I know it’s another “twice-told-tale” but I saw Kenny Rankin back in the ’70s at Paul’s Mall in Boston.  My buddy, Perry and I had front row, center seats.  When Rankin flubbed up a little during one of his sets he made a funny face and we both laughed (not noticing we were the only ones laughing, of course).  At the end of the set he looked at us appraisingly, and a little too lengthily for my comfort, and said “even professional musicians make mistakes.”

Born in New York in 1940 and raised in Washington Heights, Jazz was his favored genre, but as a singer-songwriter of his era, it was clear to him that he needed to take a more pop-oriented path, at least early in his career. And in following that path he developed a considerable following in the early ‘70s with a number of albums that broke into the Billboard Top 100 Album Charts.

By the 1990s he was able to re-slant his repertoire to accommodate his jazz preferences while retaining his existing audience. Johnny Carson certainly liked him, and he appeared on “The Tonight Show” nearly two dozen times.  Kenny Rankin died from lung cancer in 2009, only three weeks after receiving his diagnosis.

Today’s selection was written by Paul McCartney (although credited to Lennon-McCartney) while he was residing in Scotland in 1968.  He later claimed to have been inspired by the escalating racial tensions that year in the U.S.  The song was included on “The White Album”.

Years later, when McCartney and Lennon were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, McCartney sought out Kenny Rankin to sing “Blackbird” at the ceremony, saying that Rankin’s was the best rendition he’d ever heard.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Thursday 8 March

Blackbird

Blackbird singin’ in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

All your life

You were only waiting

For this moment to arrive

 Blackbird singin’ in the dead of night

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see

All your life

You were only waiting

For this moment to be free

 Blackbird fly

Blackbird fly

Into the dark and lonely night

 All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to be free

You and me, we’re waiting for this moment to be free

Can’t you see we’re waiting for this moment to be free

Yes indeed we’re waiting for this moment to be free.

Along with such patently disturbing numbers as:  In the Year 2525; Imagine; Morning Has Broken and that subversive classic What a Wonderful World, today’s selection was one of the songs that was deemed inappropriate for radio play by Clear Channel Communications after the 2001 September 11 attacks.  Not to worry, a decade later it enjoyed a huge surge in popularity among younger protesters during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.

It all began when American songwriter Liam Sternberg observed people on a ferry walking in an awkward manner to keep their balance.  It reminded him of ancient Egyptian reliefs and that old British music hall act, Wilson, Koppel and Betty, whose claim to fame was an Egyptian parody called the “sand dance”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq7DGvfnr3U

Sternberg offered the resulting song to Toni Basil, who declined. Then he turned to the Bangles, who were recording their third album, “A Different Light”.  When they released it as the album’s third single in 1986, “Walk Like and Egyptian” reached Number Three on the UK Singles chart and became the first song by an all-female group playing their own instruments to top the U.S. Billboard singles chart.

You may remember the music video (nominated for Best Group Video at the 1987 MTV Music Video Awards) featuring people shuffling and posing like those Ancient Egyptian reliefs, interposed with members of the Bangles singing and playing. One of these scenes includes Susannah Hoffs, filmed in a close-up with her eyes exotically moving from side to side…looking left and right.

When later asked about the popular scene Hoffs explained that she was unaware that the camera was filming a close-up and that she was actually looking at individual audience members during the live video shoot as this was her technique for overcoming stage fright… switching between an audience member on her left and one on her right.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Wednesday 7 March 

Walk Like an Egyptian

 All the old paintings on the tombs

They do the sand dance don’t you know

If they move too quick (oh whey oh)

They’re falling down like a domino

 All the bazaar men by the Nile

They got the money on a bet

Gold crocodiles (oh whey oh)

They snap their teeth on your cigarette

 Foreign types with the hookah pipes say

Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey ooooh

Walk like an Egyptian

 The blonde waitresses take their trays

They spin around and they cross the floor

They’ve got the moves (oh whey oh)

You drop your drink then they bring you more

All the school kids so sick of books

They like the punk and the metal band

When the buzzer rings (oh whey oh)

They’re walking like an Egyptian

 All the kids in the marketplace say

Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey ooooh

Walk like an Egyptian

 Slide your feet up the street bend your back

Shift your arm then you pull it back

Life is hard you know (oh whey oh)

So strike a pose on a Cadillac

 If you want to find all the cops

They’re hanging out in the donut shop

They sing and dance (oh whey oh)

They spin the clubs cruise down the block

 All the Japanese with their yen

The party boys call the Kremlin

And the Chinese know (oh whey oh)

They walk the line like Egyptian

 All the cops in the donut shop say

Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oooooooh

Walk like an Egyptian

Walk like an Egyptian

Though she died in relative-obscurity and never had a chance to meet him, the world-famous Sting would certainly come to know her name.  After listening to her rendition of his “Fields of Gold” he later said, “I heard this voice and it was so beautiful, so pure, and (then the song) is playing on Radio 2. Then lo and behold, it’s Number One in England. Even though it’s a sad tragic story, it has kind of a poetry about it.”

From an early age, Eva Marie Cassidy (born in Washington, DC in 1963) displayed a keen interest in art and music. Her father taught her to play the guitar and encouraged her to sing and play at family gatherings.  Yet she was always exceedingly shy and found it difficult to perform in front of strangers.  Oh but she still loved to sing and, despite her inhibitions, performed in small venues, garnering local acclaim for her inspired interpretations of blues, jazz, gospel, folk, country and pop classics.

In 1992 Cassidy released a duet album with funk musician, Chuck Brown and although the Washington Area Music Association honored her in both the Jazz/Traditional and Roots Rock/R&B categories, her unwillingness to narrow her stylistic focus to one genre nixed any chances of securing a record deal.  So she continued to perform locally, with occasional visits to the recording studio and finally self-released a solo album in 1996.  Mainly taped live at Georgetown’s Blues Alley in a single evening, it displays her eclecticism in covering artists as varied as: Billie Holiday, Pete Seeger, Al Green, Paul Simon, Curtis Mayfield, Fats Waller, Irving Berlin and (of course) Sting.

Then the unfathomable occurred. A few weeks later, Eva Cassidy was diagnosed with terminal melanoma and on November 2, 1996  she died at the age of 33.  Her debut studio album (“Eva by Heart”) was posthumously released the following year by a producer who, as a labor of love, also assembled a compilation CD called, “Songbird”.

Nearly three years after its quiet release a copy of “Songbird” somehow landed in the hands of BBC Radio 2’s Terry Wogan who played it regularly. In late 2000 it was the Number One album on the British charts, with three Number 1 singles including today’s selection. “Songbird” has since sold more than ten million copies worldwide and in the years that have followed a number of other posthumous Cassidy releases have also ascended the charts.

Like Sting, Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton can also be counted as Eva Cassidy fans, as can a wide variety of industry critics:  “Her silken soprano voice (had) a wide and seemingly effortless range, unerring pitch and a gift for phrasing that at times was heart-stoppingly eloquent,” wrote the New York Times….

“There’s an undeniable emotional appeal in hearing an artist who you know died in obscurity singing a song about hope and a mystical world beyond everyday life,” wrote The Guardian…

But Jazz critic, Ted Gioia perhaps summed it best… “You might be tempted to write off the ‘Cassidy sensation’ as a response to the sad story of the singer’s abbreviated life rather than as a measure of her artistry. But don’t be mistaken, Cassidy was a huge talent, whose obscurity during her lifetime was almost as much a tragedy as her early death.”

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Tuesday 6 March

 Fields of Gold

You’ll remember me when the west wind moves among the fields of barley

You can tell the sun in his jealous sky when we walked in fields of gold

So she took her love for to gaze awhile among the fields of barley

In his arms she fell as her hair came down among the fields of gold.

Will you stay with me, will you be my love among the fields of barley?

And you can tell the sun in his jealous sky when we walked in fields of gold

 I never made promises lightly and there have been some that I’ve broken

But I swear in the days still left we’ll walk in fields of gold

We’ll walk in fields of gold

I never made promises lightly and there have been some that I’ve broken

But I swear in the days still left we’ll walk in fields of gold

We’ll walk in fields of gold

 Many years have passed since those summer days among the fields of barley

See the children run as the sun goes down as you lie in fields of gold

You’ll remember me when the west wind moves among the fields of barley

You can tell the sun in his jealous sky when we walked in fields of gold

When we walked in fields of gold, when we walked in fields of gold

It was just about a year ago that the telephone rang at around 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday.  A little bit tipsy, slightly shaken, but mainly angry (oh boy was he pissed!) our son was on the line.  A student at Tulane in New Orleans, he’d just been mugged on Bourbon Street in the middle of Mardi Gras and he wanted me to cancel his bankcard at once.  “Oh and don’t tell, Mom” …who was obviously sitting up in bed, wide-eyed, right next to me… “It’ll only upset her.”

In cases like this it’s effortless to jump into action and the card was cancelled within minutes.  But then a little later while mulling it over (and over), when imagination had a chance to assert itself, the chill trickled down my spine.  He’d become separated from his friends in the crowd and felt someone grab his wallet.  Without thinking he gave chase down a side street. While one guy grabbed him around the neck from behind and the thug who took his wallet taunted him, a third punched him in the head.

What if they’d hit him with something other than a fist?  What if they’d continued to pummel him? What if there had been a knife?  What if ..?

I think we all learned a lesson that night. The big, strapping lad learned that he’s not quite as invincible as he thought, and maybe a little more wariness is in order. And 1,500 miles and a time-zone away, his parents learned that the “what if” game is a foolish waste of emotional energy.  A year later it seems a distant memory. You might say that in the end it was right.

Formed in Berkeley, California in 1987 and a major part of the resurging American punk rock scene at the time, Green Day has sold over 65 million records.  Still touring and having recently recorded its ninth studio album, the band has won five Grammy Awards, including one for Best Musical Show Album for a stage adaptation of its rock opera, “American Idiot.”

Lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong wrote today’s selection in 1994, although it wasn’t released until the band’s fifth album, “Nimrod” in 1997.  With its melodious, acoustic music and reflective lyrics “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” is an uncharacteristic song for Green Day.  As bassist, Mike Dirnt put it “the release of this song was probably the most punk thing we could have done.”

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Monday 5 March 

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

 Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why

It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time

 It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.

I hope you had the time of your life.

 So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind

Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time

Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial

For what it’s worth it was worth all the while

 It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.

I hope you had the time of your life.

It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.

I hope you had the time of your life.

 It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.

I hope you had the time of your life.

Just forty and she has won 27 Grammy Awards (with 41 nominations), making her the most awarded living recipient, only three behind classical conductor, Sir Georg Solti, the most honored artist ever.  She is already the most awarded singer…and the most awarded female artist…in Grammy history.

Alison Maria Krauss, born in 1971 in Decatur, Illinois and raised in nearby Champaign, began studying classical violin at age five because her mother was looking for interesting things for her to do. She soon switched to bluegrass and, at the age of eight, began to enter local talent contests.  At ten she had her own band.  At 13 she won the Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Championship and was named “Most Promising Fiddler in the Midwest” by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass in America. She was also discovered to have “the voice of an angel.”

Signed by Rounder Records at the age of 14, she released her first solo album in 1987 and was then invited to join Union Station, the band with which she still performs.  As her contract with Rounder requires her to alternate between releasing solo albums and band albums, her first album with Union Station was released in 1989.

With fourteen albums and a plethora of soundtrack performances (including “O Brother, Where Art Thou”) she is roundly credited with helping to renew interest in bluegrass music.

Written by string-instrumentalist and vocalist Ron Black, today’s poignant selection (even for a Unitarian…and it’s the kind of selection in which Krauss excels) is the final track of Alison Krauss & Union Station’s (1997) seventh album, “So Long So Wrong”.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Sunday 4 March

A Reason For It All

I’ve seen hard times and I’ve been told

It isn’t any wonder that I fall

Why do we suffer, crossing off the years?

There must be a reason for it all

I’ve trusted in you, Jesus to save me from my sin

Heaven is the place I call my home

But I keep on getting caught up in this world I’m living in

And your voice it sometimes fades before I know

 Hurtin’ brings my heart to you, crying with my need

Depending on your love to carry me

The love that shed His blood for all the world to see

This must be the reason for it all

 Hurtin’ brings my heart to you, a fortress in the storm

When what I wrap my heart around is gone

I give my heart so easily to the ruler of this world

When the one who loves me most will give me all

 In all the things that cause me pain you give me eyes to see

I do believe but help my unbelief

I’ve seen hard times and I’ve been told

There is a reason for it all

Outside the French-speaking world his most familiar song is “La Mer” written in 1943.  With more than 400-recorded versions, you may know it as “Beyond the Sea” (or perhaps as “Sailing”), which was a hit (with unrelated English lyrics) for Bobby Darin in the early-‘60s, and George Benson in the mid-‘80s.

Then there’s the popular song that he produced from Paul Verlaine’s “Chanson d’Automne” with a refrain that anyone who has read and/or seen the “The Longest Day” is sure to remember, “Blessent mon cœur d’une langueur monotone…” (“Wound my heart with a monotonous languor…”).  In early June 1944 this was the Allies’ signal to the French Resistance that the invasion of Normandy was underway.

Louis Charles Auguste Claude Trenet was born in 1913 in Narbonne, France, and although a wildly popular performer in his time and place, he is most famous today for his recordings from the late-‘30s through the mid-‘50s, an era when it was unusual for singers to write all their own material.  And write he did, refusing to record or perform any but his own songs. His catalogue features nearly 1,000 of them.

Charles Trenet generally wrote about love, or Paris, or nostalgia (or all three) using imagery that was whimsical, witty and sometimes surreal, combining the verbal nuances of a French song with the rhythms of American swing.

Today’s selection, a huge hit that reverberated with the darkening mood of the French public when it was released in 1938, simply bursts with “joie de vivre” … well, that and onomatopoeia. I include it with a tolerable translation… 

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Saturday 3 March

Boum

La pendule fait tic-tac-tic-tic  (The clock goes “Tic, Tac, Tic, Tic”)

Les oiseaux du lac pic-pac-pic-pic  (The birds of the lake sing Pic-Pac-Pic-Pic”)

Glou-glou-glou font tous les dindons  (“Glou-Glou-Glou” all the turkeys sing)

Et la jolie cloche ding-dang-dong  (And the lovely bells go “Ding-Dang-Dong”)

 Mais… boum!  (But… “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum  (When our heart goes “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (Everything about it says “Boom!”)

Et c’est l’amour qui s’éveille  (And it’s love that has awakened)

Boum!  (“Boom!”)

Il chante “Love in Bloom”  (It sings “love in bloom”)

Au rythme de ce boum  (To the rhythm of this “Boom!”)

Qui redit boum à l’oreille  (Repeating “Boom” in our ear)

 Tout a changé depuis hier et la rue  (Everything has changed since yesterday)

A des yeux qui regardent aux fenêtres  (On the street eyes look out of the windows)

Y’a du lilas et y’a des mains tendues  (There are lilacs and there are open hands)

Sur la mer le soleil va paraître  (And over the ocean the sun is rising)

 Boum!  (“Boom!”)

L’astre du jour fait boum  (The stars today go “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (Everything about it says “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum-boum  (When our hearts go “Boom, Boom!”)

 Le vent dans les bois fait hou-hou  (The wind in the wood moans “Whoooooo”)

La biche aux abois fait mê-ê-ê  (The lamb at bay go “Maaaaaaa”)

La vaisselle cassée fait fric-fric-frac  (A broken dish goes “Frick, Frick, Frack)

Et les pieds mouillés font flic-flic-flac  (And wet feet slip “Flip, Flip, Flap”)

Mais… boum!  (But… “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum  (When our hearts go “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (Everything goes “Boom!”)

L’oiseau dit boum, c’est l’orage  (The bird says “Boom”…It’s a thunderstorm…Brrrrrrr)

 Boum!  (“Boom!”)

L’éclair qui, lui, fait boum  (The lightning that He makes goes “Boom!”)

Et le bon Dieu dit boum  (And the good Lord says “Boom!”)

Dans son fauteuil de nuages  (From his throne of clouds)

 Car mon amour est plus vif que l’éclair  (For this love is livelier than lightning)

Plus léger qu’un oiseau, qu’une abeille  (Lighter than a bird, than a bee)

Et s’il fait boum, s’il se met en colère  (And when it goes “Boom” with its passion)

Il entraîne avec lui des merveilles  (It carries us away with wonder)

 Boum!  (“Boom!”)

Le monde entier fait boum  (The whole world goes “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (The entire universe goes “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum-boum  (Because my heart goes “Boom-Boom!”)

Boum, Boum!  (“Boom, Boom!”)

 Boum!  (“Boom!”)

Le monde entier fait boum  (The whole world goes “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (The entire universe goes “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum-boum  (Because my heart goes “Boom-Boom!”)

Boum, Boum, Boum!  (“Boom, Boom, Boom!”)

 Boum, Boum!  (“Boom, Boom!”)

Je n’entends que Boum, Boum Boum!  (I hear only “Boom, Boom, Boom!”)

Ça fait toujours Boum Boum, Boum!  (It always goes “Boom, Boom, Boom!”)

“Brrrrrrr Boooooom!”

She was a polymath, a Renaissance woman who studied modern languages at Berkeley and served as an EU interpreter in Brussels, while publishing award-winning fiction in “Mademoiselle” and “Cosmopolitan” and scholarly articles in “American Heritage” and “The New York Times Magazine”.  But after becoming inspired by some Billie Holiday recordings while living in Paris, she was especially a jazz singer, whose performing career began in London where she also recorded the first of her two-dozen albums.

Born in Berkeley in 1946, by the late ‘70s Susannah McCorkle (by now living in New York) was an international darling with the jazz critics. In the ‘80s and ‘90s she was a featured performer at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center.  She also appeared regularly with a consummate cabaret show in the Algonquin Hotel’s eminent Oak Room, for which (thanks to her linguistic skills) she translated her own lyrics from French, Italian and Brazilian songs.

But Susannah McCorkle’s was a sad story in the end. Although she exuded a “sultry self-confidence” on-stage, and despite her many gifts, in private she battled with deep depression and, in May of 2001, tragically leapt off her 16^th floor balcony on W. 86^th Street in Manhattan.

With its Bossa Nova overtones and its celebration of this rejuvenating, life-affirming month of March, today’s selection is cited as McCorkle’s favorite number. Written and composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim in 1972, with intermittent Portuguese and English lyrics and very much meant to form a collage, some critics deem it to be the best Brazilian song ever written.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Thursday 1 March 2012

 The Waters of March

 É pau, é pedra,


É o fim do caminho


É um resto de toco

É um pouco sozinho…

A stick a stone

It’s the end of the road

It’s feeling alone

It’s the weight of your load

It’s a sliver of glass

It’s life, it’s the sun

It’s night, it’s death

It’s a knife, it’s a gun

 A flower that blooms

A fox in the brush

A knot in the wood

The song of the thrush

The mystery of life

The steps in the hall

The sound of the wind

And the waterfall

It’s the moon floating free

It’s the curve of the slope

It’s an egg, it’s a bee

It’s a reason for hope

And the riverbank sings

Of the waters of March

It’s the promise of spring

It’s the joy in your heart…

 É o pé, é o chão,


É a marcha estradeira


Passarinho na mão,


pedra de atiradeira

 É uma ave no céu,


É uma ave no chão 


É um regato, é uma fonte,


É um pedaço de pão

 É o fundo do poço,


É o fim do caminho 


No rosto o desgosto,


É um pouco sozinho…

A spear, a spike,

A stake, a nail,

It’s a drip, it’s a drop

It’s the end of the tale

The dew on a leaf

In the morning light

The shot of a gun

In the dead of the night

 A mile, a must

A thrust, a bump

It’s the will to survive

It’s a jolt, it’s a jump

A blueprint of a house

A body in bed

A car stuck in the mud

It’s the mud, it’s the mud

A fish, a flash

A wish, a wing

It’s a hawk, it’s a dove

It’s the promise of spring

And the riverbank sings

Of the waters of March

It’s the end of despair

It’s the joy in your heart…

É pau, é pedra

É o fim do caminho


É um resto de toco

É um pouco sozinho

 É uma cobra, é um pau

É João, é José 


É um espinho na mão

É um corte no pé

 São as águas de março 


Fechando o verão 


É a promessa de vida 


No teu coração…

 A stick, a stone

It’s the end of the road

The stump of a tree

It’s a frog, it’s a toad

A sigh of breath

A walk, a run

A life, a death

A ray in the sun

 And the riverbank sings

Of the waters of March

It’s the promise of life

It’s the joy in your heart…

 São as águas de março 


Fechando o verão 


É a promessa de vida 


No teu coração

 É pau, é pedra

É o fim do caminho


É um resto de toco

É um pouco sozinho

É pau, é pedra

É o fim do caminho


É um resto de toco

É um pouco sozinho…

Wha’?  February 29^th and after a near-snow-free winter there’s snow in the forecast for much of the Baystate?  As the leap-year storm hasn’t arrived there’s only its portent and I know I’ve told this story before but, beyond that debut album cover of the four of them in the bathtub (1966’s “If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears”), The Mamas & The Papas will forever come to mind when the weather is raw and wintry, but not quite white.

The 28th of December 1981 in Northern Ireland was just such a day. I was bumming around Ulster Province, which (at the time) was one of the few places outside America where it was actually beneficial to look like an American. It was early and having purchased my railway ticket to Belfast at the station in Coleraine, I had just enough time for a quick cuppa’ tea. So I was sitting by the window in a nearby cafe (pronounced “kaff”) when a local farmer sporting a flat cap and soiled tweed jacket pulled up on a tractor, clearly his way of getting around, and entered the shop next door.

Time was tight and I soon headed back to the station, marveling along the way how quintessentially Irish this scene was, what with that farmer in his wellies and the morning mist mingling with the smell of peat smoke from someone’s fireplace. Then I passed the tractor…with its built-in radio blaring today’s selection (and ‘pop’ went the reverie).

Written by John and Michelle Phillips in 1963 while they were living in New York and recorded and released in 1965, this was The Mamas & The Papas breakthrough single and it quickly peaked at Number 4 on the U.S. Charts and Number 23 in the UK.

TODAY’S SONG – Wednesday 29 February 2012

California Dreamin’

All the leaves are brown

And the sky is grey

I’ve been for a walk

On a winter’s day

I’d be safe and warm

If I was in L.A.

California Dreamin’

On such a winter’s day

 Stopped into a church

I passed along the way

Well, I got down on my knees

And I pretend to pray

 You know the preacher likes the cold

He knows I’m gonna’ stay

California Dreamin’

On such a winter’s day

All the leaves are brown

And the sky is grey

I’ve been for a walk

On a winter’s day

If I didn’t tell her

I could leave today

California Dreamin’

On such a winter’s day

On such a winter’s day

On such a winter’s day

In the right hands a twelve-string acoustic guitar, its double strings in six courses, produces a rich, shimmering quality…and despite having to overcome such obstacles as partial hearing loss and near-career-ending tendon damage, Leo Kottke has long been recognized as a twelve-string master.

Born in Athens, Georgia in 1945, Kottke’s family moved so often that he was raised in twelve (there’s that number again) different states. Influenced by folk and delta blues, he learned to play trombone and violin before turning to guitar.  A mishap with a firecracker permanently damaged the hearing in his left ear, a condition exacerbated (in both ears) when he was exposed to big guns while in the Naval Reserve, so much so that he was discharged early.

After a stretch of hitchhiking and busking ‘round the country, Kottke settled in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, becoming a coffeehouse regular. In 1969 he recorded his first two albums, the live “12-String Blues” and the quintessential “6-and-12-String Guitar.”  Never a top-40 kind of guy, today’s 1974 selection is Kottke’s only single to actually hit the charts.

By the early ‘80s his aggressive picking style caught up with him and he began to suffer from nerve damage and painful tendonitis in his right hand. So he took a break and changed to a classical style, using fingertips rather than fingerpicks and changing his right hand positioning.  Having collaborated with the likes of Chet Atkins, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Cash, Fleetwood Mac and Rickey Lee Jones, Kottke has recorded nearly 40 albums. These days you can still catch him on “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Featured on his seventh album, “Ice Water” and peaking at Number 69 on the Billboard Charts, “Pamela Brown” was written by Tom T. Hall, who some may recall as the writer/composer of “Harper Valley PTA.”

 TODAY’S SONG – Tuesday 28 February 2012

Pamela Brown

 I’m the guy that didn’t marry pretty Pamela Brown

Educated, well-intentioned good girl in our town

I wonder where I’d be today if she had loved me too

Probably be driving kids to school

 I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

All of my good times – all my roamin’ around

One of these days I might be in your town

And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

 Seen the lights of cities and been inside their doors

Sailed to foreign countries and walked upon their shores

I guess the guy she married was the best part of my luck

She dug him cause he drove a pick-up truck

 I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

All of my good times – all my roamin’ around

One of these days I might be in your town

And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

 I don’t have to tell you just how beautiful she was

Everything it takes to get a guy like me in love

Lord I hope she’s happy cause she sure deserves to be

Especially for what she did for me

I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

All of my good times – all my roamin’ around

One of these days I might be in your town

And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown