs from the earlier Newport Festivals in addition to the albums of their prima donna assoluta Joan Baez.

The Festival, at George Wein’s insistence, had refused to discriminate between the purely purists and the increasingly successful popularists. While Joan Baez got knowing laughs from her concert audiences with references to “Peter, Paul and Misery,” the Newport stages were open to all.

Nothing succeeds like success, and PP&M’s 1962 cover of the Pete Seeger-Lee Hays 1949 anthem “If I Had A Hammer” had become a Billboard Top Ten hit. They performed it at Newport in 1964:

Dylan himself was at Newport in ‘64, again along with Joan Baez. As an encore one night they sang “It Ain’t Me Babe” from his new album Another Side of Bob Dylan.

1965 is the year that looms largest in Newport Folk Festival history — for an event that actually had nothing to do with folk music.   That was when Bob Dylan, instead do turning on and dropping out, plugged in and took off.

The afternoon’s sound check was recorded on film. The goteed shirtless dude giving the orders, incidentally, is Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary.

That night, at the end of his conventional acoustic set, Dylan took up an electric guitar, invited a band on stage, and played three songs —”Maggie’s Farm,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.”  The electric set —the sacrilege— was greeted by shock followed by outrage.  Rolling Stone has called it “the most notorious live performance in the history of rock and roll.”

The purists and the popularizers had managed to work out a peaceful co-existence in Newport.  But they —at least the former— wanted no truck with rock and roll.

Robert Shelton, the late music critic and Dylan biographer, described the scene:

From the moment the group swung into a rocking electric version of “Maggie’s Farm,” the Newport audience registered hostility. As the group finished “Farm,” there was some reserved applause and a flurry of boos. Someone shouted: “Bring back Cousin Emmy!” The microphones and speakers were all out of balance, and the sound was poor and lopsided. For even the most ardent fan of the new music, the performance was unpersuasive. As Dylan led his band into “Rolling Stone,” the audience grew shriller: “Play folk music! … Sell out! … This is a folk festival! … Get rid of that band!” Dylan began “It Takes a Train to Cry,” and the applause diminished as the heckling increased. Dylan and the group disappeared offstage, and there was a long, clumsy silence. Peter Yarrow urged Bob to return and gave him his acoustic guitar. As Bob returned on the stage alone, he discovered he didn’t have the right harmonica. “What are you doing to me?” Dylan demanded of Yarrow. To shouts for “Tambourine Man,” Dylan said: “OK, I’ll do that one for you.” The older song had a palliative effect and won strong applause. Then Dylan did “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” singing adieu to Newport, good-bye to the folk-purist audience.

Backstage, there had been almost as much excitement as out front. At the first sound of the amplified instruments, Pete Seeger had turned a bright purple and begun kicking his feet and flailing his arms. (A festival official said later: “I had never seen any trace of violence in Pete, except at that moment. He was furious with Dylan!”) Reportedly, one festival board member–probably Seeger–was so upset that he threatened to pull out the entire electrical wiring system. Cooler heads cautioned that plunging the audience into the dark might cause a real riot.

The Seeger story was so persistent that, years later, he tried to put a kinder, gentler gloss on his actions and his motivations:

I couldn’t understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, “Maggie’s Farm,” and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, “Fix the sound so you can hear the words.” He hollered back, “This is the way they want it.” I said “Damn it, if I had an axe, I’d cut the cable right now.” But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, “you didn’t boo Howlin’ Wolf yesterday. He was electric!” Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father’s old term.

1965 was both the high point and the beginning of the end for the Newport Folk Festivals.  They would never again achieve this degree of intensity or publicity.  Indeed, they only lasted another half dozen years. Dormant after 1971, the franchise wouldn’t be revived until 1985.

And already in 1965 the signs were everywhere.  The sweetness —and sweet irrelevance— of much of the folk revival was increasingly out of touch with the more radical and edgy and impatient temper of the times.  Even for Joan Baez the diamonds were beginning to look a little rusty.

After touring with her paramour Dylan during 1964, she arrived at Newport in ‘65 as muse-in-residence to the young British psychedelic troubadour Donovan.  She harmonized with him on stage on his song “Colours.” In some ways it was sort of the same as with Dylan those few short years before; but it was also completely different. You can’t go home again; and the zeitgeist was already in the restless process of moving on.

There are several CDs and compilations —most by or based on the original Vanguard recordings— of the Newport Folk Festivals 1959-65.  Murray Lerner’s documentary of the Dylan-Newport nexus —The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965— is easily available.

Anyone interested in the folk and popular music of the 1950s and ’60s should check out Jim Moran’s Comparative Video 101. It started out as a Kingston Trio fan site, but it has moved beyond its Kingstoncentric roots. Indeed, the current edition includes Harry Belafonte’s abovementioned “Scarlet Ribbons” (not, admittedly, without its KT connections).   For Kingston Trio fans it is simply indispensable; for all others it will be informative and entertaining; for all it’s worth a bookmark.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

July 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

While researching my musical countdown for the Apollo XI anniversary, I ended up with far more Moon-related songs than I could use for the nine day  mission.

So this week’s Soundtrack is an emptying — in no particular order — of some items from my overflowing mixed bag of Moon music.

Undoubtedly many TNN readers will have lunar tune lists of their own — which I hope they will feel free to share.

“Moonshadow”

Cat Stevens’s song —which he refers to as “the optimist’s anthem”— was a track on his 1971 album Teaser and the Firecat, and  illuminated the third year of RN’s first term. Stevens, long since Yusuf Islam, recently described the song’s genesis: ”I was on a holiday in Spain. I was a kid from the West End [of London] – bright lights, etc. – I never got to see the moon on its own in the dark, there were always streetlamps. So there I was on the edge of the water on a beautiful night with the moon glowing, and suddenly I looked down and saw my shadow. I thought that was so cool, I’d never seen it before.”

“Blue Moon”

In 1961, a Pittsburgh-based group named The Marcels (after the hair style of one member’s younger sister) updated Richard Rodgers’ 1934 standard melody by adding some lyrical flourishes (think: “Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba ba bom  ba danga dang dang da dinga ding ding da dinga dong ding”) that wouldn’t have occurred to Lorenz Hart.

The result was an infectious Billboard Number One that Rolling Stone has named as one of the 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

“Moonglow”

Last Sunday I was able to use one of my favorite versions of the 1934 hit “Moonglow” —Ethel Waters’— but I had to leave out another classic rendition by the legendary Belgian gypsy guitar wizard who lived hard and died young (in 1953), Django Reinhardt.   The violinist is his fellow Quintette du Hot Club de France member Stephane Grappelli.

Another difficult choice along these lines involved featuring Les Paul and Mary Ford’s “How High the Moon” instead of one by Django’s buddy Grappelli.

“Harvest Moon”

Neil Young’s 1992 studio album —his first after being afflicted by tinnitus a couple of years before— was called Harvest Moon, and the plaintive title song was quintessentially Youngian:

“Shine On Harvest Moon” and “By the Light of the Silvery Moon”

And while we’re on the subject of harvest moons….. A misspent youth that involved hours of listening to the radio and then playing piano in bars —where tips depended on being able to play requests— resulted in the Soundtracker developing a considerable repertoire of Tin Pan Alley moon songs.

Two mainstays of any good saloon sing-along are “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “Shine On Harvest Moon.”

“Shine on Harvest Moon” was written by the popular husband-and-wife vaudeville team Jack Norworth and Nora Bayes.  It was a great success when they introduced it in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1909; and it was a hit again in the 1931 edition when it was sung by Ruth Etting (who recorded it in 1935). She included the charming —but mostly overlooked and omitted— verse.

Two decades later Nat King Cole wrapped his irresistibly mellifluous voice around it on his 1957 TV show.

Another go-to sing-along chestnut is Gus Edwards’ and Edward Madden’s 1909 hit “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” Fats Waller played and sang it on a 1942 recording.

“When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain”

Kate Smith co-wrote —along with Howard Johnson and Harry M. Woods— what became her theme song during her long career on radio and TV. It opened her 1931 nightly NBC radio show Kate Smith Sings.

“The Moon of Manakoora”

Alfred Newman wrote the lush score for John Ford’s 1937 film The Hurricane. It starred Dorothy Lamour (in a pre-Road film sarong role) and ex-Tarzan Jon Hall. Frank Loesser added lyrics and Ms. Lamour’s recording became a hit.

“Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”

Jonathan King —Charterhouse and Trinity Cambridge— was an unlikely pop star; and his song “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” was an unexpected hit in 1965. He rendered it laconically on Top of the Pops (with Jimmy Savile pretending to conduct the orchestra).

There is absolutely nothing laconic about this cover —which can only be described as magnificently otherworldly— of Jonathan King’s mundane hit.

Need I say more than: Ladies and Gentlemen, the sublimely incomparable Miss Nina Simone —

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

July 19, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 1 Comment 

The Soundtracker is trekking in New Mexico this week, combining a holiday with a seminar on Democracy in America.  Soundtrack will return next Sunday.

In the meantime, here’s a song de Tocqueville might have heard near the end of his life —while he was working on The Old Regime and the French Revolution—  that would have reminded him of his time in America two decades earlier.

Stephen Foster wrote “Hard Times Come Again No More” in 1854.   Its plaintive melody and plangent lyrics are no less moving —and no less relevant— today.

It has been well and widely covered (especially by Mavis Staples on the excellent Foster tribute album Beautiful Dreamer).  Here’s a more traditional rendition from the BBC’s 1999 series Transatlantic Sessions, featuring Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Kate’s son Rufus Wainwright, Emmylou Harris, Irish folk-pop superstar Mary Clark, and Scottish folk icons Rod Paterson and Karen Matheson.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

July 12, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 3 Comments 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

LOVE THEME FROM ROMEO AND JULIET (NINO ROTA) performed by HENRI MANCINI

The number one song at the beginning of July 1969 was Henry Mancini’s arrangement of the Love Theme from Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet.  The romantic instrumental was a surprise hit amidst the increasingly heavy rock that dominated the charts.  Indeed, it turned out to be one of the last gasps of the fading genre.

The film’s score was by the veteran Italian composer Nino Rota (1911-1979), whose past work had included the films of Federico Fellini, and whose future work would include Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy.

He also composed operas, ballets, chamber, and orchestral music.

Composer Nino Rota’s classic film scores included La Strada, La Dolce Vita, The Leopard, 8 1/2, and Amarcord.

In the film, the Love Theme was first heard at the Capulet’s ball where Juliet (Olivia Hussey) first meets Romeo (Leonard Whiting).  Rota’s melody was fitted out with respectfully Shakespearianish words —“What Is A Youth?”— by Eugene Walter,  an American whose interesting and checkered career had included serving as Fellini’s English translator.  The actor playing “Leonardo” is Bruno Filippini; the vocal track is by Glen Weston, who appears, literally and figuratively, to have left no other tracks (at least none that are Googleable).

What is a youth? Impetuous fire.
What is a maid? Ice and desire.
The world wags on.
A rose will bloom….
It then will fade:
so does a youth,
so does the fairest maid.
Comes a time when one sweet smile
Has a season for a while….
Then love’s in love with me.
Some they think only to marry,
Others will tease and tarry.
Mine is the very best parry.
Cupid he rules us all.
Caper the cape, but sing me the song,
Death will come soon to hush us along.
Sweeter than honey… and bitter as gall,
Love is a task and it never will pall.
Sweeter than honey and bitter as gall.
Cupid he rules us all.

For Andy Williams’ vocal cover —”A Time For Us“— more commercially perfervid words were provided by Larry Kusik and Eddie Snyder.

Cover art from Henry Mancini’s 1957 debut LP.

But the big Billboard  Number One hit belonged to the polymath composer, conducter, arranger, performer Henry Mancini (1924-1994)— whose own film scores included the Pink Panther, and whose Oscar-winning film themes had included “Moon River” (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and “The Days of Wine and Roses.”

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

July 5, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

For this holiday weekend, Soundtrack revisits three summery hits from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Pat Boone —the Columbia University magna cum laude anti-Elvis who became an unlikely pop idol— revisited the 1931 hit “Love Letters in the Sand.”

Written by master-tunesmith (“Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” “You Go To My Head,” For All We Know”) J. Fred Coots —with lyrics by Nick Kennedy and his brother Charles— the Depression era melody easily adapted to the soft instrumental rock beat that was becoming popular at mid-century.

The result was a hit that sat at Number One on the pop charts for five weeks in the summer of ‘57.

On a day like today
We passed the time away
Writing love letters in the sand

How you laughed when I cried
Each time I saw the tide
Take our love letters from the sand

You made a vow that you would ever be true
But somehow that vow meant nothing to you

Now my broken heart aches
With every wave that breaks
Over love letters in the sand

Now my broken heart aches
With every wave that breaks
Over love letters in the sand

A Summer Place, based on the 1958 best-seller by novelist Sloan (The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit) Wilson, was a major movie in the summer of ‘60.  It featured the two then-teen-heartthrobs Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue (what were we thinking?).

The score was written by Hollywood legend Max Steiner, and the film’s theme became a major instrumental hit for Percy Faith and his Orchestra.

“The Theme from A Summer Place” still holds the record for instrumental hits — having spent a phenomenal nine weeks in the Number One spot on Billboard’s then-fledgling Hot 100. It also won the 1961 Grammy for Record of the Year — the first movie theme ever to do so.

The Lettermen had a vocal hit in 1965 (with lyrics added by Mack Discant), but the Ur-version remains Percy Faith’s instrumental classic:

In 1964 the Beach Boys released “Fun Fun Fun” as a track on their album Shut Down Volume 2.  Composed by Brian Wilson and Mike Love (who sang the lead vocal), the song related an unhappy rite of passage described to them by a radio station owner’s daughter.  Having borrowed her father’s T-Bird on the pretext of going to the library to study, she had fun times three until dad spotted it parked at a drive-in hamburger stand.

Lest you think the amusing and infectious “Fun Fun Fun” is just mindless escapist three chord entertainment, check out Greg Panfile’s impressive “Mind of Brian” deconstruction of this Electra-meets-Indy feminist folk epic.  (And whatever you do, don’t tell him that it has only three chords).

Literally and technically, the song —which peaked at #5 on the Hot 100— is neither summer-related nor a summer hit.  But, after all, they are called the Beach Boys.

Well she got her daddy’s car
And she cruised to the hamburger stand now
Seems she forgot all about the library
Like she told her old man now
And with the radio blasting
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now
And she’ll have fun fun fun
Til her daddy takes the T-Bird away

Now the girls can’t stand her
‘Cause she walks, looks, and drives like an ace now
She makes the Indy 500 look like a Roman chariot race now
A lot of guys try to catch her
But she leads them on a wild goose chase now
And she’ll have fun fun fun
Til her daddy takes the T-Bird away

Well you knew all along
That your dad was getting wise to you now
(you shouldn’t have lied now, you shouldn’t have lied)
And since he took your set of keys
You’ve been thinking that your fun is all through now
But you can come along with me
‘Cause we got a a lot of things to do now
And well have fun fun fun now that daddy took the T-Bird away.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

June 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 3 Comments 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

GET BACK (THE BEATLES WITH BILLY PRESTON) performed by THE BEATLES

Forty years ago this week, the Number One song in America was (as it had been since 24 May) the Beatles’ “Get Back.”

Pace maker and peace maker: Billy Preston recording with the Beatles in the January 1969 “Get Back” sessions at Abbey Road studios in London.

By the beginning of 1969, when the Beatles went into the studio to begin work on a new LP and film project —in which the making of the album would be recorded in documentary style— the tensions that would soon tear the band apart were already at work.

George was unhappy and quarreling with Paul; Ringo felt unappreciated; and Yoko Ono was now silently shadowing John in an impassive-aggressive way that even today still seems more than slightly creepy.

In fact the atmosphere was so poisonous that, when George Harrison found keyboard player Billy Preston hanging out in the lobby of the Apple offices, he immediately invited him to join the band in the studio. As Harrison later recalled, Preston “came in while we were down in the basement, running through ‘Get Back,’ and I went up to reception and said, ‘Come in and play on this because they’re all acting strange’. He was all excited. I knew the others loved Billy anyway, and it was like a breath of fresh air. It’s interesting to see how nicely people behave when you bring a guest in, because they don’t really want everybody to know that they’re so bitchy… He got on the electric piano, and straight away there was 100% improvement in the vibe in the room. Having this fifth person was just enough to cut the ice that we’d created among ourselves.”

In fact, “Get Back” is attributed to “The Beatles with Billy Preston” — the only such shared credit in their entire catalog.

The concept of the new album —which was tentatively titled “Get Back”— was, precisely, to get back to the band’s earlier, simpler roots in terms of songs, arrangements, and production. This was to be a straightforward studio album minus the bells and whistles and overdubs that had started with Sgt. Pepper.

McCartney gave it the title by adlibbing “get back to where you once belonged” — referring to the song “Sour Milk Sea,” written by Harrison and recorded by Apple artist Jackie Lomax, which expressed the lyrical imperative “Get back to where you should be.”

So the phrase “Get Back” perfectly expressed the project’s intention and purpose of getting back to musical roots and basics. And during the extended jam-sessions-cum-rehearsals that became known as the “Get Back Sessions,” the band played scores of songs. But Lennon, who otherwise liked the song, claimed that every time McCartney sang the words “get back,” he glared at Yoko Ono. Lennon told Playboy in 1980: “I’ve always thought there was this underlying thing in Paul’s ‘Get Back.’ When we were in the studio recording it, every time he sang the line ‘Get back to where you once belonged,’ he’d look at Yoko.

Paul McCartney’s attempts to mock and/or satirize Tory MP Enoch Powell’s infamous “River of Blood” anti-immigration speech provided both the backstory and the genesis of “Get Back.”

In the wake of the American riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., British Tory MP Enoch Powell made an inflammatory speech about the threat he claimed Britain was creating as a result of admitting the numbers of immigrants that would end up creating, in Britain’s insular society, the destructive problems that were endemic in America.

Powell was a classicist, and what the press immediately dubbed the “River of Blood” speech was named for one particularly vivid image came from Virgil’s Aeneid:

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

It had been on Paul McCartney’s mind to address this bitterly-raging immigration debate —which was particularly focused on immigration from Pakistan— by sending up Powell’s rabble-rousing words.

At one of the “Get Back” sessions, McCartney improvised a “Commonwealth Song.” There is only one rough take of it, and the lyrics are fragmentary and only intermittently intelligible. But the message was clear: “You’d better get back to your Commonwealth Homes.”

You can hear the “Commonwealth Song” here at 3.28.

Commonwealth Song

Immigrants, immigrants had better go home,
Tonight Commonwealth… [Labor Party Prime Minister Harold] Wilson said to the immigrants,
You’d better get back to your Commonwealth homes,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he said you’d better get back… home!

Now Enoch Powell said to the folks,
He (inaudible) to the colour of your skin,
He said he don’t care what it’s…
So Ted Heath said to Enoch Powell he said you better get off…,
Enoch… Enoch you better go home!

So Wilson said to the Premier, come on we gotta swing,
We gotta go back to the summat or the other
So Enoch Powell said to Wilson/Heath by… the Commonwealth!

If you don’t want trouble then you better go back to home!

Then John Lennon sings:
I went to India, I’ve been to old Calcutta and I’ve had enough of that,
I’m coming back to England-town.
(Paul: Yes, welcome!)
And dirty Enoch Powell and he’s had enough of coloured men.

Paul: Commonwealth!
John: Yes?
Paul: Can you hear me Commonwealth?
John: Yes!
Paul: Well Enoch Powell you gotta go back to home!

The “Commonwealth Song” was a discrete composition that remained unformed and unrefined. The melody (even where the lyrics talked about going back home) has nothing to do with the melody of “Get Back” which emerged for “No Pakistanis” — another even less subtle McCartney attempt at sending up Powell.

Once again the song was spontaneous and fragmentary.

…was a Puerto Rican… living in the USA.
Get back! Oh, get Back! Get back to where you once belonged.

…don’t dig no Pakistani’s taking all the people’s jobs.
Oh, get back! Get Back! Oh, get back to where you once belonged.

…was a Pakistani…
don’t dig no Pakistanis taking all the people’s jobs.
So, get back! Get back! Get back to where you once belonged.

As the song ends, the “Get Backs” are given an over-the-top satiric fierceness.

There was only one take of the “Commonwealth Song” and “No Pakistanis” at the “Get Back” sessions, which indicates that they were incidental jams that might have been intended to work through some ideas, or that might simply have been intended to relieve the tension and pass the time. This became relevant seventeen years later when the Get Back sessions became public and, despite the evidence at ear and the common sense of the situation, McCartney was accused by some of racism.

By way of explanation —and defense— he told Rolling Stone magazine:

When we were doing Let It Be, there were a couple of verses to “Get Back” which were actually not racist at all – they were anti-racist. There were a lot of stories in the newspapers then about Pakistanis crowding out flats – you know, living 16 to a room or whatever. So in one of the verses of “Get Back,” which we were making up on the set of Let It Be, one of the outtakes has something about “too many Pakistanis living in a council flat” — that’s the line. Which to me was actually talking out against overcrowding for Pakistanis… If there was any group that was not racist, it was the Beatles. I mean, all our favorite people were always black. We were kind of the first people to open international eyes, in a way, to Motown.

Once “Get Back” gelled, the lyrics took a completely different direction.

Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn’t last
Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
For some California grass

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, Jojo
Go home

Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Get back, Jo

Sweet Loretta Martin thought she was a woman
But she was another man
All the girls around her say she’s got it coming
But she gets it while she can

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, Loretta
Go home

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Oooh…

Get back, Loretta
Your mama’s waiting for you
Wearing her high-heel shoes
And her low-neck sweater
Get back home, Loretta

The eleventh take (of fourteen) from the January 27th recording session was released in the UK as a single on 11 April, and in the US on 5 May. It immediately shot to Number One on the charts in both countries (for five weeks in England and a month in the States.)

As with all things Beatles, the exegeses of the song’s meanings are extensive. Tucson, Arizona, was the home town of McCartney’s fiancé Linda Eastman. Some thought that Jojo referred to a popular bar; others thought it referred to Ms. Eastman’s first husband Joseph, who had abandoned her and their daughter.

McCartney has claimed that the final lyrics are purposely ambiguous and mean nothing in particular. As he told a biographer: “Many people have since claimed to be the Jo Jo and they’re not, let me put that straight! I had no particular person in mind, again it was a fictional character, half man, half woman, all very ambiguous. I often left things ambiguous, I like doing that in my songs.”

Three days after the recording session, the Beatles went to the roof of their Apple offices on London’s tony Savile Row for what would turn out to be their last public performance.

They did three slightly differing versions of “Get Back” — and might have done more had the neighbors’ complaints not brought the police — and inspired McCartney’s extemporaneous addition: “You been out too long, Loretta! You’ve been playing on the roofs again! That’s no good! You know your mommy doesn’t like that! Oh, she’s getting angry… she’ll have you arrested! Get back!”

On 12 March, McCartney married Linda Eastman at the Marylebone Registry Office; on 20 March, Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar. By that time the “Get Back” project had already been shelved and the dissolution of the band had begun. But all four members liked the title song so well that they agreed to its release as a single.

Against the Beatles’ wishes, Capitol Records hired producer Phil Spector to produce an album from the “Get Back” sessions. Spector made a new mix of “Get Back” in March 1970, and an LP —now titled Let It Be— was released —a year after the single— on 8 May. To the original 11th “Get Back” take of 27 January, Spector added dialog from the rooftop session. Now McCartney is heard saying “Thanks, Mo” — referring to Ringo’s wife Maureen who was cheering enthusiastically. And Lennon closes with: “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the band and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition.”

Here is Spector’s sweetened and revised version — the twelfth and last track on Let It Be.

The original, unreleased, version can be heard on several bootlegs and, legally, on the 2003 release Let It Be…Naked.

Alan W. Pollock’s invaluable and inimitable “Notes on ‘Get Back’” answer any and all questions about the song. His conclusion is sad and wise:

In hindsight you’ll notice how the release of several Beatles singles seemed carefully timed as if to serve as a musical road sign, offering the observant follower a clue to the new direction ever so slightly ahead of the actual bend in the road. To the extent that you can trace this pattern you have to wonder how much of a conscious decision lay behind it.

“Get Back” (b/w “Don’t Let Me Down”) surely belongs to this group of singles. But whereas singles like “Paperback Writer” / “Rain” or “Penny Lane” / “Strawberry Fields Forever” each signal a compositional or stylistic leap in their wake, “Get Back” is musically rather simple stuff by comparison; its particularly enduring significance being more closely related to the chronicled history of the group per se.

As we all know, the combined album and film project named after this song was fated to end up as the painfully sad and the at times excruciatingly well documented commentary on the group’s inevitable breakup. The final edit and mixdown of the “Get Back” materials was aborted and indefinitely postponed in midstream until, almost a year later, long after the recording of the valedictory “Abbey Road” album, it was eventually post-produced and re-edited in order to be released under the transmographied title (not to mention, aptly reworded overarching message) of “Let It Be”.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

June 21, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives will be back here next week.  In the meantime, here’s a place holder (and a preview of Soundtracks yet to come).

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

June 14, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 5 Comments 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

LIKE A ROLLING STONE by BOB DYLAN

Rolling Stone chose Bob Dylan’s 1965 “Like a Rolling Stone” for the Number One position on its 2004 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Even allowing for the obvious affinity (the magazine was named after the song); and for the fact that many of the journal’s founding fathers (now founding geezers) were cutting their rock teeth at exactly the time the song was released and had felt —as Bruce Springsteen described the first time he heard it— “like somebody had kicked open the door to your mind”; and taking into consideration that Dylan has enjoyed all but mythic status for going on four decades —- even allowing for all these factors, there is a strong objective case to be made for  ”Like a Rolling Stone’s” legitimate preeminence among rock songs.  (As a superannuated geezer I would hold out for some standard like “Stardust” as the all-time all-purpose numero uno.)

As RS sees it:

“I wrote it. I didn’t fail. It was straight,” Bob Dylan said of his greatest song shortly after he wrote and recorded it in June 1965. There is no better description of “Like a Rolling Stone” — of its revolutionary design and execution — or of the young man, just turned twenty-four, who created it.

To this day, the most stunning thing about “Like a Rolling Stone” is the abundance of precedent: the impressionist voltage of Dylan’s language, the intensely personal accusation in his voice (“Ho-o-o-ow does it fe-e-e-el?”), the apocalyptic charge of Kooper’s garage-gospel organ and Mike Bloomfield’s stiletto-sharp spirals of Telecaster guitar, the defiant six-minute length of the June 16th master take. No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time.

Just as Dylan bent folk music’s roots and forms to his own will, he transformed popular song with the content and ambition of “Like a Rolling Stone.” And in his electrifying vocal performance, his best on record, Dylan proved that everything he did was, first and always, rock & roll. ” ‘Rolling Stone’ ’s the best song I wrote,” he said flatly at the end of 1965. It still is.

Recorded over two days without any sheet music, the song was, literally and figuratively, a work in progress. After the fourth take on the second day, producer Tom Wilson said: “That sounds good to me,” and that was the version released a month later.

“Like a Rolling Stone” was released as a 45-rpm single (which reached Number Two on Billboard’s Hot 100), and was the first track on Dylan’s 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited.

Cover art for Highway 61 Revisited: the photograph of Bob Dylan was by Daniel Kramer.  Highway 61 ran down and out — from the Canadian border through Dylan’s home town of Duluth to the stretch between New Orleans to Memphis that was known as the “Blues Highway”.

If you were around at the time, it really was something new and exciting under the sun.  As British musician and writer Mick Farren said, “Like a Rolling Stone” had “a song structure and rhyme pattern that boldly went where no other rock tune had gone before and imagery that touched the imagination of every teenage malcontent in the western hemisphere.”

And even today, with the bloom of youth long past, and when its familiarity and widespread influence has all but made it part of The Muzak Of Our Lives, if you give the song a chance, its impact is scarcely diminished.  As singer-songwriter Grant-Lee Philips put it, ”It’s the song I’d play for an alien who had just landed, asking to be taken to our songwriting leader.”

If you can carve 6:14 out of your day, give yourself over to the accumulating propulsive power of the words and the music and the hortatory and hypnotic quality of Dylan’s delivery.  And allow your heartbeat to pace itself to the sinuous flow of Al Kooper’s fortuitous organ riff (the twenty-one year old guitarist had come to observe the session and his break-time noodling ended up as the song’s basic signature).  Give it a chance, and  ”Like A Rolling Stone” 2009 can have some of the same impact as “Like A Rolling Stone” 1965.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

The song began life buried in twenty pages of verse possibly based on a relationship with Edie Sedgwick — the poor little rich girl whose nostalgie de la boue led to a short and tragic life that also fascinated the likes of Andy Warhol and George Plimpton. From that point of view, the lyrics can be read as a classic narrative of a lost soul’s downward spiral.  Dylan later said that this experience of distilling a song from his unfocused prose was what tipped the balance for him between writing and songwriting.

The first verses were composed on an upright piano at his home in Woodstock, New York.  As with “Blowin’ in the Wind” —with a melody built on the slave song “No More Auction Block,” “Like a Rolling Stone” owed a lyrical tip o’ the cap to Hank Williams’ song “Lost Highway,” which was also part of Dylan’s traditional repertoire.

“Like a Rolling Stone” was recorded on 14-15 June.  The single was released on 15 July; and the album Highway 61 Revisited was released on 30 August 1965.  Its first public performance was on 25 July.  That was when Dylan stepped on stage at the Newport Folk Festival and, greeted by boos and catcalls, introduced “Like a Rolling Stone” as the second of three songs in his first electric set.

I had the opportunity to meet Bob Dylan and experience “Like a Rolling Stone” (or at least what passed for a facsimile of it) at first hand when I worked for Late Night with David Letterman.  The tenth anniversary show was broadcast in prime time from Radio City Music Hall on 6 February 1992.  The Rockettes danced Dave on stage. (In light of current events, it’s perhaps notable that among the jokes in his opening monolog was: “Here’s good news. We’re a month into 1992 and so far no Kennedys have been arrested.”)

Paul Shaffer had assembled an incredible Super Band for the evening. In addition to the Will Lee, Syd McGuinness, and Anton Figg, there were Carole King on keyboard, guitarists Steve Vai and Chrissie Hynde, and an augmented horn section.  The backup singers (backup singers!) were Roseanne Cash, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, Michelle Shocked, and Mavis Staples.  And the musical guest was Bob Dylan.

Booking Dylan —at Dave’s request— was considered a coup. And the notion of him singing  all six minutes of  ”Like a Rolling Stone” with that band in that place on that show seemed to have the makings of TV history.

Hunkered down: Bob Dylan in the studio during the recording of “Like a Rolling Stone” in June 1965.

Among my assignments was dealing with the musicians, and long after everyone else had arrived and been led through the labyrinthine backstage to their dressing rooms, Dylan was nowhere in sight. Finally, when concern was beginning to segue into worry (with outright panic just around the corner), someone pointed to a slight figure —wearing blue jeans and a sweat shirt with the hood pulled over his head— hunkered down next to one of the stage entrances.

To the extent that I had noticed him before, I had assumed it was one of the stage hands or animal wranglers (later in the show border collies shepherded  a herd of sheep across the stage, through the aisles, and into cabs on Sixth Avenue). When I walked over and hunkered down opposite him, a familiar face greeted me from under the hood. He couldn’t have been nicer  or more cooperative.  He said that he had no need to go to his dressing room, and had just been waiting for the rehearsal and sound check to begin.

The rehearsal was really just a low-key run through, so the fact that the famous melody made no appearance didn’t seem particularly ominous. By this time it was well known that, at many Dylan performances, any reproduction of the original song might be purely coincidental.  But it had been assumed that the spectacular nature and clear intention behind this 10th Anniversary show rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone” would require —and therefore  inspire— at least some fidelity to the classic original.

Both the afternoon dress rehearsal and the early evening show-for-air were taped. There was a wake-like aspect to the post-dress production meeting, as the realization dawned  that, during the air show, Dylan might once again —as he had just done in the dress— turn in a performance that  essentially amounted to six minutes and eleven seconds of unintelligibly mumbled words delivered in what might optimistically be considered a monotone.

Which is exactly what happened.  The result —the seemingly interminable result— was like some ghastly karaoke, costing millions of dollars a minute, gone hopelessly awry.  Looking at it today I can laugh —in fact, a couple of times, out loud— at the sheer shambles of it.   But at the time, and at the subdued after party, it seemed like the end of civilization as we knew it.

Rolling Stone had the first word; and now it has the last:

Just as Dylan bent folk music’s roots and forms to his own will, he transformed popular song with the content and ambition of “Like a Rolling Stone.” And in his electrifying vocal performance, his best on record, Dylan proved that everything he did was, first and always, rock & roll. ” ‘Rolling Stone’ ’s the best song I wrote,” he said flatly at the end of 1965. It still is.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

June 7, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

 The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time Richard Nixon became President in 1969.

MR. TAMBOURINE MAN by BOB DYLAN

Bob Dylan’s first —eponymous— album, released in 1962, was a mix of original material, arrangements of traditional folk songs (“House of the Rising Sun,” “Pretty Peggy-O,” “Man of Constant Sorrow”) and a couple of blues classics (Elizabeth Cotton’s “Freight Train Blues,” and Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”).

Dylan had traveled from Minnesota to meet his idol Woody Guthrie, and his heartfelt “Song To Woody” was typical of the album’s sound and feel.

The stripped down acoustic guitar/harmonica arrangements and the powerful melodic and lyrical content of the folk-protest songs —among which was “Blowin’ in the Wind”— made 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and 1964’s Another Side of Bob Dylan the Ur-albums of the 1960s folk revival/renaissance.

But Dylan was creatively and personally restless, and he was already being drawn by the opportunities —and the liberties— offered by rock and roll.

In 1964 he performed at the Newport Folk Festival.  Among his set was an early version of “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

In 1965 he returned to Newport.  At the end of his folk set, he plugged in his guitar and played three songs (“Maggie’s Farm,” “Like A Rolling Stone,” and “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, it Takes a Train to Cry”) with a rock band as backup. 

The result was no less electric (no pun intended) and only marginally more decorous than the uproar that greeted the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, when the outraged patrons trashed the theater and took the riot into the streets of Paris.  

Robert Shelton, the late music critic and Dylan biographer, described the scene:

From the moment the group swung into a rocking electric version of “Maggie’s Farm,” the Newport audience registered hostility. As the group finished “Farm,” there was some reserved applause and a flurry of boos. Someone shouted: “Bring back Cousin Emmy!” The microphones and speakers were all out of balance, and the sound was poor and lopsided. For even the most ardent fan of the new music, the performance was unpersuasive. As Dylan led his band into “Rolling Stone,” the audience grew shriller: “Play folk music! … Sell out! … This is a folk festival! … Get rid of that band!” Dylan began “It Takes a Train to Cry,” and the applause diminished as the heckling increased. Dylan and the group disappeared offstage, and there was a long, clumsy silence. Peter Yarrow urged Bob to return and gave him his acoustic guitar. As Bob returned on the stage alone, he discovered he didn’t have the right harmonica. “What are you doing to me?” Dylan demanded of Yarrow. To shouts for “Tambourine Man,” Dylan said: “OK, I’ll do that one for you.” The older song had a palliative effect and won strong applause. Then Dylan did “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” singing adieu to Newport, good-bye to the folk-purist audience.

Backstage, there had been almost as much excitement as out front. At the first sound of the amplified instruments, Pete Seeger had turned a bright purple and begun kicking his feet and flailing his arms. (A festival official said later: ”I had never seen any trace of violence in Pete, except at that moment. He was furious with Dylan!”) Reportedly, one festival board member–probably Seeger–was so upset that he threatened to pull out the entire electrical wiring system. Cooler heads cautioned that plunging the audience into the dark might cause a real riot.

 

Dylan’s next LP —1965’s Bringing It All Back Home— straddled the old and new worlds by offering one electric and one acoustic side.  Among the tracks on the acoustic side was the finished version of “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.

Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin’.
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.

Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun,

It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run

And but for the sky there are no fences facin’.

And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme

To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind,

I wouldn’t pay it any mind, it’s just a shadow you’re

Seein’ that he’s chasing.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind,

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,

The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,

Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,

With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,

Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.

There have been various accounts of the song’s composition and exegeses of its meaning(s).  According to one version, it was written on a marijuana-fueled cross-country road trip (during which new supplies were picked up at post offices to which they had been mailed in advance).  What else could “take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind” mean?  And the vivid and apparently disconnected imagery of the song have led to its being claimed as one of the earliest LSD-inspired hits (not to mention the exhortation to “take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship”). 

But experts —and where Dylan is concerned, there are experts of every kind including the chronology of his alleged drug consumption— claim that “Mr. Tambourine Man” was completed at least several weeks before the first putative Dylan dalliance with lysergic acid diethylamide.

Dylan himself has debunked any drug connection. “Drugs never played a part in that song… ‘disappearing through the smoke rings in my mind,’ that’s not drugs; drugs were never that big a thing with me. I could take ‘em or leave ‘em, never hung me up.”

Indeed, the Tambourine Man, far from being a figment of Dylan’s imagination was a very real person — who was frequently among Dylan’s backup musicians.  Bruce Langhorne was a greatly-admired guitarist and a ubiquitous session man on many of the most important and influential folk albums of the early ‘60s.  His work can be heard behind Dylan, Odetta, Joan Baez, Richard and Mimi Farina, Peter, Paul & Mary, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Carolyn Hester, among many others.

The Tambourine Man himself: Bruce Langhorne with his Turkish frame drum.

Langhorne was also known for playing a distinctive Turkish frame drum — in effect a supersized tambourine.  As he described it, “It was about [four inches] deep, and it was very light and it had a sheepskin head and it had jingle bells around the edge – just one layer of bells all the way around…I bought it ’cause I liked the sound…I used to play it all the time.”

Thus both the Tambourine Man and the jingle jangle morning are poetic riffs on real inspirations.

Cover art for The Byrds’ debut album Mr. Tambourine Man.  The single of the title song quickly rose to Number One on Billboard’s Hot 100.  The album stayed on the charts for four months and reached Number Seven.

In 1965 the seminal folk-rock group The Byrds covered “Mr Tambourine Man” (or at least the two verses that would fit the three-minute rule for radio air play).  The single shot up the charts to Number One (Dylan’s only song to reach that top spot). As Dylan is said to have said after his first hearing of the Byrds’ cover, “Wow, man, you can even dance to that!”  

It was the Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” that made Bob Dylan a truly national figure —and, for many, a truly national hero— by putting him atop the rock as well as the folk world at exactly the time he was making the transition himself.

Time magazine, naming Dylan as one of the Twentieth Century’s 100 Most Important People, described this period after Newport and before the 1966 motorcycle accident that led to his complete withdrawal from the world.  

Dylan got booed when he showed up with rock musicians behind him, and the booing didn’t let up until his great songs like Desolation Row and Like a Rolling Stone pierced the consciousness of a whole new generation, making everyone realize that rock music could be as direct, as personal and as vital as a novel or a poem. That popular music could be expression as well as recreation.

Dylan was suddenly a singer no longer. He was a shaman. A lot of people called him a prophet. In a way, it must have been scarier than being booed. Everything he sang, said, did or even wore took on a specific gravity that made it harder and harder for him to move. The music became so important to so many people, took on such awesome proportions, that Dylan could respond only with the ultimate sanity: silence.

In the fall of 1964, when I had just settling into the student life of London, I read a piece in the Observer’s weekend magazine about a young American folk singer who had built a following in Germany and had just been signed by the British record powerhouse Decca.  A couple of weeks later I saw a poster for a gig, and a couple of nights later I was sitting in the a crowded smoke-filled basement club in the Tottenham Court Road.  

Cover art for Julie Felix’ 1964 debut album, which  included two Dylan tracks — “Masters of War,” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

Unlike the often ethereal and affectless presentation of many of the folk purists then popular, Julie Felix used her brain to find the guts as well as the hearts of the songs she sang.  Her commitment was complete and her performance was compelling.  Her ecumenical repertoire ranged from traditional folk songs to Guthrie and Dylan  to the work of new young writers like Phil Ochs, Tim Hardin, and Donovan, and a then-still-cult Leonard Cohen.  

That night began a friendship that now spans forty-four years, during which her talent has grown even richer and deeper.

In 1967 I worked as a record promoter, traveling to radio stations to plug Julie’s single of Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye.”  In 1968 she became the first woman ever to have a BBC TV program (in addition to being the BBC’s first series in color) and invited Cohen to make his British TV debut.  Many years later, with Jools Holland, he watched a clip of that gig.

Last spring a fan recorded her singing “Mr. Tambourine Man” at a folk club in Hertfordshire.  Even in this candid low-tech capture, it is a revelatory performance.  

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