When he was seventeen (Haven’t we heard this before?), Ronald “Ron” Eldon Sexsmith started playing at the Lion’s Tavern in his home town of St. Catharine’s, Ontario. It was 1981 and he soon garnered a following as the “One-Man Jukebox” for his impressive ability to play whatever was requested. But after a few years, when he grew tired of playing the same old stuff and began to experiment with more obscure (and interesting) tunes, the days of the One-Man Jukebox were numbered.

In 1985 he moved to Toronto, got a job as a courier, formed a band (called The Uncool) and released a cassette, and then another, and still another, along the way being rejected by every major Canadian label.  Far from an over-night success, it wasn’t until 1995 that Ron Sexsmith finally had a hit, “Speaking with the Angels” that at long last led to a contract with Geffen Records and a self-titled album that earned wide attention within musical circles, especially after Elvis Costello began to recommend it.

As more albums were released more recognition followed, from Elton John, Paul McCartney and Ray Davies.  As a matter of fact after Sexsmith recorded “This is Where I Belong” for a Kinks tribute album, Davies invited him to perform with him at a concert in London. Sexsmith songs have since been covered by a broad range of artists including: John Hiatt, Sheryl Crow, Leonard Cohen, k.d. lang, Michael Bublé and (those who have read prior “postings” will find this fitting) Rod Stewart.

About his songwriting Ron Sexsmith has said, “…my main objective is to try and stay out of the way of the song. I want to write songs that are good whether I’m singing them or not.”

Today’s selection comes in praise of a month known for its rejuvenation; a month that always starts on the same day of the week as July (except on leap years when it starts as the same weekday as January) and always ends on the same day of the week as December.  It’s the closing track of Sexsmith’s second (major label) album in 1997, “Other Songs”.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SECTION – Sunday 1 April 2012

April After All

 It’s really coming down

Raining cats and hounds

It’s falling on parades

And on the plans we made

But there’ll be other days

And things will turn our way

The rain has got to fall

It’s April after all

 Even the longest night

Will lead you to daylight

It’s the way May leads to June

And it’s how I’ve come to you

The world goes spinning round

Life goes up and down

And rain is bound to fall

It’s April after all

 There’ll be other days

Darling come what may

The rain has got to fall

It’s April after all

Tears are bound to fall

It’s April after all

It was based on a 1919 play, which was adapted as a (lost) 1923 silent film before becoming re-adapted into the “top-grossing film of all time,” a claim that lasted for a full decade after its release in 1929.

Yes it had showgirls, and it had sound, introducing the world to “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and “Painting the Clouds With Sunshine” but perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Gold Diggers of Broadway was that it was filmed in Technicolor (in 1929!) capturing the very essence of the flapper era.

Regrettably, only the last 20 minutes of the film survive, providing the distant modern viewer with a tantalizing glimpse of life in living color, before the Crash. And so we turn to a loose remake, Gold Diggers of 1933, filmed in (more economical) black and white and released in the murky depths of the Great Depression.

What a comedown one might say.  Perhaps, but as the Hay’s “censorship” Code wasn’t enforced until the following year (just after the repeal of Prohibition as a matter of fact), the movie is an absolute wonder thanks to the outlandish, sexually-charged choreography of Busby Berkeley in his pre-code prime.

A dance director for dozens of Broadway musicals in the 1920s, Busby Berkeley William Enos grew up in (surprise, surprise) an entertainers’ household and served as a field artillery lieutenant during the First World War.  Watching soldiers in their intricate military drill is said to have served as a great inspiration for his elaborate routines. His numbers were the best-regimented displays on Broadway and later in Hollywood. And ever more elaborate they became.

By all accounts Berkeley wasn’t overly concerned with his chorus girls’ dancing skills, as long as they could form themselves into remarkable geometric patterns or participate in one of his popular parades of faces. Occasionally criticized for the recurrent display of the “female form as seen through the male gaze” or depictions of “New Deal collectivism” (as opposed to rugged individualism), Berkeley simply shrugged, stating that his foremost objective was to always top himself without repeating past (kaleidoscopic) accomplishments.  One need only look at the astounding “Lullaby of Broadway” number from Gold Diggers of 1935 for “objective” proof.

By decade’s end outsized musicals had become passé and Berkeley resorted to non-musical directing, although he did continue to dabble.  Carmen Miranda’s “Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” is a latter-day Busby Berkeley number, as are those late ‘40s Esther Williams’ swimming finales, all filmed (for a now-accustomed audience) in glorious, living Technicolor.

Of course Gold Diggers of 1933 had one other awe-inspiring asset (okay, Ruby Keeler aside) and that’s the scintillating sight of a young Ginger Rogers (sometimes in EXTREME close-up) singing today’s selection in the midst of a Busby Berkeley routine, albeit a minor one.

Although Harry Warren and Al Dubin’s catchy song, “We’re in the Money” soon became a much-recorded standard, I defy you to find another version that features an entire verse sung in flawless Pig Latin. In addition to the song selection I’ve included a YouTube URL as this is a number that should also be seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOjTNuuEVw

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Saturday 31 March

We’re in the Money

Gone are my blues,

And gone are my tears;

I’ve got good news

To shout in your ears.

The long lost dollar has come back to the fold,

With silver you can turn your dreams to gold!

Oh!

 We’re in the money, we’re in the money,

We’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along!

We’re in the money, the sky is sunny,

Old man Depression, you are through, you done us wrong!

Oh!

We never see a headline ’bout a bread line today;

And when we see the landlord,

We can look that guy right in the eye.

We’re in the money, come on, my honey,

Let’s lend it, spend it, send it rolling around!

 Oh, boy, we’re in the money, I’ll say we’re in the money,

We’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along!

Let’s go, we’re in the money, look up, the sky is sunny,

Old man Depression, you are through, you done us wrong!

We never see a headline ’bout a bread line today,

And when we see the landlord,

We can look that guy right in the eye!

We’re in the money, come on, my honey,

Let’s spend it, lend it, send it rolling along!

 Ereway inhay the oneymay, ereway inhay the oneymay!

Eveway otgay ayay otlay ofway atwhay itay akestay otay etgay aylayongwayo!

Ereway inhay the oneymay, ethay iesksays are unnysay!

Oldmay anday eedayessionpray, ouyay aray oothray ootay unday usay ongwrayo!

Eway evernay eesay eadlayinelay ayofay eadbrayinelay otayayday.

Anday enwhay eway eesay ethay andlayord

We’ll ooklay atthay uygay ightray inay ethay eyeyay!

We’re in the money, come on, my honey,

Let’s lend it, spend it, send it rolling around!

You’ve easily heard 101 variations of this story through me alone. In today’s case it was 1962 and a seventeen-year-old secondary school kid and his little brother (who was all of fourteen) decided to form a band.  The youngest of eight siblings, and the only boys, Ray and Dave lived in a Muswell Hill (North London) row house where on most Saturday nights their sociable parents would hold lively parties with sing-alongs-aplenty and lots of beer.

The brothers had long since learned to play guitar and between the ongoing music hall numbers and their big sisters’ predilection for jazz, swing and early rock and roll, they had a wide variety of influences.   So with a couple of other schoolmates they formed the Ray Davies Quartet and after a decent enough reception at a school dance, began to play at local pubs and clubs.

In those days Ray wasn’t comfortable with his singing, so the band tried out a number of lead vocalists, including another schoolmate named Rod Stewart, who was eventually dropped as a result of “musical differences” stemming from the fact that their drummer’s mother didn’t like his voice.  Stewart quickly formed another group, called Rod Stewart and the Moonrakers, and it became their local rival.

After graduation Ray left home to study film, sketching, theatre, jazz and blues at the Hornsey College of Art, but by 1964 he was back in Muswell Hill with the latest incarnation of the band, now called the Pete Quaife Band, after the base player. Soon they billed themselves as the Bo-Weevils, then the Ramrods, then the Ravens and it was only after they’d hired (not one but) two managers that they finally settled on the name for which they would become recognized as one of the most important bands in rock history, starting with their first Number One hit only a few months later.

In the words of one manager, they “needed a gimmick, some edge to get them attention; something newsy, naughty but just on the borderline of acceptability… At that time, they were participating in a time-honoured pop ritual—fame through outrage.” As the other put it, “I had a friend who thought the group was rather fun…He came up with the name just as an idea, as a good way of getting publicity. When we went to the band members with the name, they were absolutely horrified.”

According to Ray Davies the name was actually coined by their producer, who took note of what was then considered their “kinky” fashion sense (with brocade jackets, frilled cravats, skinny jeans and hair much longer than the Beatles’ or the Stones’) and said,  “The way you look, you ought to be called the Kinks.” In the retelling Davies added, “I’ve never really liked the name.”

Chosen by “Rolling Stone” as one of the top five “Guitar Songs of All Time” and long considered the “track that invented heavy metal” that first Number One hit was, of course “You Really Got Me.”  And yet Ray Davies is also considered to be rock music’s most insightful, literate (and witty) songwriter.

Today’s section was featured as the opening track to “Muswell Hillbillies” the Kinks’ ninth studio album in 1971. Unfortunately “20th Century Man” failed to reach the Billboard 100 in the States, and was never even released as a single in the UK.  Perhaps this is because the song starts simply and acoustically, and gradually grows in complexity and accoutrement until it’s something else all together, much like the century it represents. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it’s still relevant, a far easier task than trying to picture Rod Stewart singing lead.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 30 March

20^th Century Man

 This is the age of machinery

A mechanical nightmare

The wonderful world of technology

Napalm, hydrogen bombs, biological warfare

This is the twentieth century

But too much aggravation

It’s the age of insanity

What has become of the green, pleasant fields of Jerusalem?

 Ain’t got no ambition, I’m just disillusioned

I’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want, I don’t want to be here

My mama said she can’t understand me

She can’t see my motivation

Just give me some security

I’m a paranoid, schizoid product of the twentieth century

You keep all your smart modern writers

Give me William Shakespeare

You keep all your smart modern painters

I’ll take Rembrandt, Titian, da Vinci and Gainsborough

Girl we gotta’ get out of here

We gotta’ find a solution

I’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want, I don’t want to die here

Ya’ we gotta’ get out of here

We gotta’ find a solution

I’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want, I don’t want to be here

 I was born in a welfare state

Ruled by bureaucracy

Controlled by civil servants

And people dressed in grey

Got no privacy, got no liberty

Cos the twentieth century people

Took it all away from me

Don’t wanna’ get myself shot down

By some trigger happy policeman

Gotta keep a hold on my sanity

I’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want, I don’t want to die here

 My mama says she can’t understand me

She can’t see my motivation

Ain’t got no security

I’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want to die here

 This is the twentieth century

But too much aggravation

This is the edge of insanity

I’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want to be here

Perhaps like me you’ve wondered why we call it “Thursday” but in French and Spanish it’s “Jeudi” and “Jueves” respectively.  By Jove, here’s why. It’s because in Romance languages this is the day of Jupiter, that rumbling Roman god of thunder, lightning and the great big sky.

Jeudi, check; Jeuves, check; but how does that explain Thursday?  Well, in northern Europe after the Romans “came calling” and (whether they liked it or not) the Germanic people adopted the Roman calendar, Jupiter was identified with the Norse god, Thor; he of rumbling thunder, flashes of lighting and one big hammer.  Hence Jupiter’s day became “Thor’s day” in Germanic languages, of which English is one.

So where’s this leading?  Well, far, from the great northwestern expanses of the Roman Empire, and about 1,500 years after its collapse, an Australian girl named Melanie Horsnell won a songwriting competition and used the money to leave her hometown of Sidney to fly to London, where she lived as a busker for a year.  The wonderful thing about street performing is that it gives you lots of practice in public and Melanie, who hadn’t originally considered a musical career, decided to pursue one.

Back in Sidney she became a regular at the (suburban) Glebe Excelsior Hotel, known for its live music tradition, and slowly joined the vanguard of the local folk scene, building up a fan base.  On the side she was hired to provide songs for Australian television commercials (e.g. McDonalds, Huggies and Johnnie Walker), which led to a National Grid commercial in the States.

Occasionally performing with some fellow musicians under the name… Forever Thursday, it was this collaborative effort that provided the music for Melanie’s next American commercial gig, J.C. Penney and you will doubtless recognize today’s selection, Forever Thursday’s 2007 debut release, which was later released as a whimsical music video that begins with a girl (Melanie) staring quizzically at the great big morning sky…

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Thursday 29 March 

How Can It Be

 I say, and so say I

My morning thought

It knew itself just fine

Until across the room

It caught its first glimpse of my afternoon

How can it be

That these things live in me?

 I say, and so say I

My morning’s day seems nothing like its night

My night so self assured

Was all at sea when faced with dawn’s strange world

 How can it be

That these things live in me?

I say, and so say I

My morning’s day seems nothing like its night

My night so self assured

Was all at sea when faced with dawn’s strange world

 How can it be

That these things live in me?

“Boston-style songwriting refers to the introspective and literate breed of singer-songwriter so prevalent in the modern folk music landscape,”  affirms Ellis Paul who has long been positioned at the head of the class in this particular school of folk-pop music that “bridges the gap between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.”

“(It’s a style that) grew out of Boston’s thriving folk scene with its dense collection of colleges, college radio stations and listening rooms,” he adds, noting that Boston-style songwriting “tends to be more about lyric than melody, is intimate and thoughtful but also relevant, often addressing social issues.”

Paul Plissey was born (in 1965) and raised in Presque Isle, Maine (deep in Aroostook County, the largest county east of the Mississippi and northernmost land-area in the Continental U.S.) where he played trumpet in the high school band and was state champion as a 5K runner.  That got him into Boston College on a track scholarship where his 10K time remains one of the best in BC history.

His running aspirations all ended with a knee injury during his junior year so Plissey taught himself to play the acoustic guitar to pass the time and began to write songs with the help of a “Hits of the 70s” songbook. Upon graduation, he began to perform at open mic nights around Boston, while working with inner-city kids. After winning a Boston Acoustic Underground songwriting competition, he received national exposure on a Windham Hill Records compilation, settled on the stage name, Ellis Paul and made the leap to professional musician.

Since his debut record in 1989, Paul has released 17 albums and plays nearly 200 dates a year on the club and coffeehouse circuit, bringing that Boston-style to a venue near you. “Each song is supposed to be like a little three-dimensional world,” he concludes.  “I’m hoping to invite them in, have them make out the details and the reasons for being there and apply them to their own lives. But I’m also hoping to entertain them.”

Today’s selection, long an Ellis Paul standard, comes from his sixth (1998) album, “Translucent Soul”.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Wednesday 28 March

The World Ain’t Slowin’ Down

 I found you sitting on a suitcase crying

Beneath my feet

I feel the rumble of a subway train

I laugh out loud

‘Cause it’s the one thing I hadn’t been trying

The train came in breathless

The passengers restless

You say, “Baby, you’ll never change”

You gotta’ get gone, you gotta’ get going

Hey, the world ain’t slowing down for no one

It’s a carnival calling out to you

It sounds like a song

Hits you like scripture

You paint the picture

With colors squeezed from your hand

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go-round?

Hey look, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey…

Out on the sidewalk,

Pigeons do the moonwalk

I’ll be dancing like Fred Astair

The lampposts are rocking

The whole town’s talking

Like a fool in a barber’s chair

And I get the sensation

The joy and frustration

Like being caught by a tropical rain

Freedom can numb you

When there’s no place to run to

It feels just like Novocain

You gotta’ get gone, you gotta’ get going

Hey the world ain’t slowing down for no one

It’s a carnival calling out to you

(It’s calling out to you)

It sounds like a song

Hits you like scripture

You paint the picture

With colors squeezed from your hand

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go-round?

Hey look, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey…

 You packed up all your handbags

Throwing off the sandbags

I let go and you stepped free

I didn’t want to lose you

You said, “You didn’t choose to

It’s just how your karma came”

But thanks for the vision

And the twenty-twenty wisdom

It hit me like a southbound train

 You gotta’ get gone, you gotta’ get going

Hey the world ain’t slowin’ down for no one

It’s a carnival calling out to you

(It’s calling out to you)

It sounds like a song

Hits you like scripture

You paint the picture

With colors squeezed from your hand

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go–

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go–

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go-round

Hey look, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey, it’s a big, blue world

It’s a big, blue world

Riding on a big, blue world

After Paris it’s the most romantic city I know and having enjoyed Montreal in every season, I guess I’ll have to go with a delightfully mild (late) spring weekend in envisioning today’s selection.  That’s the scene, as for the time… here’s hoping that you too have experienced one of those occasionally beguiling phases that have little to do with age and everything to do with endorphins and “joie de vivre.”

Few have been more adept at capturing joie de vivre (along with its sibling, “sweet sorrow”) than the McGarrigle Sisters, Kate and Anna.  Raised in a mixed English/French Canadian (and highly musical) family in the Laurentian village of Saint-Saveur-des Monts, they began performing publicly in the mid-‘60s, while Kate studied engineering at McGill and Anna was an art major at Ecole de Beux-Arts de Montréal.

They also began to write their own songs, some of them covered by artists as varied as Judy Collins, Nana Mouskouri, Billy Bragg, The Corrs, Maria Muldaur, Elvis Costello and Emmylou Harris. It was one song in particular, “Heart Like a Wheel” that was covered by Linda Ronstadt on her 1974 album of the same name that at long last landed the McGarrigles their first recording contract.

The result was their 1975 self-titled debut album, “Kate and Anna McGarrigle” which led off with today’s selection and amongst its 12 tracks included their own version of “Heart Like a Wheel” as well as (Kate’s then-husband) Loudon Wainwright III’s “The Swimming Song.”  The album was chosen by “Melody Maker” as the best record of the year.

Through the next 30 plus years (until Kate’s death from clear-cell sarcoma at the age of 63) the McGarrigles would release another nine albums, some in English, some in French, with the later recordings occasionally including Kate’s singer/songwriter children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright.

And sometimes the McGarrigles would tour.  I was lucky enough to see them in London in the ‘80s and in Toronto in the ‘90s and on both occasions they made the concert hall feel like the front parlor of an old house in Saint-Saveur-des Monts on a Saturday night.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Monday 26 March

Kiss And Say Goodbye

 Call me when you’re coming to town

Just as soon as your plane puts down

Call me on the telephone

But only if you’re traveling alone

Counting down the hours

Through the sunshine and the showers

Today’s the day

You’re finally going to come my way

Let’s make a date to see a movie

Some foreign film from gay Paree

I know you like to think you’ve got taste

So I’ll let you choose the time and place

Have some dinner for two

In some eastside rendezvous

Then we’ll walk

Arm in arm around the block and talk

 Tonight you’re mine


Let’s not waste time

 I do believe the die is cast

Let’s try and make the nighttime last

And I don’t know where it’s coming from

But I want to kiss you till my mouth gets numb

I want to make love to you

Till the day comes breaking through

And when the sun is high in the sky

We’ll kiss and say goodbye

The first recorded (English language) usage of the word “serendipity” was in a letter, dated 28 January 1754, from English historian, Horace Walpole to British Diplomat, Horace Mann.  Walpole claimed to have taken it from the Persian fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip” whose protagonists were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”  Serendip was an old name for Ceylon, which is an old name for Sri Lanka.

Which is all to say that “serendipity” is a pleasant surprise, or happy accident.   As noted medical research Julius Comroe once put it, serendipity is to “look for a needle in a haystack and get out of it with the farmer’s daughter.”

For me, discovering today’s selection was an example of serendipity.  In the early/mid part of the last decade, before trusting my livelihood to the wonderful world of Mac, I subscribed to Napster (which was only available to MS Windows users) and having heard Iris DeMent’s “Let the Mystery Be,” I was looking for more of her work.  When I came across “My Life” with her name listed, I assumed it was her version.  Instead I was introduced to this rendition, sung by D.C. Anderson, and it was pleasant surprise indeed.

Based in New York, David Cameron (D.C.) Anderson is a Broadway actor (including “Phantom of the Opera”, “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Pippin”) and a cabaret and folksinger/songwriter who has recorded nearly a dozen albums.  Today’s selection comes from his 1997 release, “The Box Under the Bed,” and I quickly discovered that I liked it even better than the DeMent original, which was the closing track on her 1994 (Grammy Award nominated) album, “My Life.”

Born in Paragould, Arkansas in 1961 (but bred in Cypress, California) and raised in a Pentecostal household, Iris DeMent was her father’s fourteenth child and her mother’s eighth.  Although heavily influenced by gospel and country music, her themes have long explored religious skepticism (she considers herself to be a Christian agnostic), small town life, human frailty and something we could all stand a little more of (whether in reference to others or to ourselves)…understanding and forgiveness.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Sunday 25 March

My Life

 My life, it don’t count for nothing

When I look at this world, I feel so small

My life, it’s only a season

A passing September that no one will recall

But I gave joy to my mother

And I made my lover smile

And I can give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting

And I can make things seem better for a while

My life, it’s half the way traveled

And still I have not found my way out of this night

My life, it’s tangled in wishes

And so many things that just never turned out right

 But I gave joy to my mother

And I made my lover smile

And I can give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting

And I can make things seem better for a while

Perhaps you recall “Telephone and Rubber Band.” And who can forget: “The Ecstasy of Dancing Fleas,” “Milk,” “Hugebaby” or “Pythagoras’s Trousers”?  It’s all high-spirited stuff from the Penguin Café.

Known to those familiar with “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” for helping with the string arrangement on Sid Vicious’ “distinctive” version of “My Way,” classical guitarist and composer, Simon Jeffes had become “disillusioned with the rigid structures of classical music and the limitations of rock music.”

Then, while in the South of France, he was on the beach sunbathing and as he later recounted, “suddenly a poem popped into my head (where) I am the proprietor of the Penguin Café (and) I will tell you things at random… It went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what’s most important. Whereas in the Penguin Café your unconscious can just be. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves.”

Teaming up with cellist Helen Liebman, Jeffes began to experiment with an assortment of musical configurations, both live and in the studio, sometimes playing various instruments himself, sometimes bringing in other musicians, depending on the needs of a particular piece or when making live appearances, such as when The Penguin Café Orchestra (PCO) opened for the German band (“fahr’n, fahr’n, fahr’n auf der Autobahn”) Kraftwerk at North London’s Roundhouse in 1976.

A first album, “Music From the Penguin Café” was released that same year, followed by a world tour (with mainly music festival appearances).  The next album, “Penguin Café Orchestra” followed in 1981. And so it went for the next 15 years, with six studio albums, numerous live (and televised) performances and marginal renown, until Simon Jeffes’ died from a brain tumor in 1997.

Today’s selection comes from “Signs of Life” the PCO’s (1987) fifth album. “Perpetuum Mobile” is Latin for “perpetual motion” and is actually a long-recognized musical term referring to an ongoing steady stream of notes or a musical progression that’s played over and over again.  Composers as varied as Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Paganini, Debussy, Shostakovich, Britten, and numerous others have effectively tapped into this technique.  And to this you can add Simon Jeffes…with all the enthusiasm of a free-flowing life force.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Saturday 24 March

Perpetuum Mobile

Our selection today comes laced with gratitude to a friend who, as an MD, helped us out of a jam when our far-off kid was ailing mightily.  He’s much better now and so are we…certainly well enough to sit in astonishment when reading about an artist whose career has spanned (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven…) EIGHT decades.

Her father thought up her given name when she was born in 1932 (drolly alleging that it was a combination of two old girlfriends, Pet and Ulla) and she was christened Petula Sally Olwen Clark in her hometown of Epsom, Surrey. Although most of us know her for those wonderfully upbeat hits from the ‘60s, Petula Clark’s career actually began as a BBC Radio entertainer during (ready for this) the Second World War.

She made her debut in 1942, while attending a BBC broadcast with her father.  When an air raid occurred the producer asked if there was anyone who could sing (in hopes of calming the edgy studio audience) and the ten year old raised her hand and sang “Mighty Lak a Rose” to a thunderous ovation.  Clark then repeated her performance for the broadcast audience, and thus soon began a series of nearly 500 appearances for “Britain’s Shirley Temple” whose photo was often plastered on British military equipment as a sign of good luck.

Throughout the 1950s Petula Clark garnered international success by recording in both French and English. But then came the paradigm shift of Beatlemania and her singing career (like so many others) began to founder. In 1964, composer-arranger, Tony Hatch tried to interest her in some new material that just wasn’t a fit, so in desperation he played a few chords from an unfinished song he’d been writing with The Drifters in mind.  Clark’s response was immediate, if the lyrics were as good as the melody she’d record it as her next single.

Released in four languages, and “owning” the American charts, “Downtown” was an enormous success in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Japan and India. Actually it would prove to be the first of fifteen consecutive U.S. Top 40 hits for Clark.  A multiple Grammy Award winner (with a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame), who will turn 80 this year, little “Pet-Ulla” has sold more than 68 million records throughout her extraordinary career.

Today’s selection-by-request, was also written by Tony Hatch (with Jackie Trent), and released in 1967.  Peaking at Number Five on the Charts it was Clark’s final American top-ten single.

Now there are those who think of “subway” in the American sense (underground metro) and those who think of the British usage (underground pedestrian passageway).  And there are those, like me, who have smugly assumed that since it was written by a Brit and sung by a Brit it obviously refers to the British usage. Wrong, according to lyricist Jackie Trent, the song was inspired by a Broadway Musical, “Subways Are For Sleeping.”

Good choice, Doc. “Don’t Sleep in the Subway” is reportedly Petula Clark’s favorite Tony Hatch composition.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 23 March

Don’t Sleep in the Subway

 You wander around

On your own little cloud

When you don’t see the why

Or the wherefore

Ooh, you walk out on me

When we both disagree

‘Cause to reason is not what you care for

I’ve heard it all a million times before

Take off your coat, my love, and close the door

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

Don’t stand in the pouring rain

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

The night is long

Forget your foolish pride

Nothing’s wrong

Now you’re beside me again

You try to be smart

Then you take it apart

‘Cause it hurts when your ego is deflated

You don’t realize

That it’s all compromise

And the problems are so over-rated

 Good-bye means nothing when it’s all for show

So why pretend you’ve somewhere else to go?

 Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

Don’t stand in the pouring rain

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

The night is long

Forget your foolish pride

Nothing’s wrong

Now you’re beside me again

 Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

Don’t stand in the pouring rain

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

The night is long

Forget your foolish pride

Nothing’s wrong

Now you’re beside me again

 Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

Don’t stand in the pouring rain

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’…