It was the first recording by a non-British artist on Apple Records and it was called, quite simply, James Taylor.  Beset by heroin addiction and clinical depression, the then-unknown Taylor had been signed-on by Peter Asher who, in 1968, was head of A&R (artists and repertoire) for the new label.

Once part of the English duo, Peter and Gordon, it was Asher’s incredible fortune to be the older brother of Jane, who was Paul McCartney’s girlfriend in the mid-‘60s.  As a result Peter and Gordon ended up with a number of Lennon-McCartney discards, including their biggest hit, “World Without Love”.  After the duo disbanded Asher, who read philosophy at King’s College London (shameless plug), went on to Apple Records.

Upon signing Taylor, Asher agreed to produce the album (and perform as a backup vocalist as well) and although it wasn’t a commercial success he had such faith in the young American’s potential that he moved to the States and became his manager.  Asher also produced many of Taylor’s recordings between 1970 and 1985, beginning with “Sweet Baby James”.

Produced at Trident Studio, then the most technologically advanced studio in England, “James Taylor” was recorded using session time that had been booked by the Beatles, who were then recording “The White Album.” Paul McCartney and George Harrison showed particular interest in what Taylor was doing… and Taylor, of course, was mindful of them.

So much so that he changed the name of one of the songs from the original “I Feel Fine” (also the name of the Beatle’s eighth single) to “Something in the Way She Moves.” Irony of ironies the retitled song then served as the starting point for the first (and most successful) Beatle’s track that Harrison ever wrote.  Note Taylor’s song title, and then think of the first line to Harrison’s “Something.”

McCartney and Harrison also guested on this number, which poignantly refers to Taylor’s affliction but also includes the line “with a holy host of others standing ’round me,” referring to the Beatles in the room. Mainly however, “Carolina in My Mind” refers to his increasing homesickness for the tranquil Piedmont where he spent his formative years, a sentiment that hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Although born in Boston, James Taylor was raised in Chapel Hill, where his father was dean of UNC’s School of Medicine and every year the UNC graduating class sings it during commencement.  In fact, nearly a half a century after those days when he felt as if he was on “the dark side of the moon,” the song is recognized as the Tarheel State’s unofficial anthem. And no surprise, it’s a favorite of the neighboring Palmetto State too.

 LISTEN TO THIS SONG – Tuesday 5 March

Carolina in My Mind

 In my mind I’m goin’ to Carolina

Can’t you see the sunshine?

Can’t you just feel the moonshine?

Ain’t it just like a friend of mine

To hit me from behind

Yes I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind

Karen she’s a silver sun

You best walk her way and watch it shine

Watch her watch the mornin’ come

A silver tear appearing now I’m cryin’ ain’t I?

I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind

 There ain’t no doubt in no one’s mind

That love’s the finest thing around

Whisper something soft and kind

And hey babe the sky’s on fire, I’m dyin’ ain’t I?

I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind

In my mind I’m goin’ to Carolina

Can’t you see the sunshine?

Can’t you just feel the moonshine?

Ain’t it just like a friend of mine

To hit me from behind

Yes I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind

 Dark and silent late last night

I think I might have heard the highway call

Geese in flight and dogs that bite

Signs that might be omens say I’m going, going

Gone to Carolina in my mind

Now with a holy host of others standing ’round me

Still I’m on the dark side of the moon

And it looks like it goes on like this forever

You must forgive me

If it’s up and…

In my mind I’m goin’ to Carolina

Can’t you see the sunshine?

Can’t you just feel the moonshine?

And ain’t it just like a friend of mine

To hit me from behind

Yes I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind

 In my mind I’m goin’ to Carolina

Can’t you see the sunshine?

Can’t you just feel the moonshine?

Ain’t it just like a friend of mine

To hit me from behind

Yes I’m goin’ to Carolina in my mind

 Better make it back home again soon

Gotta’ get back to Carolina soon

Gotta’ make it back on home again soon

Gotta’ get back to Carolina soon

Carolina yeah

Gotta’ get back home soon

Can’t hang around no more, babe

Gotta’ get back on home again….

Having just about recovered from a random case of colitis (something I’d never even heard of ’til last weekend) I was thanking heaven for intravenous therapy, sophisticated antibiotics and for the nursing profession in general when it occurred to me that despite its drawbacks we do live in an enchanted age.

2013 may not have the dash and brio of times gone by but at least our odds of remaining sentient are better. Hey, if William Henry Harrison hadn’t caught pneumonia while taking the oath of office he may have been a great president, and if Thomas Wright Waller had made it beyond the age of 40 his name would surely be as tip-of-the-tongue as that of Louis Armstrong.

Born in Harlem in 1904 to a preacher father and a church organist mother, Waller was playing piano at six and composing organ music at fourteen.  Having learned the “stride” style he turned professional at fifteen (against his father’s wishes) and between his first recording session in 1922 (on piano roll) and his last in 1943, recorded well over 600 jazz, ragtime, swing and classical “sides.”

Everything about him was legendary: his appetite for food and liquor (hence the name “Fats”); his ability to master any keyboard he saw, from pipe organ (which he called the “God box”) to celesta; his facility for fitting in to any performance role (e.g. as soloist, sideman or as the leader of a crackerjack ensemble); his otherworldly ability to lay down recordings in a single take; his comedic timing; his generosity and easygoing disposition; and especially his room-filling vivacity.  You get the feeling Fats Waller was fun to be around.

Right through the ‘20s and ‘30s the man had a lead foot for life, flinging aside racial handicaps to become one of the most popular performers of his time both at home and abroad. Certainly that was the case in 1926 when he was kidnapped after a performance in Chicago.

Forced into a darkened building with a gun at his back, he quickly discovered himself to be the guest entertainer for Al Capone’s birthday bash, already in full swing. Delighted to know that the gangsters weren’t going to kill him he played for three days, finally arriving back at his hotel in a drunken stupor with thousands of dollars of tips in his pocket.

All the while, Waller was writing songs (over 400 were copyrighted, while others were not) and adding more than a page or two to today’s book of jazz standards. “Both big in body and in mind…(he was) a bubbling bundle of joy,” recalled one collaborator.

By 1943, he was just breaking into film (alongside Lena Horne and Cab Calloway in “Stormy Weather”) when it all came to an end on the eastbound Super Chief one December night. Recovering from a bout of influenza, Fats Waller succumbed to pneumonia and died just prior to the train’s arrival in Kansas City. Word swept through the station so quickly that his dear friend Louis Armstrong, a passenger on the unboarding/boarding westbound train, heard the news then and there…and cried for hours on end.

Recorded by Fats Waller and His Rhythm in 1937, “The Joint is Jumpin’” is about a Prohibition era Rent Party. Said to have played a major role in the development of early jazz and blues music and particular to Harlem, where local musicians were at a premium, tenants would throw a party (sometimes hiring competing musicians who would take turns trying to outdo each other) and pass the hat to help pay their rents.

LISTEN TO THIS SONG – Saturday 2 March 

The Joint is Jumpin’

They have a new expression along old Harlem way

That tells you when a party is ten times more than gay

To say that things are jumpin’ leaves not a single doubt

That everything is in full swing when you hear someone shout.

Here ’tis:

The joint is jumpin’

It’s really jumpin’

Come in, cats, and check your hats

I mean this joint is jumpin’

The piano’s thumpin’

The dancers are bumpin’

This here spot is more than hot

In fact, the joint is jumpin’

Check your weapons at the door

Be sure to pay your quarter

Burn your leather on the floor

Grab anybody’s daughter

The roof is rockin’

The neighbors knockin’

We’re all bums when the wagon comes

I mean, this joint is jumpin’

Let it be! Yes!

 Burn this joint, boy! 

 Yes!

Oh, my! Yes!

Don’t you hit that chick, that’s my broad

Where’d you get that stuff at?

Why, I’ll knock you to your knees! What?

Put this cat out of here! What?

Get rid of that pistol! Get rid of that pistol!

Yeah!  Get rid of it, Yes! Yeah!

That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Ha, ha! Yes!  

Now it’s really ready! 

No, baby, not now, I can’t come over there right now

Yeah, let’s do it!

 The joint is jumpin’

It’s really jumpin’

Every Mose is on his toes

I mean this joint is jumpin’

Uh-oh! No time for talkin’

This place is walkin’, yes

Get your jug and cut the rug

I think the joint is jumpin’, Listen

Get your pig feet, bread and gin

There’s plenty in the kitchen

Who is that that just came in

Just look at the way he’s switchin’

Aw, mercy,

Don’t mind the hour, I’m in power

I’ve got bail if we go to jail

I mean this joint is jumpin’

Don’t give your right name, no, no, no, no

I gave myself a year, and after a year I gave myself another. Now after another year I’m giving myself a number (but I’m not taking away my name).

It was 7:45 a.m. on 23 February 2011, in the middle of School Vacation Week and I had a good portion of the cast of Concord Carlisle High School’s pending production of “The Producer’s” asleep in my rec room. Figuring I wasn’t going to get any work done between then and 8:00 when it was time to holler “Rise and Shine!” and make everyone a healthy breakfast, I decided to start a simple hobby.

I thought it might be fun to see if I could come up with a year’s worth of interesting popular songs, which I could e-mail every day to a small group of friends.  I began with “House at Pooh Corner” by Kenny Loggins, figuring at the very least I’d end up with an interesting circuit of music.

I was pretty diligent and had posted 340 songs by the time 23 February 2012 had rolled around. Those 25 missed days represented time away from my desk.  Fervently hoping that a hobby that’s all about research and commentary without personal profit somehow squeezes into the “Fair Use Doctrine” of copyright law I decided to turn my hobby into a daily blog, Thisrightbrain.com.

I also decided to adopt Henry David Thoreau’s idea of taking two years worth of material and condensing it into one year’s worth of really good material, as he did with “Walden, or a Year in the Woods.”  Figuring to make one more circuit around the calendar, I selected the best songs from the previous year (let’s face it, there were some “misses”) while adding some new ones and burnishing my write-ups in hopes of coming up with one really good collection. It was also an opportunity to get creative with a lifetime’s worth of photographs by trying to match (mainly) old pictures with a lyric from that day’s song.

And now we’ve circled around to 23 February 2013 and this is posting Number 695.  This year there were 36 missed days (factoring in the leap year) again representing time away from the desk. But as the blog postings only amount to 295, my goal is to post 70 more songs and write-ups.  Considering I have three book projects going, some will be delighted to know that I then plan to take a break. In the mean time, what shall we cover today?

Released in 1994, “Return to Pooh Corner” is an album by Kenny Loggins. Described as “music for parents and children to enjoy together,” it features songs written by John Lennon, Jimmy Webb, Paul Simon and Rickie Lee Jones among others, as well as several traditional children’s songs. Re-written for those parents among us (and featuring Amy Grant) this is an updated version of a once and future featured song…

 LISTEN TO THIS SELECTION – Sunday 24 February

Return to Pooh Corner

 Christopher Robin and I walked along

Under branches lit up by the moon

Posing our questions to Owl and Eeyore

As our days disappeared all too soon

But I´ve wandered much further today than I should

And I can´t seem to find my way Back to the Wood

 So help me if you can I´ve got to get

Back to the House At Pooh Corner by one

You´d be surprised there´s so much to be done

Count all the bees in the hive

Chase all the clouds from the sky

Back to the days of Christopher Robin and Pooh

 innie the Pooh doesn´t know what to do

Got a honey jar stuck on his nose

He came to me asking help and advice

And from here no one knows where he goes

So I sent him to ask of the Owl if he’s there

How to loosen a jar from the nose of a bear

Help me if you can I’ve got to get

Back to the House at Pooh Corner by one

You’d be surprised there’s so much to be done

Count all the bees in the hive

Chase all the clouds from the sky

Back to the days of Christopher Robin and Pooh

 It’s hard to explain how a few precious things

Seem to follow throughout all our lives

After all’s said and done I was watching my son

Sleeping there with my bear by his side

So I tucked him in, I kissed him and as I was going

I swear that old bear whispered, “Boy, welcome home.”

 Believe me if you can I’ve finally come

Back to the House at Pooh Corner by one

What do you know there’s so much to be done

Count all the bees in the hive

Chase all the clouds from the sky

Back to the days of Christopher Robin

Back to the ways of Christopher Robin

Back to the days of Pooh

Perhaps you too are “marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious…” which is how one dictionary defines one who is a “Romantic.”  If so, you no doubt realize that Romanticism (which came in part as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution) is only a few hundred years old.

But what may surprise you is that the concept of romantic love itself (i.e. romance) isn’t much older, dating back only as far as the late Middle Ages, when “of the Roman style” referred to the advent of chivalry, which eventually incorporated the notion of courtly love. Prior to that there were fertility rites.

There may have been complex forms of courtship (and the ever-ready libido), but feelings of emotional intimacy and attraction, aka the “sweet new style” (as 14^th century troubadours called it) is something rather new to our species.  So take heart you dreamers, you idealists, you modern romantics with your heads stuck in the clouds. You’re living in the right age and this song’s for you.

Written and sung by Tim Lopez of Chicago-based Plain White T’s, “Rhythm of Love” was included on the band’s six album “Wonders of the Younger” in 2010 and has since sold over a million copies. It marks Lopez’s first solo lead with the group.

Formed by high school friends Tom Higgenson (who normally sings lead) and Ken Fletcher in 1997, Plain White T’s spent much of their first decade generating an underground pop punk following.  All that changed in 2007 with the release of their Number 1 hit, “Hey There Delilah,” which Higgenson wrote as a romantic paean to nationally ranked steeplechase runner, Delilah DiCrescenzo… And the “sweet new style” soldiers on.

 LISTEN TO THIS SONG – Saturday 23 February

Rhythm of love

 My head is stuck in the clouds

She begs me to come down

Says, “Boy, quit foolin’ around”

I told her, “I love the view from up here

Warm sun and wind in my ear

We’ll watch the world from above

As it turns to the rhythm of love”

We may only have tonight

But ’til the morning sun

You’re mine, all mine

Play the music low

And sway to the rhythm of love

 Well, my heart beats like a drum

Guitar string to the strum

A beautiful song to be sung

She’s got blue eyes, deep like the sea

That roll back when she’s laughin’ at me

She rises up like the tide

The moment her lips meet mine

We may only have tonight

But ’til the morning sun

You’re mine, all mine

Play the music low

And sway to the rhythm of love

When the moon is low

We can dance in slow motion

And all your tears will subside

All your tears will dry

 And long after I’ve gone,

You’ll still be humming along

And I will keep you in my mind,

The way to make love so fine

 We may only have tonight

But ’til the morning sun

You’re mine, all mine

Play the music low

And sway to the rhythm of love

 Play the music low

And sway to the music of love

Yeah, sway to the music of love

Sometimes you can’t hurry these things. In 1958 a Detroit junior high school student named Florence Ballard befriended Paul Williams of the male singing group, The Primes.

Ballard was a good singer, as was Williams’ girlfriend Betty McGlown, so The Primes’ manager decided to create a sister group and Ballard quickly recruited her friends Mary Wilson and Diana Ross.

Soon the Doo-wop singing “Primettes” were gaining a following around the Detroit area where they performed at sock hops and talent shows. Eventually Ross asked an old neighbor, Smokey Robinson, to help the group land an audition with Motown executive Berry Gordy, who allowed them to contribute hand claps and background vocals for other Motown artists such as Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells.

When Gordy finally agreed to sign the girls to his label (by which point McGlown had left the group to get married), it was under the condition that they change their name, as The Primes were now called The Temptations. And so in 1961 The Supremes were born.

Written and produced by the Motown team of Holland/Dozier/Holland for the then-prime-time Supremes, and soon featured on “The Supremes A’ Go-Go” (the first LP by an all-female group to reach Number 1 on the Billboard Album charts) “You Can’t Hurry Love” crowned the Billboard Singles charts and peaked at Number 5 in the UK in the summer of ‘66…where it got a second breath sixteen years later when Phil Collins topped the UK  Singles charts with it for two weeks in 1983.

Still, despite his clever video with white socks, shades, multiple selves…and just pure fun, Collins never managed to match the panache of Mademoiselles Ross, Wilson and Ballard who went on to release their own Italian cover of the song “L’amore verrà”.

 LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL – Friday 22 February

You Can’t Hurry Love

 I need love, love to ease my mind

I need to find, find someone to call mine

But mama said you can’t hurry love

No you just have to wait

She said love don’t come easy

It’s a game of give and take

You can’t hurry love

No, you just have to wait

You gotta trust, give it time

No matter how long it takes

But how many heartaches must I stand

Before I find a love to let me live again

Right now the only thing that keeps me hanging on

When I feel my strength, yeah, it’s almost gone

I remember mama said

 You can’t hurry love

No you just have to wait

She said love don’t come easy

It’s a game of give and take

How long must I wait how much more can I take

Before loneliness will ’cause my heart, heart to break

No, I can’t bear to live my life alone

I grow impatient for a love to call my own

But when I feel that I, I can’t go on

These precious words keeps me hanging on

I remember mama said

 Can’t hurry love

No you just have to wait

She said love don’t come easy

it’s a game of give and take

 You can’t hurry love

No you just have to wait

She said love don’t come easy

It’s a game of give and take

No matter how long it takes

 No love, love don’t come easy

But I keep on waiting, anticipating for that

Soft voice to talk to me at night

For some tender arms to hold me tight

I keep waiting; I keep on waiting

But it ain’t easy, it ain’t easy when mama said

You can’t hurry love no

You just have to wait

She said trust, give it time

No matter how long it takes

 You can’t hurry love

You just have to wait

She said love don’t come easy

It’s a game of give and take

Although Johnny Mercer is said to have written the lyrics with Judy Garland in mind, this song was first sung by that “bombshell of bombs,” Dorothy Lamour in the 1942 film “The Fleet’s In.” With music composed by the film’s director, Victor Schertzinger, and featuring the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, it became one of Lamour’s signature themes…until Francis Edward Ifield ran away with it 20 years later.

Born in 1937, Ifield taught himself to yodel as a young teen while milking the family cows, about 30 miles outside of Sydney.  By the age of 19 he’d become the biggest recording star in Australia and after venturing to ‘Ol Blighty in 1959 he became the first person ever to have three consecutive Number 1 British hits.

Of course the streak began with Dorothy Lamour’s old signature song. While it peaked at Number 5 in the States, “I Remember You” topped the British charts for a full seven weeks in 1962, making Frank Ifield the first person ever to sell one million records in UK, along the way.

LISTEN TO THIS SONG – Thursday 21 February 

I Remember You

 I remember you

You’re the one who made my dreams come true

A few kisses ago

 I remember you

You’re the one who said “I love you, too”

Yes, I do, didn’tcha know?

I remember, too, a distant bell and stars that fell

Like the rain out of the blue-ooh…

 When my life is through

And the angels ask me to recall

The thrill of it all

Then I will tell them I remember you-ooh…

 I remember, too, a distant bell and stars that fell

Just like the rain out of the blue-ooh…

When my life is through

And the angels ask me to recall

The thrill of it all

Then I will tell them I remember, tell them I remember

Tell them I remember you

The bumper sticker on the Dodge Charger says, “Proud Parents of a ‘D’ Student” and the camera follows a group of ’70s suburban teens (in bad need of a hobby) while they meander through their seditious day. In the backseat sits the nearly beatific Billy Corgan, front man for the Smashing Pumpkins.

Entitled “1979” it won the 1996 MTV Video Music Award for Best Alternative Video and it’s fitting to know that after it was shot in suburban Chicago someone left the footage on top of a car before driving away. The band (everyone had a bit part) had to fly back from New York, where they were performing, and reshoot the entire video.

Formed in 1988, the (Cure-influenced) Smashing Pumpkins started out with vocalist, Corgan, guitarist James Iha, and a drum machine. In time bassist, D’arcy Wtretzky and jazz drummer, Jimmy Chamberlain joined the group, which released its debut album, “Gish” in 1991.  Although critically acclaimed, it was their second album, “Siamese Dream” in 1994 that brought them breakthrough success…paving the way for a grinding international tour schedule.

In 1995 the slightly despondent Corgan took a break from the road and wrote dozens and dozens of songs, 28 of which would be included on the Smashing Pumpkins’ double-album, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” in 1996. One that wasn’t initially slated for the album was (the partially completed) “1979” which the producer felt wasn’t good enough.

But of all the dozens and dozens of songs he’d just written, Corgan considered this one to be the most important, so he did enough revising for it to become a track on the second disc.  When it was released a single “1979”  reached Number 12 on the Billboard Charts in ‘96 and is by far the group’s biggest (and some might say, most accessible) hit.

 LISTEN TO THIS SONG -Wednesday 20 February

“1979”

Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time

On a live wire right up off the street

You and I should meet

Junebug skipping like a stone

With the headlights pointed at the dawn

We were sure we’d never see an end to it all

And I don’t even care to shake these zipper blues

And we don’t know

Just where our bones will rest

To dust I guess

Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

Double cross the vacant and the bored

They’re not sure just what we have in store

Morphine city slipping dues down to see

That we don’t even care as restless as we are

We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts

And poured cement, lamented and assured

To the lights and towns below

Faster than the speed of sound

Faster than we thought we’d go, beneath the sound of hope

Justine never knew the rules,

Hung down with the freaks and the ghouls

No apologies ever need be made, I know you better than you fake it

To see that we don’t even care to shake these zipper blues

And we don’t know just where our bones will rest

To dust I guess

Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

The street heats the urgency of now

As you see there’s no one around

After Hurricane Sandy she released her EP (“Live From Laurel Canyon”) with tens of thousands of dollars in proceeds going to a relief fund. After the appalling shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School she recorded a rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (and then performed it on Good Morning America) with all proceeds going to benefit The United Way of Western Connecticut and other local charities.

An ambassador for The VH1 Save The Music Foundation (dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of music education and restoring the teaching of instrumental music in America’s public schools), Ingrid Ellen Egbert Michaelson is perhaps best known for her myriad of songs featured in advertising campaigns for the likes of: Old Navy, Traveler’s Insurance, Opel/Vauxhall, Motts Apple Juice, Ritz Crackers, Google Chrome, etc.

….And on such television shows as: Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, Scrubs, The Big C, One Tree Hill, Parenthood, Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters, Army Wives, Hellcats, Body of Proof, In Plain Sight, The Vampire Diaries, So You Think You Can Dance, Enlightened, etc. etc.

Born in 1979 in Staten Island, Michaelson took up the piano at the age of four and “trained until seven” at Manhattan’s Third Street Music School.  After graduating from Staten Island Technical High School and Binghamton University, where she majored in Theater, she began to record her own music in 2002 and self-promoted it on MySpace, while performing at local venues and directing children’s theater.

Dubbed the “DIY Diva” by London’s “Daily Mail” she eventually self-produced her first album “Slow the Rain” (as she has since done with each of her albums) and released it on her own label, Cabin 24 Records.

Featured on her fourth album “Everybody” in 2009, this song, “The Chain” (with its truly wonderful first line and curly-cue last stanza) goes to show how studio recording itself can be an art form.

A live version was previously included on Ingrid Michaelson’s 2008 compilation album, “Be OK” which debuted at 35 on the Billboard Album Chart and sold 15,000 copies in its first week… Naturally, part of the proceeds went to the charity, Stand Up To Cancer.

 LISTEN TO THIS SONG – Tuesday 19 February 

The Chain

The sky looks pissed

The wind talks back

My bones are shifting in my skin

And you my love are gone

 My room feels wrong

The bed won’t fit

I cannot seem to operate

And you my love are gone

 So glide away on soapy heels

And promise not to promise anymore

And if you come around again

Then I will take

Then I will take

The chain from off the door

 I’ll never say

That I’ll never love

But I don’t say a lot of things

And you my love are gone

So glide away on soapy heels

And promise not to promise anymore

And if you come around again

Then I will take

The chain from off the door…

After his death in 1976, the FBI (which had maintained a 500 page file on him) still considered him to be “potentially dangerous.” Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why, beyond his mellifluous musicianship and trenchant skill as a songwriter, his music remains relevant and continues to be recorded by new generations of artists.

Despite the subsequent mental illness and drunkeness that led to a decidedly bad end when he took his life 37 years ago now, Phil Ochs’ repeated affirmation of the individual’s role (i.e. you and me, whoever we are) in the eternal fight for social justice continues to ring loud and clear. Here was a man who was gleefully adept at sizing up the hypocrisy of the entire spectrum, from left (“Love Me, I’m a Liberal”) to right (“I’m Gonna Say it Now”) in a single album.

Here’s the final track on his final all-acoustic record, “Phil Ochs in Concert,” released in 1966, which, in addition to the aforementioned numbers also includes the poignant (and center leaning) “There But For Fortune.”

 LISTEN TO THIS SONG – Monday 18 February

When I’m Gone

 There’s no place in this world where I’ll belong when I’m gone

And I won’t know the right from the wrong when I’m gone

And you won’t find me singin’ on this song when I’m gone

So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

 And I won’t feel the flowing of the time when I’m gone

All the pleasures of love will not be mine when I’m gone

My pen won’t pour a lyric line when I’m gone

So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

And I won’t breathe the bracing air when I’m gone

And I can’t even worry ’bout my cares when I’m gone

Won’t be asked to do my share when I’m gone

So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

And I won’t be running from the rain when I’m gone

And I can’t even suffer from the pain when I’m gone

Can’t say who’s to praise and who’s to blame when I’m gone

So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

 Won’t see the golden of the sun when I’m gone

And the evenings and the mornings will be one when I’m gone

Can’t be singing louder than the guns while I’m gone

So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

 All my days won’t be dances of delight when I’m gone

And the sands will be shifting from my sight when I’m gone

Can’t add my name into the fight while I’m gone

So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

And I won’t be laughing at the lies when I’m gone

And I can’t question how or when or why when I’m gone

Can’t live proud enough to die when I’m gone

So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

 There’s no place in this world where I’ll belong when I’m gone

And I won’t know the right from the wrong when I’m gone

And you won’t find me singin’ on this song when I’m gone

So I guess I’ll have to do it

I guess I’ll have to do it

Guess I’ll have to do it

While I’m here

At the dawning of the 1970s I was a newspaper boy, delivering “The Oneonta Star” in the Catskill Mountain town of Stamford, NY. When you’re thirteen years old and you have to get up at 5:00 a.m. you invariably learn to become a “morning” person, which I am to this day.

There seemed to be a lot more snow back then and I used to envy my mutt-of-a-dog, Tep (that’s “Pet” as in Pettingell, spelled backwards), for her fur coat and ability to rise and shine, without having to get out of bed, get dressed and then get bundled up. This is leading somewhere, honest.

By 5:15 Tep and I would be trudging the mile or so to the Star’s drop-off spot where we’d meet up with the Van Hueson brothers (the other two paper boys, neither of whom made it into adulthood) and their dogs. And after filling our newspaper bags, we’d all venture across the street to the coffee shop next to the Western Union, where we three would chat over hot chocolate, while the proprietor fed the dogs stale donuts, as they patiently waited for us outside in the elements.

When the clock struck 6:00 we’d take turns paying the tab and head out in three different directions for our appointed rounds.

In addition to a Survival Coat parka and a fine pair of mukluks, one of the Christmas presents I received around about then was a transistor radio that you could clip to your belt.  It was high-tech for the time, but in rural, mountainous Delaware County, NY pretty much the only radio station I could get was WGY (AM 810) out of Schenectady.  One of the oldest stations in the country, WGY was then the Flagship Station of General Electric’s Broadcasting Group and featured an eclectic mixture of “Easy Listening” and “Soft Rock.”

“That explains a lot,” I hear you say, and perhaps it does. Anyway, mine was a long, circuitous route and the only way to deliver newspapers in winter was by foot. Because Stamford lies in the shade of Mt. Utsayantha (aka “The Queen of the Catskills”) and because I kinda’ needed my hands for the job, I would often have to walk sideways, or even backwards if I was to maintain the WGY signal on the radio clipped to my belt.

Having laid this all out, perhaps you can understand why this high stepping Chet Atkins number called “Chaplain in New Shoes” was a favorite, as one can imagine a little chaplain, light on his feet and pleased as punch with his new shoes. A splendid newspaper delivery song, it comes from the great picker’s 1971 album, “For the Good Times.”

 LISTEN TO THIS SONG – Sunday 17 February