I am convinced. Even now.  If you’re artistically inclined and spend a little time in Paris with the “right” person, your muse will come a’ calling. Penned by English writer, entertainer and Head of Variety at the BBC, Eric Maschwitz (using the ambitious nom de plume, Holt Marvell), today’s selection came to light after a fine romance with Hollywood actress Anna May Wong, who had recently departed for America.

Along with “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” (another Holt Marvell wonder) “These Foolish Things” is known as a “Mayfair Song” although many of the lyrics clearly evoke the City of Light.

Written one Sunday morning in Maschwitz’s London flat, with three choruses and a verse, the lyrics were dictated over the telephone to composer Jack Strachey, who quickly wrote the music.  The song was first used in a 1936 late-evening “live review” broadcast, and seemed like such a clunker that Maschwitz’s agent refused to publish it, allowing Maschwitz to keep the copyright. A stroke of luck because soon-after, popular pianist Leslie Hutchinson discovered the sheet music on a piano in Maschwitz’s office and asked if he could record it.

This time it was a huge success and Maschwitz later claimed to have earned in excess of £40,000 (a tidy sum in the ‘30s and ‘40s) from the soon-to-be standard, which has since been covered by the likes of Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby (who omitted the line, “The song that Crosby sings”), Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, James Brown, Aaron Neville, Sammy Davis Jr and many others, with instrumental jazz arrangements covered by Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker, Count Basie and Lester Young.

Today’s version (with lyrics that vary slightly from the original) was the title track for a debut solo album in 1973, although the singer was already a well-known recording artist.  Born and raised on a farm in County Durham, Bryan Ferry was a pottery teacher by day and a musician by night when he and some friends (including the eccentric, talented Brian Eno) formed the art-rock group, Roxy Music in 1971.

Remembered today for its musical sophistication and fascinating experimentation, as well as for its racy album covers, Ferry, who had gained renown for his sartorial elegance, managed to become involved with a heroic number of those racy cover models (most famously, Jerry Hall).  Yes, he looked good, but anyone who begins his solo career singing about the ‘sigh of midnight trains in empty stations’ has a few of the (not so foolish but) fundamental things…figured out

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Saturday 5 May

 These Foolish Things

 Oh will you never let me be?

Oh will you never set me free?

The ties that bound us are still around us

There’s no escape that I can see.

And still those little things remain

That bring me happiness or pain.

 A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces

An airline ticket to romantic places,

And still my heart has wings

These foolish things

Remind me of you.

 A tinkling piano in the next apartment

Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant,

A fairground’s painted swings,

These foolish things

Remind me of you.

 You came, you saw, you conquered me,

When you did that to me, I somehow knew that this had to be.

 The winds of March that make my heart a dancer.

A telephone that rings – but who’s to answer?

Oh, how the ghost of you clings

These foolish things

Remind me of you

 Gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow,

Wild strawberries only seven francs a kilo.

And still my heart has wings

These foolish things

Remind me of you.

The park at evening when the bell has sounded,

The Isle de France with all the girls around it.

The beauty that is spring

These foolish things

Remind me of you.

I know that this was bound to be

These things have haunted me

For you’ve entirely enchanted me

 The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations

Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations.

Oh, how the ghost of you clings

These foolish things

Remind me of you.

 First daffodils and long excited cables

And candlelight on little corner tables,

And still my heart has wings

These foolish things

Remind me of you.

 The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses

The waiters whistling as the last bar closes,

The song that Crosby sings,

These foolish things

Remind me of you.

How strange, how sweet to find you still

These things are dear to me

That seem to bring you so near to me

 The scent of smouldering leaves, the wail of steamers,

Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers,

Oh, how the ghost of you clings

These foolish things

Remind me of you, just you.

“I have a relative who is involved in one of those kinds of government jobs where they can’t say what they do,” Bruce Cockburn once explained.  “The part you can say involves monitoring other people’s radio transmissions and breaking codes. At that time China and the Soviet Union were almost at war on their mutual border. And both of them had nuclear capabilities. (My relative) said, ‘We could wake up tomorrow to a nuclear war.’ Coming from him, it was a serious statement.”

“So I woke up the next morning and it wasn’t a nuclear war. It was a real nice day and there was all this good stuff going on and I had a dream that night which is the dream that is referred to in the first verse of the song, where there were lions at the door, but they weren’t threatening, it was kind of a peaceful thing.”

Born in 1945 in Ottawa, Ontario, Bruce Douglas Cockburn’s first guitar was one he found in his grandmother’s attic, which he adorned with golden stars and used to play along to radio hits….”Hopes to become a musician,” stated the caption under his high school photo. “He has a guitar.”

After graduation Cockburn became a busker in Paris for a while, then he enrolled at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. But as occasionally happens, his passion to create and perform conflicted with the rigors of academia. He returned to Ottawa and eventually signed with a small, local record label. Wondering Where the Lions Are from his 1979 album, Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws gained wide exposure outside of Canada and ushered in an international career for Cockburn.

Beyond its messages of hope and spiritually there has long been speculation about references made in the song, many of them ostensibly specific to Vancouver (“The Lions” are a pair of pointed peaks overlooking the city for example and there are always “freighters on the nod” in Vancouver Harbor and English Bay) as well as Vancouver Island (where orange Mars Water Bombers, used to fight forest fires, float on Sproat Lake). In the end, however Cockburn is more than happy to allow them to remain slightly oblique.

Today’s selection was Bruce Cockburn’s only Top 40 hit in the United States, peaking at Number 21 on the Billboard charts.  While also a significant hit in Canada, seven of his subsequent singles were far bigger hits there.  Still, Wondering Where the Lions Are was named the “29th Greatest Canadian Song of All Time” by CBC Radio… “All time” …we’re talking about eternity here.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 4 May

Wondering Where the Lions Are

 Sun’s up, uuh huh, looks okay

The world survives into another day

And I’m thinking about eternity

Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me.

 I had another dream about lions at the door

They weren’t half as frightening as they were before

But I’m thinking about eternity

Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me.

Walls, windows, trees, waves coming through

You be in me and I’ll be in you

Together in eternity

Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

Up among the firs where it smells so sweet

Or down in the valley where the river used to be

I got my mind on eternity

Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I’m wondering where the lions are…

I’m wondering where the lions are…

Huge orange flying boat rises off a lake,

Thousand-year-old petroglyphs doing a double take,

Pointing a finger at eternity

I’m sitting in the middle of this ecstasy

Young men marching, helmets shining in the sun,

Polished and precise like the brain behind the gun

(Should be!) They got me thinking about eternity

Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

 And I’m wondering where the lions are…

I’m wondering where the lions are…

 Freighters on the nod on the surface of the bay

One of these days we’re going to sail away,

Going to sail into eternity

Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

 And I’m wondering where the lions are…

I’m wondering where the lions are

Here’s a case where “what you see” is not necessarily “what you get.”  A few months ago (6 March) we featured the song, Fields of Gold, sung by one of the most mellifluous folk voices ever recorded, that of Eva Cassidy.

If you knew nothing about today’s selection beyond the fact that it’s a traditional American folk/spiritual that has been covered by the likes of Dolly Parton; Tennessee Ernie Ford; Alison Krauss; Peter, Paul and Mary; Emmylou Harris; Pete Seeger and Johnny Cash (among many others)… you’d no-doubt arrive at certain assumptions about the listening experience you’re in for. The fact that Wayfaring Stranger is especially associated with Burl Ives (so much so that he became known as “The Wayfaring Stranger”) would surely seal it for you.

And having heard her rendition of Fields of Gold you’d be correct in thinking that the shy, waif-like Cassidy could do wonderful things with such a song.  But what might surprise you is the kinds of wonderful things she actually did.  Unfortunately they’re a key reason why she lived her entire life in near obscurity.

Eva Cassidy’s singing had astonishing range and versatility and regardless of genre she could effortlessly out-perform many of the world’s great jazz, folk, soul, gospel, pop, country and blues singers.  But her unwillingness to narrow her stylistic focus to one genre prohibited her from securing any kind of record deal.  Artistically, she was compelled to “sing it” her way, which record executives saw as anathema to immediate marketability.

In the case of today’s selection, Cassidy opted to eschew the tried-and-true folk and country influences and bounce the song into a new “spiritual” universe.  Listen to her splendid vocal phrasing and note how she is able to float that prhasing along the bar lines of the melody. Then compare the second chorus with the first, and notice how she increasingly wears that poor wayfaring stranger’s sentiments on her sleeve.  Lastly, be sure to listen closely to the poignant conclusion, sadly portentous of her own life’s story… “I’m going back to see my savior; oh, I’m going back, no more to roam.”

The fair-skinned/fair-haired Cassidy was dead within a year from malignant melanoma and today’s selection was first released on her posthumous debut album in 1997, ‘Eva by Heart’ and then included on the break-through compilation album, “Songbird,” the following year. Word has it that this track was nearly lost to the cutting room floor (deemed too rough) and that it was only through her father’s intervention that we are able to appreciate what the woman who redefined “Fields of Gold” could do with a “Wayfaring Stranger.”

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Thursday 3 May

Wayfaring Stranger

 I am a poor wayfaring stranger

While journeying through this world of woe

And there’s no sickness, toil nor danger

In that bright land to which I go

 I’m going there to see my Father

I’m going there no more to roam

I’m only going over Jordan

I’m only going over home

I know dark clouds will gather around me

I know my way is rough and steep

And beautiful fields lie just before me

Where God’s redeemed there vigils keep

I’m going there to see my Father

I’m going there no more to roam

I’m only going over Jordan

I’m only going over home

 I’m going there to see my Mother

I’m going there no more to roam

I’m only going over Jordan

I’m only going over home

 I want to wear that crown of glory

When I get home to that good land

Well I want to shout salvation’s story

In concert with the blood-washed band

 I’m going there to see my Savior

I’m going there no more to roam

I’m only going over Jordan

I’m only going over home

Born in Dallas and raised in San Antonio, Bette Claire McMurray married Warren Audrey Nesmith just before he shipped off to War in the Spring of ’42. Nine months later their son was born in Houston.  Unfortunately the Nesmiths divorced soon after Warren’s return and Bette and her son, Robert Michael returned to Dallas where she still had family.

To support herself, Bette took on a number of temp jobs, learning invaluable skills along the way, including shorthand, graphic design and touch-typing.  Finally she was offered a permanent secretarial position at Texas Bank and Trust and such was her proficiency that she eventually became an executive secretary, pretty much the top rung of the ladder for a woman in that time and that place.

In the 1960s IBM’s Selecectric typewriter, with its groundbreaking typeball design, would prove to be a typing pool marvel, but here in the ‘50s electric typewriters featured key-baskets and typing ribbons that were notorious for their typographical errors.  With her graphics experience it occurred to Bette that artists don’t erase their mistakes, they simply paint over them.  “So,” she once recounted, “I decided to use what artists use. I put some tempera water-based paint in a bottle and took my watercolor brush to the office.  I used that to correct my mistakes.”

For the next few years she used it in secrecy and continued to improve upon this white correction paint, even incorporating the help of her son’s high school chemistry teacher.  While some executives admonished her when they discovered that she’d been using it, Bette’s “paint out” was in high demand among her co-workers.  In 1956 she began to market the correction fluid as “Mistake Out” and when it started to catch on, she changed the product’s name to “Liquid Paper” and launched her own company.

Over the next quarter century Bette Graham (she remarried in 1962) built the company into an international, multimillion-dollar business and by the time she sold the Liquid Paper Corporation to Gillette in 1979 (for $48 million), it employed 200 people and made 25 million bottles of correction fluid per year.  When Bette died at the age of 56, just a few months after selling her company, a considerable portion of her estate went to the Gihon Foundation so that it could establish its Council of Ideas, a think tank (active between 1990 and 2000) that was devoted to exploring world problems.

The remainder of Graham’s estate went to her son, Michael, who had already made somewhat of a name for himself as an actor and musician, and would go on to become a music video pioneer (winning the first Grammy Award ever given for a Video of the Year,in 1982) and with the $25 million he inherited, an eminent philanthropist.

To many, of course, Michael Nesmith will best be remembered for the wool hat he wore as Mike in the NBC comedy, The Monkees, which ran from 1966 to 1968. But Nesmith was also a celebrated songwriter who, prior to joining The Monkees, had written the hit, “Different Drum” made famous by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys.

In 1969 he formed the collaborative First National Band, writing much of the group’s music himself, including today’s selection. Released in 1970 on his debut album, “Magnetic South” it rose to Number 21 on the Billboard Charts.  And although it would be Michael Nesmith’s only “solo” top 40 single, when it hit the charts Bette Graham herself was still years away from topping her 40s, and as any proud mother would be, she was surely very pleased with “Joanne”.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – 2 May 2012

 Joanne

 Her name was Joanne

And she lived near a meadow

By a pond

And she touched me for a moment

With a look that spoke to me

Of her sweet long

 Then the woman that she was

Drove her on with desperation

And I saw, as she went

A most hopeless situation

For Joanne and the man

And the time that made them both run

 She was only a girl

I know that well, but still I could not see

That the hold that she had

Was much stronger than the love

She felt for me

But staying with her

And my little bit of wisdom

Broke down her desires

Like a light through a prism

Into yellows and blues

And the tune that I could not have sung

Though the essence is gone

I have no tears to cry for her

And my only thoughts of her

Are kind

 Her name was Joanne

And she lived near a meadow by a pond

And she touched me for a moment

With a look that spoke to me

Of her sweet long

Then the woman that she was

Drove her on with desperation

And I saw as she went

A most hopeless situation

For Joanne and the man

And the time that made them both run

 For Joanne and the man

And the time that made them both run

Remember when album covers were fun? Take this one for example. Designed by an artist named, John Connor who used an “anamorphic projection” of the band members’ features.  It looked distorted until you held up the accompanying lyric sheet, which had special pinholes through which the picture (when viewed at an angle) looked perfectly correct.

Formed in 1969, when Fairport Convention bassist, Ashley Hutchings left that seminal band with the idea for a new group that combined traditional folk songs with rock and blues, Steeleye Span (the name comes from a character in the Lincolnshire song, “Horkstow Grange”) is still in business and remains at the vanguard of the longstanding British folk revival. Not that it didn’t take a while to get there.

It wasn’t until 1973, when they were opening for Jethro Tull in concert and had released their fifth album, Parcel of Rogues, that they finally had a hit. Sung a cappella in Latin, “Gaudete” reached Number 14 on the UK Singles Chart at Christmas time and provided Steeleye Span with its first Top of the Pops performance. And it wasn’t until the group’s eighth album, “All Around My Hat” in 1975 (with the really cool cover) that they began to gain a solid international following after reaching Number 143 on the American Billboard charts.  With English origins that stretch back at least to the 1820s, the album’s rollicking title track is Steeleye Span’s highest charting single (reaching Number 5 in the UK).

Like many such traditional songs there are numerous versions with perhaps the earliest featuring a Cockney costermonger (street vendor who sold fruit and vegetables) whose fiancée has been sentenced to seven years in Australia for theft.  He vows to remain true to her by wearing willow sprigs in his hatband  (a symbol of mourning) for “twelve-month and a day.” Other versions can be found in Canada, Scotland and in Ireland, where the protagonist is a Republican girl who swears to wear the Irish tricolor in her hat in remembrance of her lover who died in the Easter Rising.

Steeleye Span’s version features lyrics that are interpolated from at least two other songs, “Farewell He” offering a sermon-like warning to young girls on the faithlessness of young men; and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” which is an old U.S. military song (still used to keep cadence in marching) that was used in the John Ford film of the same name and includes the recognizable refrain “Far away! Far away! She wore it for her soldier who was far, far away.”

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Tuesday 1 May

All Around My Hat

All around my hat

I will wear the green willow

And all around my hat

For a twelve month and a day

And if anyone should ask me

The reason why I’m wearing it

It’s all for my true love

Who’s far, far away

 Fare thee well cold winter

And fare thee well cold frost

Nothing have I gained

But my own true love I’ve lost

I’ll sing and I’ll be merry

When on occasion I do see

He’s a false deluded young man

Let him go farewell he

 The other night he brought me

A fine diamond ring but,

He thought to have deprived me

Of a far better thing

But I being careful

As lovers ought to be

He’s a false deluded young man

Let her go farewell he

And all around my hat

I will wear the green willow

And all around my hat

For a twelve month and a day

And if anyone should ask me

The reason why I’m wearing it

It’s all for my true love

Who’s far, far away

With a quarter pound of reason

And a half a pound of sense

A small spring of time

And as much of prudence

You mix them all together

And you will plainly see

He’s a false deluded young man

Let him go, farewell he

And all around my hat

I will wear the green willow

And all around my hat

For a twelve month and a day

And if anyone should ask me

The reason why I’m wearing it

It’s all for my true love

Who’s far, far away

 All around my hat

I will wear the green willow

And all around my hat

For a twelve month and a day

And if anyone should ask me

The reason why I’m wearing it

It’s all for my true love

Who’s far, far away

 All around my hat

I will wear the green willow

And all around my hat

For a twelve month and a day

And if anyone should ask me

The reason why I’m wearing it

It’s all for my true love

Who’s far, far away

It’s hard to imagine a popular song that the following artists (among others) have in common: The Who, Cher, Emmylou Harris & Gram Parsons, Jimmy Webb, Jennifer Warnes, Journey, Don McLean, Joan Jett, Roy Orbison, Bad Romance, Kim Carne, Heart, Pat Boone, Keith Richards & Norah Jones, Juice Newton, Sinead O’Conner, The Everly Brother, Robin Gibb, Rod Stewart, Leo Sayer, Nazareth and Jim Capaldi.

Written and composed by Boudleaux Bryant in 1960 and first recorded by The Everly Brothers (although not as a single), “Love Hurts” became a hit for Roy Orbison the following year…in Australia (hitting Number 5 on the charts). In 1973 a cover of the song by Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons was included on Parson’s posthumously released album, “Grievous Angel” and Emmylou has included it as part  of her live repertoire ever since.

The most popular recording of the song, and perhaps the one you most remember, was by Scottish metal band, Nazareth whose version reached Number 10 on the U.S. Billboard Singles Charts in 1975; at nearly the same time that today’s selection by Jim Capaldi, hit Number Four on the UK Charts.

Born in Evesham, Worcestershire in 1944, Capaldi was yet another of those seminal rock artists.  With a musical career that lasted more than four decades he was a founding member of Traffic (Mr. Fantasy was one of his songs), and performed as drummer and percussionist for the likes Hendrix, Clapton, Harrison and Santana.

After his death from stomach cancer in 2005, the Dear Mr. Fantasy concert was held in London to celebrate his life, with artists as varied as Pete Townshend, Cat Stevens, Bill Wyman and (of course) Steve Winwood and all profits going to The Jubilee Action Street Children Appeal.  Which goes to show that although there are times when love hurts, there are other times when belovedness relieves.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Monday 30 April

Love Hurts

Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and mars

Any heart, it’s not tough or strong enough

To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain

Love is like a flower, holds a lot of rain

Love hurts

 I’m young, I know, but even so

I know a thing or two I’ve learned from you

I really learned a lot, really learned a lot

Love is like a stove, burns you when it’s hot

Love hurts, oo love hurts

 Some fools dream of happiness, blissfulness, togetherness

Some fools fool themselves, I guess, but they’re not foolin’ me

I know it isn’t true, I know it isn’t true

Love is just a lie, made to make you blue

Love hurts, oo love hurts

 Some fools dream of happiness, blissfulness, togetherness

Some fools fool themselves, I guess, but they’re not foolin’ me

I know it isn’t true, I know it isn’t true

Love is just a lie, made to make you blue

Love hurts, love hurts, oo love hurts

Oo love hurts, yeah love hurts ….

He’s an interesting guy, a true bibliophile, who has gone so far as to read the Random House Dictionary cover to cover.  His website contains a year-by-year listing of every book he has read since 1968.  Both the first and thousandth listings are Rousseau’s Confessions.

A left-handed multi-instrumentalist who plays violin, piano and guitar, he has walked across the United States (in increments) on several occasions, writing poetry along the way.  He has also walked across Japan and has been incrementally working on Europe since 1998.

In the early ‘60s, prior to his incredible musical success, he earned a BA in Art History followed by a Masters in Mathematics, both from Columbia University.  Then at the very peak of that commercial success he received his doctorate in Mathematics Education, also at Columbia. And yet he is best known for his voice.

Arthur Ira “Art” Garfunkel was born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York in 1941.  When bar mitzvahed he performed as cantor, singing for his family for over four hours. By this time he had already met his future singing partner, Paul Simon after they’d both been cast in the same PS 164 production of “Alice in Wonderland” as sixth graders.  As legend has it, Simon first became interested in singing after hearing Garfunkel sing “Too Young” in a school talent show and in time the two began performing together as “Tom & Jerry” at high school dances.

Eventually they would take their rocky ride as one of popular music’s great acts (Simon & Garfunkel are ranked as #40 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest artists of all time) and although there would be numerous reunions their final album would be 1970’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. Then Garfunkel would turn to acting, starring in Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe.  He would also turn to teaching, serving as a mathematics teacher at a private school in Connecticut.

And in 1973 he would return to singing, releasing his debut solo album Angel Clare (named after a character from Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles) which reached Number Five on the Billboard Album charts. Written and first recorded by the British Afro-pop band, Osbisa in 1971, today’s World Music selection is the eighth track on the album.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Sunday 29 April 

Woyaya

 We are going, heaven knows where we are going,

We’ll know we’re there.

We will get there; heaven knows how we will get there,

We know we will.

 It will be hard we know

And the road will be muddy and rough,

But we’ll get there; heaven knows how we will get there,

We know we will.

 We are going, heaven knows where we are going,

We’ll know we’re there.

“Eve is a twofold mystery.” ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 “If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.  And they tolerated it and let us go ahead and play with our toys.” ~ Orson Welles

After yesterday’s pean to timid/impudent young men I thought it best to select something that relates to the youthful years of humanity’s better half, because in the words of Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Maiden herself,“The cocks may crow, but it’s the hen that lays the egg.”

According to singer/songwriter, Vanessa Carlton, today’s selection is about “the journey of one girl and her perception of her environment and how she starts out as a wide-eyed person, but everyone gets hardened by life, but not necessarily to the point where you can’t feel anymore.”

Born in 1980 in Milford, Pennsylvania and an alumna of the School of American Ballet, Carlton began performing in Manhattan clubs and bars while a student at Columbia University.  Her break came when she met a record producer at a singer-songwriter circle meeting, who invited her to make a demo. The demo led to a recording contract and her 2002 debut album, “Be Not Nobody” (featuring “A Thousand Miles” which reached Number Five on the Billboard Charts) was certified platinum (a million record sales) in less than a year.

Co-written with singer/songwriter, Stephan Jenkins (who also produced it), “White Houses” was included on Carlton’s second album, “Harmonium” in 2004. Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac played acoustic guitar on the track after Jenkins happened to meet him outside the studio and invited him to join the session.  “He just came in, played this great riff, recorded it and then he left.  It all happened very fast and turned out amazing,” said a bemused Jenkins.

Although not a commercial success upon its release, “White Houses” has grown to become a “cult classic” among teenagers (I can attest to that).  Better still, it provided the inspiration for “Building White Houses,” a 2004/5 drive to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 26 April

White Houses

Crashed on the floor when I moved in

This little bungalow with some strange new friends

Stay up too late, and I’m too thin

We promise each other it’s ’til the end

Now we’re spinning empty bottles

It’s the five of us

With pretty eyed boys girls die to trust

I can’t resist the day

No, I can’t resist the day

 Jenny screams out and it’s no pose

‘Cause when she dances she goes and goes

Beer through the nose on an inside joke

And I’m so excited, I haven’t spoken

And she’s so pretty, and she’s so sure

Maybe I’m more clever than a girl like her

Summer is all in bloom

Summer is ending soon

 It’s all right and it’s nice not to be so alone

But I hold on to your secrets in white houses

Maybe I’m a little bit over my head

I come undone at the things he said

And he’s so funny in his bright red shirt

We were all in love and we all got hurt

I sneak into his car’s cracked leather seat

The smell of gasoline in the summer heat

Boy, we’re going way too fast

It’s all too sweet to last

It’s all right

And I put myself in his hands

But I hold on to your secrets in white houses

Love, or something ignites in my veins

And I pray it never fades in white houses

My first time, hard to explain

Rush of blood, oh, and a little bit of pain

On a cloudy day, it’s more common than you think

He’s my first mistake

Maybe you were all faster than me

We gave each other up so easily

These silly little wounds will never mend

I feel so far from where I’ve been

So I go, and I will not be back here again

I’m gone as the day is fading on white houses

I lied, wrote my injuries all in the dust

In my heart is the five of us

In white houses

 And you, maybe you’ll remember me

What I gave is yours to keep

In white houses

“Young men are pretty much the same everywhere, I guess. They never have their wits about them. They never mean what they say, because they don’t understand the use of words. They are generally half impudent and half timid … Indeed there is no such thing as a young man, for a man is not really a man till he is middle-aged.” – The Duke’s Children (1879) Anthony Trollope 

Born in the Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby in 1948, Todd Harry Rundgren had some success as a teen with his garage rock group, the Nazz.  A fine songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, he was influenced instrumentally (and production-wise) by mid/late ‘60s British groups like The Who, Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Cream and vocally by the likes of The Beach Boys, Gilbert & Sullivan, classic Rock n’ Roll and by Broadway musicals.  His major inspiration however, at least early-on, was the great Laura Nyro.

“I knew her fairly well,” he once said. “I actually had arranged a meeting (in 1968), just because I was so infatuated with her and I wanted to meet the person who had produced all this music. We got along, and we were kind of friendly, and actually, after I met her the first time, she asked me if I wanted to be her bandleader. But the Nazz had just signed a record contract and I couldn’t skip out on the band, even though it was incredibly tempting.”

Actually, breaking it off with the Nazz came the following year and Rundgren, who’d considered working as a computer programmer, learned how to engineer and master his own records, becoming a well respected and accomplished producer, not only for his own projects but (through the years) for numerous others too, including albums by: The Band, Bad Finger, Grand Funk Railroad, Hall & Oates, Ian and Sylvia, Meat Loaf, Patti Smith, The Tubes, XTC and Cheap Trick.

In 1970 he formed his next band, Runt with (what a kick!) Soupy Sales’ two sons, Hunt and Tony and released a debut album that some maintain is the group’s debut (the name of the album was also Runt) while others refer to it as Rundgren’s debut solo album as he not only wrote, produced and sang the songs, he also played many of the instruments as well, including keyboards and guitars.  Rundgren alone is pictured on the album cover and, when reissued, his name received the sole artist credit.

The third track of Runt, and today’s selection about timid/impudent young men everywhere, who never quite “mean what they say because they don’t understand the use of words,” hit Number 20 on the Billboard Charts.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Thursday 26 April 

We Gotta’ Get You a Woman

 Leroy, boy, is that you?

I thought your post-hangin’ days were through

Sunkin’ eyes and full of sighs

Tell no lies, you get wise

I tell you now we’re gonna pull you through

There’s only one thing left that we can do

 We gotta’ get you a woman

It’s like nothin’ else to make you feel sure you’re alive

We gotta’ get you a woman

We better get walkin’, we’re wastin’ time talkin’ now

 Leroy, boy, you’re my friend

You say how and I’ll say when

Come and meet me down the street

Take a seat, it’s my treat

You may not ever get this chance again

That empty feeling’s just about to end

Talkin’ ’bout life and what it means to you

It don’t mean nothin’ if it don’t run through

I got one thing to say, you know it’s true

You got to find some time to get this thing together

 We gotta’ get you a woman

It’s like nothin’ else to make you feel sure you’re alive

We gotta’ get you a woman

We better get walkin’, we’re wastin’ time talkin’ now

Talkin’ ’bout things about that special one

They may be stupid but they sure are fun

I’ll give it to you while we’re on the run

Because we ain’t got time to get this thing together, ’cause we

Got to get together with a woman who has been around

One who knows better than to let you down

Let’s hope there’s still one left in this whole town

And that she’ll take some time to get this thing together

We gotta’ get you a woman

And when we’re through with you

We’ll get me one too

Jay Ketcham “Ketch” Miller Secor had a plan. “I had just read the book, Bound for Glory, and I knew that I wanted to go hobo with music. So we went out on the road,” he recounted.

Ketch, a fiddle player since seventh grade, had learned to play the banjo while at Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire (established by John Phillips, yes there IS a tie to rival Phillips Andover, which was established by his nephew, Samuel Phillips Jr.) and he used his folks’ Harrisonburg, Virginia home as his base for a series of “musician-hobo jaunts” with some friends, up to Maine and Canada.

In time sensibility reigned, in the form of his long-standing girlfriend, Lydia who was now a student at Cornell, so Ketch enrolled at nearby Ithaca College and brought along his old musician pal, Critter Fuqua (nope, not making this stuff up).  In Ithaca Ketch and Critter discovered a passel of like-minded string-picking “Americana” musicians and decided to form a band.

But after Lydia broke off the relationship, Ketch decided to hit the road again and convinced the others to join him.  Calling themselves Old Crow Medicine Show (O.C.M.S.) they recorded a cassette tape they could sell (using Critter’s bedroom as their studio) and headed north, busking their way across Canada before circling back through the States and ending up in the Appalachian town of Butler, Tennessee with a full repertoire of bluegrass, blues and folk numbers.

You will be pleased to know that upon graduating Lydia had a change of heart and after getting his address from his parents she showed up at Ketch’s cabin door early one morning. Soon after they were married (she is now an award winning writer) and soon after that the group received an invitation to play at the MerleFest Music Festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, where they were a hit.  Having released seven albums, Old Crow Medicine Show has been a staple at music festivals throughout the world ever since.

Composed of two parts, with one written by Ketch Secor, today’s selection is the group’s signature song.  Interestingly the other part was written five years before Secor was born.  Even more interestingly it was written by Bob Dylan.

“I heard a Dylan song that was unfinished back in high school and I finished it,” said Secor.  “As a serious Bob Dylan fan, I was listening to anything he had put on tape, and this was an outtake of something he had mumbled.”

What Dylan had “mumbled” during one of the 1973 recording sessions for the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid movie soundtrack, became the chorus for the song, “Wagon Wheel”  and Secor added additional “autobiographical” verses between the refrain.

“I sang it all around the country from about 17 to 26, before I ever even thought, ‘oh I better look into this,” said Secor, who decided to seek a copyright before the group included the song on its 2004 (full-length) debut album “Old Crow Medicine Show”. In doing so he discovered that Dylan had already credited the phrase “Rock me, Mama” to pre-war bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, who himself had likely taken it from an early Big Bill Broozny recording.  In the end Secor and Dylan signed a co-writing agreement for “Wagon Wheel” with official credits going to Dylan/Secor.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Wednesday 25 April

Wagon Wheel

Headed down south to the land of the pines

And I’m thumbin’ my way into North Caroline

Starin’ up the road

Pray to God I see headlights

 I made it down the coast in seventeen hours

Pickin’ me a bouquet of dogwood flowers

And I’m a hopin’ for Raleigh

I can see my baby tonight

 So rock me mama like a wagon wheel

Rock me mama anyway you feel

Hey mama rock me

Rock me mama like the wind and the rain

Rock me mama like a southbound train

Hey mama rock me

 Runnin’ from the cold up in New England

I was born to be a fiddler in an old-time string band

My baby plays the guitar

I pick a banjo now

Oh, the North Country winters keep a gettin’ me now

Lost my money playin’ poker so I had to up and leave

But I ain’t a turnin’ back

To livin’ that old life no more

 So rock me mama like a wagon wheel

Rock me mama anyway you feel

Hey mama rock me

Rock me mama like the wind and the rain

Rock me mama like a southbound train

Hey mama rock me

 Walkin’ to the south out of Roanoke

I caught a trucker out of Philly

Had a nice long toke

But he’s a headed west from the Cumberland Gap

To Johnson City, Tennessee

 And I gotta’ get a move on before the sun

I hear my baby callin’ my name

And I know that she’s the only one

And if I die in Raleigh

At least I will die free

 So rock me mama like a wagon wheel

Rock me mama anyway you feel

Hey mama rock me

Rock me mama like the wind and the rain

Rock me mama like a southbound train

Hey mama rock me