Originally posted August 1, 2009:
As it happened, I never found a Saturday during July to explore the record log, to see what LPs have made their ways to my shelves in Julys past. There was a perfectly good reason for that: There were more immediate, and perhaps more interesting, things to write about on Saturdays in July. So we’ll celebrate August’s start with a look at July records. (Long-term readers with good memories may recall that I once shared a First Friday post on a Saturday, so this type of temporal dislocation is nothing new. We’re all lost in time, anyway.)
My first July records came in 1972, when I picked up a copy of The Beatles’ Second Album and an album titled A Special Path, recorded and released by Becky Severson, a high school classmate of mine. The Beatles album was the next-to-last step in my quest to own all of the Fab Four’s Capitol and Apple albums; all that remained was A Hard Day’s Night. (Actually, two records remained on the to-buy list; I also needed to yet pick up Beatles VI. I should have checked my database instead of relying on memory.) The Becky Severson album was a simple, folkish work, testifying to her Christian faith. Its title song surfaced years later, a tale that I told here in 2007.
It was another three years before July found a new record on my shelves. I’ve told the story before about how Paul William’s Just An Old Fashioned Love Song came to my attention in 1975. And I’ve also told – obliquely – the story about a friend giving me Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly in July of 1976. (I often wonder how many tales about music I have left to tell; if I have one for every four of the albums on my shelves, I’m good for a few years yet.) And in July of 1977, as I was finishing up my time at St. Cloud State, KVSC was giving away promotional albums the staff had decided against: I got the Bee Gees’ Children of the World and Neil Diamond’s Beautiful Noise.
I moved to Monticello, and in July of 1978, my fiancée of the time gave me Jackson Browne’s Late For The Sky (a superlative album, and I wonder as I type its name why I’ve never written about it). The next July albums came in 1982, flea market captures of America’s Homecoming and Carly Simon’s No Secrets. A year later, I received as a gift a big band anthology, Big Band Collector's Guild Premiere Showcase, which I enjoyed a fair amount.
I went to Missouri to go to grad school. I bought no records during the one July I was there, and I went back to Monticello and bought no records during the two Julys I was there that second time. I moved, for the summer of 1987, to St. Cloud. It was there that the Bob Dylan project started, with a lady friend of mine and I determined to get all of Dylan’s existing work on vinyl before CD’s overtook the world. In July of that year, we picked up Infidels and Another Side of Bob Dylan. They went with me to Minot in August of 1987.
In Minot during July of 1988, I bought five LPs. The best of those was likely Paul Simon’s Graceland and the most interesting was probably Suzanne Vega’s Solitude Standing. Elton John, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the New Riders of the Purple Sage rounded things out.
By the time the spring of 1989 came sneaking into the northern plains, new LPs were becoming very difficult to find in Minot, as I’ve mentioned before. CDs had taken over, and I was forced to find my vinyl at garage sales and at the one pawnshop in town. So when I moved to Minnesota in July 1989, living on the northern edge of the Twin Cities metro area, I celebrated by picking up thirty-four albums in that first month.
The log shows some very nice records: Shoot Out The Lights by Richard and Linda Thompson, as well as their I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight; the Indigo Girls’ self-titled album; Fairport Convention’s Unhalfbricking and Full House as well as the anthology, Fairport Chronicles; Maria McKee’s self-titled album; four Van Morrison albums as well as an anthology of Them, his early band; What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye; Joy of Cooking’s self-titled debut; and albums by Mott the Hoople, Kate and Anna McGarrigle and on and on. It was a great month, except that I kept pulling books off the big shelves to make room for LPs. And I had nowhere else to put the books.
I learned that month that I love Joy of Cooking’s work; despite that, the group has shown up here sparingly. So here’s the opening track from that debut album, today’s Saturday Single.
“Hush” by Joy of Cooking from Joy of Cooking [1970]
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Sportsmanship & Grace
Originally posted August. 3, 2009:
I went to a baseball game forty years ago today. How do I know?
Because I saw something that day at Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium that’s been etched in my memory ever since.
It was a Sunday, and I went to the ball game through a trip sponsored by St. Cloud State. I was fifteen, and my folks – Dad, of course, taught at the college – paid my way and sent me off on the bus to the Cities. It wasn’t the first Minnesota Twins game I’d gone to, but I hadn’t been to many of them. And I’d never gone to one essentially unsupervised. Yeah, there were adults on the bus, but none of them were going to keep track of me. I was basically on my own, and that made me feel pretty good.
And the game promised to be something special, as well. The Twins were playing the Baltimore Orioles, and both teams were in first place as the last two months of the season got underway. That season, 1969, was the first year that the two major leagues were split into divisions, with the division winners set to face each other in playoffs after the regular season. So the series between the Twins and the Orioles was a preview of a likely post-season series.
There was an added attraction: The Orioles’ starting pitcher that Sunday, Dave McNally, had won fifteen games without a loss that season. If he won that Sunday’s game, he’d set a new American League record for consecutive victories at the start of a season. (He was tied at 15-0 with Johnny Allen, who’d pitched for Cleveland in 1937.)
In addition, by winning his sixteenth game in a row, McNally would tie an American League record, set by Walter Johnson in 1912 and tied by Smokey Joe Wood later that same season, as well as by Lefty Grove in 1931 and by Schoolboy Rowe in 1934. (The streaks by Johnson, Wood, Grove and Rowe had come after they’d lost games in those seasons.)
So McNally was trying to become the first American League pitcher to ever have a record of 16-0. (He’d then set his sights on Rube Marquard of the National League Giants, who in 1912 won his first nineteen decisions.)
I wasn’t yet an avid baseball fan, but I was learning. I knew as we drove from St. Cloud that morning about McNally and his chance for history. I also knew that the Twins and the Orioles were two very good baseball teams. A look at the box score from that day’s game reveals the name of four members of the Baseball Hall of Fame: Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew of the Twins and Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson of the Orioles. (There are also some names in the box score of at least two Twins who also deserve to be in the Hall: Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat. Other Orioles? Probably not.)
I had a good seat, about fifteen rows above the third-base dugout, the Orioles’ dugout. And it was a tight game, as might have been expected. As the Twins came to bat in the bottom of the seventh inning, they trailed 1-0, and McNally had given up just four hits. But in that bottom of the seventh inning, the Twins managed two hits, and then a walk loaded the bases. Rich Reese came to the plate, pinch-hitting for Twins pitcher Kaat. I don’t remember how many pitches McNally threw to Reese, but the last one was decisive: Reese launched the ball over the right-field fence for a grand-slam home run. The Twins had a 4-1 lead, and McNally’s first loss was in sight.
McNally stayed in the game, which I find odd, both in memory and in baseball strategy. (I’m referring as I write this to a box score available at Baseball-Reference.com, an invaluable site, and I find that some details of the game have become fuzzy for me. But my main point, which I’ll actually address in a bit, remains clear.) In the top of the eighth inning, the Orioles closed the gap to 4-2, and McNally went back to the mound to pitch to the Twins in the bottom of the eighth inning. The Twins scored another run, and that was when Orioles manager Earl Weaver came on the field to take McNally out of the game.
The stadium was noisy as the Twins took that 5-2 lead and as Weaver came out of the third-base dugout, right in front of me. The noise lessened a bit as Weaver walked to the mound and took the baseball from McNally. And as McNally headed toward the dugout, his head down and his perfect season gone, two remarkable things happened:
First, the Minnesota fans – more than forty thousand were there that Sunday – stood and applauded. I’ve since learned, of course, that most sports fans in most cities acknowledge historic performances by opposing players, but this was the first time I’d seen that happen, and it made an impression on me. But that was only the first remarkable thing.
McNally crossed the third-base line as the crowd applauded him. He raised his head, and – in a gesture that’s remained vivid in my memory for forty years – took off his cap and tipped it to the fans in the stadium. If there were ever an object lesson in sportsmanship and grace, it came in that moment from Dave McNally.
A Six-Pack From The Charts (Billboard Hot 100, August 9, 1969)
“My Pledge of Love” by the Joe Jeffrey Group, Wand 11200 [No. 16]
“Choice of Colors” by the Impressions, Curtom 1943 [No. 24]
“Hurt So Bad” by the Lettermen, Capitol 2482 [No. 44]
“Muddy River” by Johnny Rivers, Imperial 6638 [No. 45]
“Hey Joe” by Wilson Pickett, Atlantic 2648 [No. 59]
“While You’re Out Looking For Sugar” the Honey Cone, Hot Wax 6901 [No. 62]
Joe Jeffrey, according to the Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, was from Buffalo, New York. There’s a bit more information at All-Music Guide, which notes that the singer, who was born Joe Stafford but changed his name (evidently to avoid confusion with Jo Stafford, even though Jo Stafford sang pop and was female) was a regular in clubs in the Cleveland, Ohio, area. “My Pledge of Love” was the only one of Jeffrey’s four singles on Wand to reach the Top 40, peaking at No. 14.
As the late 1960s rolled on, Curtis Mayfield of the Impressions was becoming more and more explicit in his songwriting about the racial divide in the United States. “Choice of Colors” may have been the furthest extension of that progression. Listening to it today, I find it remarkable that the song did as well as it did, peaking at No. 21 on the pop chart and reaching No. 1 on the R&B chart. The record is a remarkably frank piece of work.
“Hurt So Bad” was the Lettermen’s remake of the 1965 hit by Little Anthony & the Imperials, which went to No. 10. The Lettermen’s version was more lightweight than Little Anthony’s; it peaked at No. 12 as it floated from radio speakers during the late summer and early autumn of 1969, speaking directly to the life and heart of at least one young listener in the Midwest. It was the Lettermen’s final Top 40 hit.
Johnny Rivers’ “Muddy River” was pulled from his remarkable album Slim Slo Slider, and it’s surprising to me that it didn’t do better than it did. Rivers’ “Summer Rain,” a single that’s high on my all-time list, had gone to No. 14 as 1967 turned into 1968, and “Muddy River,” while not quite of that quality, was a good single. But “Muddy River” sat at No. 45 for one more week and then jumped to No. 41 for a week before falling back down the chart. Rivers wouldn’t hit the Top 40 again until 1972 with “Rockin’ Pneumonia – Boogie Woogie Flu,” which went to No. 6.
Wilson Pickett’s version of “Hey Joe” didn’t reach the Top 40, but it did prove once again that Pickett could to justice to pretty much any song. The record peaked at No. 59 on the pop chart, and went to No. 29 on the R&B chart. It’s also notable for the presence of Duane Allman on guitar. (If you listened to the mp3 before reading this, it’s likely you knew – or at least suspected – that already.)
“While You’re Out Looking For Sugar” is one of the delightful confections with a groove that Honey Cone and the other members of the Invictus stable turned out in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed by the one-time Motown team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland, Invictus and Hot Wax were also home to Freda Payne, Laura Lee, the Chairmen of the Board and others. “While You’re Out Looking For Sugar” was, says Wikipedia, Honey Cone’s first single. It peaked at No. 62 on the pop chart and made it to No. 26 on the R&B chart. The group eventually had four Top 40 hits, including “Want Ads,” which went to No. 1 in 1971.
I went to a baseball game forty years ago today. How do I know?
Because I saw something that day at Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium that’s been etched in my memory ever since.
It was a Sunday, and I went to the ball game through a trip sponsored by St. Cloud State. I was fifteen, and my folks – Dad, of course, taught at the college – paid my way and sent me off on the bus to the Cities. It wasn’t the first Minnesota Twins game I’d gone to, but I hadn’t been to many of them. And I’d never gone to one essentially unsupervised. Yeah, there were adults on the bus, but none of them were going to keep track of me. I was basically on my own, and that made me feel pretty good.
And the game promised to be something special, as well. The Twins were playing the Baltimore Orioles, and both teams were in first place as the last two months of the season got underway. That season, 1969, was the first year that the two major leagues were split into divisions, with the division winners set to face each other in playoffs after the regular season. So the series between the Twins and the Orioles was a preview of a likely post-season series.
There was an added attraction: The Orioles’ starting pitcher that Sunday, Dave McNally, had won fifteen games without a loss that season. If he won that Sunday’s game, he’d set a new American League record for consecutive victories at the start of a season. (He was tied at 15-0 with Johnny Allen, who’d pitched for Cleveland in 1937.)
In addition, by winning his sixteenth game in a row, McNally would tie an American League record, set by Walter Johnson in 1912 and tied by Smokey Joe Wood later that same season, as well as by Lefty Grove in 1931 and by Schoolboy Rowe in 1934. (The streaks by Johnson, Wood, Grove and Rowe had come after they’d lost games in those seasons.)
So McNally was trying to become the first American League pitcher to ever have a record of 16-0. (He’d then set his sights on Rube Marquard of the National League Giants, who in 1912 won his first nineteen decisions.)
I wasn’t yet an avid baseball fan, but I was learning. I knew as we drove from St. Cloud that morning about McNally and his chance for history. I also knew that the Twins and the Orioles were two very good baseball teams. A look at the box score from that day’s game reveals the name of four members of the Baseball Hall of Fame: Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew of the Twins and Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson of the Orioles. (There are also some names in the box score of at least two Twins who also deserve to be in the Hall: Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat. Other Orioles? Probably not.)
I had a good seat, about fifteen rows above the third-base dugout, the Orioles’ dugout. And it was a tight game, as might have been expected. As the Twins came to bat in the bottom of the seventh inning, they trailed 1-0, and McNally had given up just four hits. But in that bottom of the seventh inning, the Twins managed two hits, and then a walk loaded the bases. Rich Reese came to the plate, pinch-hitting for Twins pitcher Kaat. I don’t remember how many pitches McNally threw to Reese, but the last one was decisive: Reese launched the ball over the right-field fence for a grand-slam home run. The Twins had a 4-1 lead, and McNally’s first loss was in sight.
McNally stayed in the game, which I find odd, both in memory and in baseball strategy. (I’m referring as I write this to a box score available at Baseball-Reference.com, an invaluable site, and I find that some details of the game have become fuzzy for me. But my main point, which I’ll actually address in a bit, remains clear.) In the top of the eighth inning, the Orioles closed the gap to 4-2, and McNally went back to the mound to pitch to the Twins in the bottom of the eighth inning. The Twins scored another run, and that was when Orioles manager Earl Weaver came on the field to take McNally out of the game.
The stadium was noisy as the Twins took that 5-2 lead and as Weaver came out of the third-base dugout, right in front of me. The noise lessened a bit as Weaver walked to the mound and took the baseball from McNally. And as McNally headed toward the dugout, his head down and his perfect season gone, two remarkable things happened:
First, the Minnesota fans – more than forty thousand were there that Sunday – stood and applauded. I’ve since learned, of course, that most sports fans in most cities acknowledge historic performances by opposing players, but this was the first time I’d seen that happen, and it made an impression on me. But that was only the first remarkable thing.
McNally crossed the third-base line as the crowd applauded him. He raised his head, and – in a gesture that’s remained vivid in my memory for forty years – took off his cap and tipped it to the fans in the stadium. If there were ever an object lesson in sportsmanship and grace, it came in that moment from Dave McNally.
A Six-Pack From The Charts (Billboard Hot 100, August 9, 1969)
“My Pledge of Love” by the Joe Jeffrey Group, Wand 11200 [No. 16]
“Choice of Colors” by the Impressions, Curtom 1943 [No. 24]
“Hurt So Bad” by the Lettermen, Capitol 2482 [No. 44]
“Muddy River” by Johnny Rivers, Imperial 6638 [No. 45]
“Hey Joe” by Wilson Pickett, Atlantic 2648 [No. 59]
“While You’re Out Looking For Sugar” the Honey Cone, Hot Wax 6901 [No. 62]
Joe Jeffrey, according to the Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, was from Buffalo, New York. There’s a bit more information at All-Music Guide, which notes that the singer, who was born Joe Stafford but changed his name (evidently to avoid confusion with Jo Stafford, even though Jo Stafford sang pop and was female) was a regular in clubs in the Cleveland, Ohio, area. “My Pledge of Love” was the only one of Jeffrey’s four singles on Wand to reach the Top 40, peaking at No. 14.
As the late 1960s rolled on, Curtis Mayfield of the Impressions was becoming more and more explicit in his songwriting about the racial divide in the United States. “Choice of Colors” may have been the furthest extension of that progression. Listening to it today, I find it remarkable that the song did as well as it did, peaking at No. 21 on the pop chart and reaching No. 1 on the R&B chart. The record is a remarkably frank piece of work.
“Hurt So Bad” was the Lettermen’s remake of the 1965 hit by Little Anthony & the Imperials, which went to No. 10. The Lettermen’s version was more lightweight than Little Anthony’s; it peaked at No. 12 as it floated from radio speakers during the late summer and early autumn of 1969, speaking directly to the life and heart of at least one young listener in the Midwest. It was the Lettermen’s final Top 40 hit.
Johnny Rivers’ “Muddy River” was pulled from his remarkable album Slim Slo Slider, and it’s surprising to me that it didn’t do better than it did. Rivers’ “Summer Rain,” a single that’s high on my all-time list, had gone to No. 14 as 1967 turned into 1968, and “Muddy River,” while not quite of that quality, was a good single. But “Muddy River” sat at No. 45 for one more week and then jumped to No. 41 for a week before falling back down the chart. Rivers wouldn’t hit the Top 40 again until 1972 with “Rockin’ Pneumonia – Boogie Woogie Flu,” which went to No. 6.
Wilson Pickett’s version of “Hey Joe” didn’t reach the Top 40, but it did prove once again that Pickett could to justice to pretty much any song. The record peaked at No. 59 on the pop chart, and went to No. 29 on the R&B chart. It’s also notable for the presence of Duane Allman on guitar. (If you listened to the mp3 before reading this, it’s likely you knew – or at least suspected – that already.)
“While You’re Out Looking For Sugar” is one of the delightful confections with a groove that Honey Cone and the other members of the Invictus stable turned out in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed by the one-time Motown team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland, Invictus and Hot Wax were also home to Freda Payne, Laura Lee, the Chairmen of the Board and others. “While You’re Out Looking For Sugar” was, says Wikipedia, Honey Cone’s first single. It peaked at No. 62 on the pop chart and made it to No. 26 on the R&B chart. The group eventually had four Top 40 hits, including “Want Ads,” which went to No. 1 in 1971.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
'Till Stoneman's Calvary Came . . .'
Originally posted August 4, 2009:
Just as one song leads to another, so does one book pull a reader to another. About three weeks ago, I saw a reference to 1942 by Winston Groom, a history of that one year, looking at how it shaped the history of World War II. (The name of the author might be familiar; he wrote Forrest Gump, the novel that was turned into the Academy Award-winning film.) When I went to the website of my local library to reserve a copy of 1942, I saw that Groom has also written a series of books about the U.S. Civil War.
So, after reading 1942, I worked my way through Vicksburg 1863, an account of the Union campaign to take control of the Mississippi River, a campaign that ended with the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi. From there, I moved on to Shrouds of Glory, an account of an 1864 campaign into Tennessee by a Confederate army. All three of the books read quickly, and Groom tells the tales well. But what made the books pertinent to this space was something I ran across on Page 17 of Shrouds of Glory:
“In addition, [Union General William Tecumseh] Sherman had at his disposal some three divisions of cavalry commanded by Generals Edward M. McCook, Kenner Garrard, and George Stoneman . . .”
I stopped reading, knowing I’d just read something that was familiar to me. I looked again. And I saw it. “George Stoneman.” And I heard Levon Helm’s voice in my head:
“Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train
“Till Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again . . .”
The song, of course, is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” which was included on The Band, the second album by the group that I’ve long called my favorite rock group of all time. I read long ago that Robbie Robertson, who composed the song, wrote it as a salute to the southern heritage of Arkansas-born Helm, who was the only non-Canadian in The Band. And I pondered the confluence of Groom’s book, Robertson’s song and Helm’s heritage at odd times for a few days.
And, as I almost always do, I thought about cover versions. I have covers of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” by Johnny Cash, John Denver and Richie Havens, but none of them really grab me (which, as regards the Havens version, is a surprise to me). I also have a version by the Allman Brothers Band that was included on the 2007 release Endless Highway - The Music of The Band, but I don’t post a lot of things released after 1999, and I didn’t hear anything in the ABB version that made me want to change my mind.
One version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” that I do not have in my mp3 collection is the bastard cover by Joan Baez. Taking ludicrous liberties with Robertson’s lyrics – including turning Robert E. Lee into a steamboat – Baez got herself a No. 3 hit in 1971. But I won’t listen to it and won’t recommend that others do, either.
There certainly, are, no doubt, other covers of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but instead of wandering off and making a list of other performers who’ve done the song – as I frequently do – I decided on a different route this morning: I’d look in my collection for cover versions of other songs by The Band. And here are four:
“The Weight” by Joe Cocker from Mad Dogs & Englishmen [Fillmore East, New York, March 28, 1970]
“Upp Till Ragvaldsträsk!” by Lalla Hanson from Upp Till Ragvaldsträsk! [1971]
“The Shape I’m In” by Bo Diddley from Another Dimension [1971]
“Twilight” by Danko-Fjeld-Andersen from Ridin’ On The Blinds [1994]
The Joe Cocker version of “The Weight” wasn’t included in the original LP release when the live album came out in 1970. The track was one of those added to the two-CD “Deluxe Edition” that was released in 2005. I have eighteen cover versions of “The Weight,” and probably the best-known versions are those by Aretha Franklin and King Curtis, both of which were included on anthologies of Duane Allman’s work. I decided to bypass those and share the Cocker version, as it’s pretty good and I’m not sure it’s all that well-known.
“Upp till Ragvaldsträsk!” is a Swedish-language version of “Up On Cripple Creek.” I know very little about Lalla Hanson. He’s a Swedish performer who was a contemporary of the members of The Band, and “Upp till Ragvaldsträsk!” (which translates loosely to “Up To Ragvald’s Swamp,” I think) was the title track of his first album. If you’re interested, you can Google his name and click the link to translate the Swedish Wikipedia page, which will offer a link to a translation of his home page; or you can jump with into the Swedish and see what you can glean. (I think I found the mp3 of “Upp till Ragvaldsträsk!” at The Band, a website that’s no longer very active. The mp3 is at a lower bitrate than I would usually share, but the unique quality of the track makes it worth hearing anyway.)
I got the Bo Diddley album, Another Dimension, from another blogger about the time Diddley died (June 2008). As usually happens with these things, I don’t recall where I found it, and backtracking from indices doesn’t provide me with any clues. Diddley does a pretty nice job on “The Shape I’m In.”
I’ve posted the Danko-Fjeld-Andersen album Ridin’ On The Blinds a couple of times (along with its predecessor, Danko Fjeld Andersen), but I can’t put up a list of covers of The Band’s songs without including the DFA version of “Twilight.” I never thought much of any of the versions The Band did of the song, but Danko’s reading on this version never fails to thrill me.
Just as one song leads to another, so does one book pull a reader to another. About three weeks ago, I saw a reference to 1942 by Winston Groom, a history of that one year, looking at how it shaped the history of World War II. (The name of the author might be familiar; he wrote Forrest Gump, the novel that was turned into the Academy Award-winning film.) When I went to the website of my local library to reserve a copy of 1942, I saw that Groom has also written a series of books about the U.S. Civil War.
So, after reading 1942, I worked my way through Vicksburg 1863, an account of the Union campaign to take control of the Mississippi River, a campaign that ended with the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi. From there, I moved on to Shrouds of Glory, an account of an 1864 campaign into Tennessee by a Confederate army. All three of the books read quickly, and Groom tells the tales well. But what made the books pertinent to this space was something I ran across on Page 17 of Shrouds of Glory:
“In addition, [Union General William Tecumseh] Sherman had at his disposal some three divisions of cavalry commanded by Generals Edward M. McCook, Kenner Garrard, and George Stoneman . . .”
I stopped reading, knowing I’d just read something that was familiar to me. I looked again. And I saw it. “George Stoneman.” And I heard Levon Helm’s voice in my head:
“Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train
“Till Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again . . .”
The song, of course, is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” which was included on The Band, the second album by the group that I’ve long called my favorite rock group of all time. I read long ago that Robbie Robertson, who composed the song, wrote it as a salute to the southern heritage of Arkansas-born Helm, who was the only non-Canadian in The Band. And I pondered the confluence of Groom’s book, Robertson’s song and Helm’s heritage at odd times for a few days.
And, as I almost always do, I thought about cover versions. I have covers of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” by Johnny Cash, John Denver and Richie Havens, but none of them really grab me (which, as regards the Havens version, is a surprise to me). I also have a version by the Allman Brothers Band that was included on the 2007 release Endless Highway - The Music of The Band, but I don’t post a lot of things released after 1999, and I didn’t hear anything in the ABB version that made me want to change my mind.
One version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” that I do not have in my mp3 collection is the bastard cover by Joan Baez. Taking ludicrous liberties with Robertson’s lyrics – including turning Robert E. Lee into a steamboat – Baez got herself a No. 3 hit in 1971. But I won’t listen to it and won’t recommend that others do, either.
There certainly, are, no doubt, other covers of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but instead of wandering off and making a list of other performers who’ve done the song – as I frequently do – I decided on a different route this morning: I’d look in my collection for cover versions of other songs by The Band. And here are four:
“The Weight” by Joe Cocker from Mad Dogs & Englishmen [Fillmore East, New York, March 28, 1970]
“Upp Till Ragvaldsträsk!” by Lalla Hanson from Upp Till Ragvaldsträsk! [1971]
“The Shape I’m In” by Bo Diddley from Another Dimension [1971]
“Twilight” by Danko-Fjeld-Andersen from Ridin’ On The Blinds [1994]
The Joe Cocker version of “The Weight” wasn’t included in the original LP release when the live album came out in 1970. The track was one of those added to the two-CD “Deluxe Edition” that was released in 2005. I have eighteen cover versions of “The Weight,” and probably the best-known versions are those by Aretha Franklin and King Curtis, both of which were included on anthologies of Duane Allman’s work. I decided to bypass those and share the Cocker version, as it’s pretty good and I’m not sure it’s all that well-known.
“Upp till Ragvaldsträsk!” is a Swedish-language version of “Up On Cripple Creek.” I know very little about Lalla Hanson. He’s a Swedish performer who was a contemporary of the members of The Band, and “Upp till Ragvaldsträsk!” (which translates loosely to “Up To Ragvald’s Swamp,” I think) was the title track of his first album. If you’re interested, you can Google his name and click the link to translate the Swedish Wikipedia page, which will offer a link to a translation of his home page; or you can jump with into the Swedish and see what you can glean. (I think I found the mp3 of “Upp till Ragvaldsträsk!” at The Band, a website that’s no longer very active. The mp3 is at a lower bitrate than I would usually share, but the unique quality of the track makes it worth hearing anyway.)
I got the Bo Diddley album, Another Dimension, from another blogger about the time Diddley died (June 2008). As usually happens with these things, I don’t recall where I found it, and backtracking from indices doesn’t provide me with any clues. Diddley does a pretty nice job on “The Shape I’m In.”
I’ve posted the Danko-Fjeld-Andersen album Ridin’ On The Blinds a couple of times (along with its predecessor, Danko Fjeld Andersen), but I can’t put up a list of covers of The Band’s songs without including the DFA version of “Twilight.” I never thought much of any of the versions The Band did of the song, but Danko’s reading on this version never fails to thrill me.
Clutter & Stuff & Things
Originally posted August 5, 2009:
A long-time friend stopped by for dinner the other evening. We talked about our cats (five between the two households) and about K’s work in online education – she teaches students all over the world from her home in Nevada. We talked about our families and about the Texas Gal’s current college coursework. We talked a bit about books, and we shared the nuggets of news that folks do when they’re catching up.
As we were dipping into dessert, K began to look around the dining room/library, then craned her neck to peer into the living room. “Where are they?” she asked.
I was puzzled. “Where are what?”
“The penguins.”
I laughed. For years, I collected penguins, mostly ceramic, and at one point – when I lived in Minot, North Dakota – had a collection of about twenty-five, maybe thirty. I also had penguin bathroom accessories – wastebasket, shower curtain and soap dish – and there were other penguin things around my home.
It was an accidental collection. In 1976 or so, I was sharing pictures from my time in Denmark with my then-fiancée’s family. One of the pictures was of a fountain on the pedestrian mall in downtown Fredericia, a fountain decorated with statues of penguins. My future mother-in-law thought it was odd that I’d take a picture of something so prosaic; from then on, during nearly every visit to her home before and during my marriage to her daughter, she gave me a ceramic penguin figurine or something with penguins on it. The collection grew, and other folks – family and friends – gave me occasional gifts of penguin stuff.
I liked my penguins, and I happily displayed them in two homes in Monticello and then in my apartment in Minot, after the marriage had ended with a sigh of exhaustion. I think that’s where K saw them, during one of her visits to Minot. I might also have had them on display in my next place, in Anoka, Minnesota, where she was a regular dinner guest.
But the penguins are no longer on display. I’m not even sure where the collection is, whether it’s in a box nested in another box on the shelves in the basement or whether I gave them away sometime in the past twenty years. I still have a few penguinish things: A stapler, four newer figurines on the mantel, a sweet powder blue Pittsburgh Penguins cap and a few other items here and there. But my days of collecting all things penguin are gone. I do wonder a little bit about the whereabouts of the ceramic penguins. Some of them were quite nice, and I imagine some had some value as collectibles. But I honestly don’t remember what I did with them.
They were, after all, just things. Nice things, yes, but just things. And as I thought about my penguins this week, I also thought – and not for the first time – about how we here in the U.S. have let our things become so important to us. We collect, accumulate and want more things, whether they’re automobiles, backyard decks, bracelets, books, cookware sets, CDs, sweaters, power boats, coffee-makers or any of the other desirable things with which we seem to clutter our lives..
Clutter? Yeah, sometimes – a lot of the time – I think so. We’re not rich, the Texas Gal and I. But we sometimes look around our home and realize how much stuff we have, stuff that decorates our lives and makes them more pleasant. It’s nice to have those things, but in the end, they’re not essential. They’re things. I sometimes think that we can examine our priorities by thinking about what we would make sure to take out of our homes if they were on fire.
Even during the times I had them on display, my penguin figurines would have been far down that list. What’s at the top of the list? Obviously, the Texas Gal and the three cats come first. Then the box that contains documents like our birth certificates, marriage license and so on. Then would come our financial records, which we’ve made easily accessible and portable. Then, if there were time, the Texas Gal would probably grab as many of our photos as she could, and I’d grab my journal from my year in Denmark and my external hard drive, where I keep my writing projects (as well as my mp3s). In a fire, I think we’d be lucky to get that much. And if all we got out was ourselves and the cats, well, the rest of it – all of it, no matter how dear some of it may be to us – is just things.
Are those things irreplaceable? Some of them truly are, and we would grieve those losses. But in the end, we’d be safe and whole and they’re just things.
A Six-Pack Of Things
“A Thing Going On” by J.J. Cale from Grasshopper [1982]
“You’re The Best Thing” by the Style Council from Cafe Bleu [1984]
“All These Things We Dream” by the Living Daylights from The Living Daylights [1996]
“Bags and Things” by Dennis Lambert from Bags and Things [1972]
“Things Yet To Come” by Sweathog from Sweathog [1971]
“If It Ain't One Thing It's Another” by the Staple Singers from City in the Sky [1974]
All I’m going to say about these songs today is that, even though a couple of them are by lesser-known artists, they’re all worth hearing.
A long-time friend stopped by for dinner the other evening. We talked about our cats (five between the two households) and about K’s work in online education – she teaches students all over the world from her home in Nevada. We talked about our families and about the Texas Gal’s current college coursework. We talked a bit about books, and we shared the nuggets of news that folks do when they’re catching up.
As we were dipping into dessert, K began to look around the dining room/library, then craned her neck to peer into the living room. “Where are they?” she asked.
I was puzzled. “Where are what?”
“The penguins.”
I laughed. For years, I collected penguins, mostly ceramic, and at one point – when I lived in Minot, North Dakota – had a collection of about twenty-five, maybe thirty. I also had penguin bathroom accessories – wastebasket, shower curtain and soap dish – and there were other penguin things around my home.
It was an accidental collection. In 1976 or so, I was sharing pictures from my time in Denmark with my then-fiancée’s family. One of the pictures was of a fountain on the pedestrian mall in downtown Fredericia, a fountain decorated with statues of penguins. My future mother-in-law thought it was odd that I’d take a picture of something so prosaic; from then on, during nearly every visit to her home before and during my marriage to her daughter, she gave me a ceramic penguin figurine or something with penguins on it. The collection grew, and other folks – family and friends – gave me occasional gifts of penguin stuff.
I liked my penguins, and I happily displayed them in two homes in Monticello and then in my apartment in Minot, after the marriage had ended with a sigh of exhaustion. I think that’s where K saw them, during one of her visits to Minot. I might also have had them on display in my next place, in Anoka, Minnesota, where she was a regular dinner guest.
But the penguins are no longer on display. I’m not even sure where the collection is, whether it’s in a box nested in another box on the shelves in the basement or whether I gave them away sometime in the past twenty years. I still have a few penguinish things: A stapler, four newer figurines on the mantel, a sweet powder blue Pittsburgh Penguins cap and a few other items here and there. But my days of collecting all things penguin are gone. I do wonder a little bit about the whereabouts of the ceramic penguins. Some of them were quite nice, and I imagine some had some value as collectibles. But I honestly don’t remember what I did with them.
They were, after all, just things. Nice things, yes, but just things. And as I thought about my penguins this week, I also thought – and not for the first time – about how we here in the U.S. have let our things become so important to us. We collect, accumulate and want more things, whether they’re automobiles, backyard decks, bracelets, books, cookware sets, CDs, sweaters, power boats, coffee-makers or any of the other desirable things with which we seem to clutter our lives..
Clutter? Yeah, sometimes – a lot of the time – I think so. We’re not rich, the Texas Gal and I. But we sometimes look around our home and realize how much stuff we have, stuff that decorates our lives and makes them more pleasant. It’s nice to have those things, but in the end, they’re not essential. They’re things. I sometimes think that we can examine our priorities by thinking about what we would make sure to take out of our homes if they were on fire.
Even during the times I had them on display, my penguin figurines would have been far down that list. What’s at the top of the list? Obviously, the Texas Gal and the three cats come first. Then the box that contains documents like our birth certificates, marriage license and so on. Then would come our financial records, which we’ve made easily accessible and portable. Then, if there were time, the Texas Gal would probably grab as many of our photos as she could, and I’d grab my journal from my year in Denmark and my external hard drive, where I keep my writing projects (as well as my mp3s). In a fire, I think we’d be lucky to get that much. And if all we got out was ourselves and the cats, well, the rest of it – all of it, no matter how dear some of it may be to us – is just things.
Are those things irreplaceable? Some of them truly are, and we would grieve those losses. But in the end, we’d be safe and whole and they’re just things.
A Six-Pack Of Things
“A Thing Going On” by J.J. Cale from Grasshopper [1982]
“You’re The Best Thing” by the Style Council from Cafe Bleu [1984]
“All These Things We Dream” by the Living Daylights from The Living Daylights [1996]
“Bags and Things” by Dennis Lambert from Bags and Things [1972]
“Things Yet To Come” by Sweathog from Sweathog [1971]
“If It Ain't One Thing It's Another” by the Staple Singers from City in the Sky [1974]
All I’m going to say about these songs today is that, even though a couple of them are by lesser-known artists, they’re all worth hearing.
Staple Singers, Dennis Lambert & Honey Cone
Originally posted August 06, 2009:
So what pops up at YouTube this morning?
Here’s a video of the Staple Singers performing “Respect Yourself” at the 1972 Wattstax music festival, which took place in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The festival, notes Wikipedia, was “organized by Memphis’ Stax Records to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots. Wattstax was seen by some as ‘the Afro-American answer to Woodstock.’ To enable as many members of the black community in L.A. to attend as possible, tickets were sold for only $1.00 each. The Reverend Jesse Jackson gave the invocation, which included his “I Am – Somebody” poem, which was recited in a call and response with the assembled stadium crowd.”
I think – but don’t know for sure – that the video is pulled from the film Wattstax, a documentary by Mel Stuart that focused on the festival and, as Wikipedia notes, “the African American community of Watts in Los Angeles.” Wikipedia adds, “In the film, interspersed between songs are interviews with Richard Pryor, Ted Lange and others who discuss the black experience in America.” (Richard Pryor’s fame still shines; for those who don’t remember, Ted Lange’s fame came from playing Isaac Washington, the bartender, on the television series The Love Boat.)
Yesterday, I posted “Bags and Things,” the title track to Dennis Lambert’s 1972 album. This morning, I found a video of Lambert performing “It Only Takes A Minute” in March 2008 at Hollywood’s Viper Room. It turns out – and I might have been one of the few out of the loop on this one – that Lambert co-wrote (with Brian Potter) “It Only Takes Minute,” which was a No. 10 hit for Tavares (No. 1 on the R&B chart) in 1975.
Here’s a look at Honey Cone dancing and lip-synching their hit (No. 15) “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show Part I” on a 1972 episode of the The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.
One of the songs I posted yesterday, “All These Things We Dream” by the Living Daylights, has been downloaded less than any of the other five. Noticing that last evening, I pulled the group’s self-titled CD from the stack and dropped it in the player. I still like almost all of it, and as the CD seems to be out and print and I am persistent, I’ll be offering the entire CD tomorrow, hoping to persuade at least a few of you to give a listen to an unknown group who put out a very, very good album in 1996. See you then!
So what pops up at YouTube this morning?
Here’s a video of the Staple Singers performing “Respect Yourself” at the 1972 Wattstax music festival, which took place in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The festival, notes Wikipedia, was “organized by Memphis’ Stax Records to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots. Wattstax was seen by some as ‘the Afro-American answer to Woodstock.’ To enable as many members of the black community in L.A. to attend as possible, tickets were sold for only $1.00 each. The Reverend Jesse Jackson gave the invocation, which included his “I Am – Somebody” poem, which was recited in a call and response with the assembled stadium crowd.”
I think – but don’t know for sure – that the video is pulled from the film Wattstax, a documentary by Mel Stuart that focused on the festival and, as Wikipedia notes, “the African American community of Watts in Los Angeles.” Wikipedia adds, “In the film, interspersed between songs are interviews with Richard Pryor, Ted Lange and others who discuss the black experience in America.” (Richard Pryor’s fame still shines; for those who don’t remember, Ted Lange’s fame came from playing Isaac Washington, the bartender, on the television series The Love Boat.)
Yesterday, I posted “Bags and Things,” the title track to Dennis Lambert’s 1972 album. This morning, I found a video of Lambert performing “It Only Takes A Minute” in March 2008 at Hollywood’s Viper Room. It turns out – and I might have been one of the few out of the loop on this one – that Lambert co-wrote (with Brian Potter) “It Only Takes Minute,” which was a No. 10 hit for Tavares (No. 1 on the R&B chart) in 1975.
Here’s a look at Honey Cone dancing and lip-synching their hit (No. 15) “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show Part I” on a 1972 episode of the The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.
One of the songs I posted yesterday, “All These Things We Dream” by the Living Daylights, has been downloaded less than any of the other five. Noticing that last evening, I pulled the group’s self-titled CD from the stack and dropped it in the player. I still like almost all of it, and as the CD seems to be out and print and I am persistent, I’ll be offering the entire CD tomorrow, hoping to persuade at least a few of you to give a listen to an unknown group who put out a very, very good album in 1996. See you then!
Obscure But Worth Hearing
Originally posted August 7, 2009:
Welcome to the Ocean. Welcome to the Sea of Meant to Be.
Ferris Wheels. French Brocade. Every Heart is on Parade.
All These Things We Dream. All These Things We Dream.
Those are some of the first lines from “All These Things We Dream,” a song by the Living Daylights that I posted two days ago. Since then, the song’s been downloaded only thirteen times. That’s what happens, generally, when I post something that’s not ever been very popular. And the Living Daylights was not a popular band.
The band was, to be honest, utterly obscure. So obscure that there are very few references to the band on the ’Net. (I searched using the name of the band coupled with the name of each band member. The search was complicated by the existence of the James Bond film of the same name: The Living Daylights.)
There is an entry for a band called the Living Daylights at All-Music Guide, with a different album listed for a different year, and the description of the band and its work is entirely at odds with how the CD I have sounds. It’s not the same band.
A search under “Song” at All-Music Guide for “All These Things We Dream” comes up empty. The Living Daylights is a band that seems to have made almost no impact on modern life, and that’s happened during an era when one can hardly avoid coming to the attention of Google even by accident.
So why am I writing about the Living Daylights and what seems to be the band’s only CD? Because even though it’s always a joy to hear songs and write about songs that I’ve heard for forty years – that’s seventy-one percent of my lifetime – it’s also a distinct and rare pleasure to find something new, something I’d not heard when it came out, and be able to enjoy it to the same degree as I do the music I’ve carried around in my head for years.
And that’s what happened when I came across The Living Daylights on the discount shelf of a bookstore in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, almost eight years ago. All one can judge by in those circumstances is the cover and the song titles. None of that was familiar, but the impulse to buy the CD and bring it home is something that I’m sure every music lover has faced: This CD wants me to buy it, and I don’t know why!
I’m certain that the CD cost me no more than two dollars, a minor investment. And when I got home and heard the first strains of “All These Things We Dream,” I was hooked and the hook set in as the rest of the CD played on.
What’s the frame of reference? Who does the Living Daylights sound like? I called the Texas Gal into the study this morning and played her snippets of four or five tracks. Her overall judgment was that “it sounds a little like Darden Smith,” and of course, over the last two-plus years, I’ve made well-known my affection for Mr. Smith’s work. But her first reaction, her first thought on hearing the Living Daylights was “It sounds like America.” (I asked her later if the meant the band – the “Horse With No Name” boys – or the country, and she said she meant both: “It sounds a little like the band, but it also sounds like life in America.”) Looking for guidance, I checked Darden Smith’s entry at AMG, and the first style listed is “Americana.”
And maybe Americana is as good a tag to slap onto the Living Daylights as any. Years ago, I might have called it folk-rock, balancing the intersection of the acoustic guitars with the rock rhythm section. But that’s a crowded intersection at which to stand, and it’s too easy a label. Maybe it is Americana. Whatever it is, from the opening moments of “All These Things We Dream” through the end of “Anna,” The Living Daylights is one of those CDs that – without being self-consciously and artificially hushed – provides me with a gentle place from which to view the world.
Ten of the eleven songs on the CD were written by the group, with acoustic guitarist and singer Rick Barron being the chief writer, having been credited on all of them. The only cover is a version of Jonathan Edwards’ “Sunshine.” (It’s a decent version of a song that I’ve never particularly liked.) The highlights? Beyond the opener, “All These Things We Dream,” I like “I’ll Be Good To You” with its organ foundation and fills; I also find the wordy “Life Is,” the spare “Medicine Lake” and the melancholy closer, “Anna,” worth attention.
Members of the Living Daylights were: Rick Barron, vocals and acoustig guitar; Paul Peterson, vocals, upright and electric bass, keyboards and percussion programming; Joe Finger, vocals and drums; Troy Norton, vocals and electric and acoustic guitar; Wayne Cullinan, vocals and percussion; and Don LaMarca, acoustic piano, Hammond organ and keyboards.
Tracks
All These Things We Dream
I Am Here
We All Shine On
I’ll Be Good To You
Sunshine
All These Tears
Strong Man
Somebody’s Gonna Love You
Life Is
Medicine Lake
Anna
The Living Daylights by the Living Daylights [1996]
62.17 MB zipfile, mp3s at 192 kbps
Afternote
I should mention the two sites I’ve found that mention the Living Daylights. One is the website of Paul Peterson, also known as St. Paul Peterson, a former Prince protégé. A page on his site about his album Blue Cadillac notes that Rick Barron of the Living Daylights helped on his album. (Thanks for reminding me, Steve!) The other is a site called Professional Drum Tracks, which lists The Living Daylights and shows the CD cover.
Welcome to the Ocean. Welcome to the Sea of Meant to Be.
Ferris Wheels. French Brocade. Every Heart is on Parade.
All These Things We Dream. All These Things We Dream.
Those are some of the first lines from “All These Things We Dream,” a song by the Living Daylights that I posted two days ago. Since then, the song’s been downloaded only thirteen times. That’s what happens, generally, when I post something that’s not ever been very popular. And the Living Daylights was not a popular band.
The band was, to be honest, utterly obscure. So obscure that there are very few references to the band on the ’Net. (I searched using the name of the band coupled with the name of each band member. The search was complicated by the existence of the James Bond film of the same name: The Living Daylights.)
There is an entry for a band called the Living Daylights at All-Music Guide, with a different album listed for a different year, and the description of the band and its work is entirely at odds with how the CD I have sounds. It’s not the same band.
A search under “Song” at All-Music Guide for “All These Things We Dream” comes up empty. The Living Daylights is a band that seems to have made almost no impact on modern life, and that’s happened during an era when one can hardly avoid coming to the attention of Google even by accident.
So why am I writing about the Living Daylights and what seems to be the band’s only CD? Because even though it’s always a joy to hear songs and write about songs that I’ve heard for forty years – that’s seventy-one percent of my lifetime – it’s also a distinct and rare pleasure to find something new, something I’d not heard when it came out, and be able to enjoy it to the same degree as I do the music I’ve carried around in my head for years.
And that’s what happened when I came across The Living Daylights on the discount shelf of a bookstore in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, almost eight years ago. All one can judge by in those circumstances is the cover and the song titles. None of that was familiar, but the impulse to buy the CD and bring it home is something that I’m sure every music lover has faced: This CD wants me to buy it, and I don’t know why!
I’m certain that the CD cost me no more than two dollars, a minor investment. And when I got home and heard the first strains of “All These Things We Dream,” I was hooked and the hook set in as the rest of the CD played on.
What’s the frame of reference? Who does the Living Daylights sound like? I called the Texas Gal into the study this morning and played her snippets of four or five tracks. Her overall judgment was that “it sounds a little like Darden Smith,” and of course, over the last two-plus years, I’ve made well-known my affection for Mr. Smith’s work. But her first reaction, her first thought on hearing the Living Daylights was “It sounds like America.” (I asked her later if the meant the band – the “Horse With No Name” boys – or the country, and she said she meant both: “It sounds a little like the band, but it also sounds like life in America.”) Looking for guidance, I checked Darden Smith’s entry at AMG, and the first style listed is “Americana.”
And maybe Americana is as good a tag to slap onto the Living Daylights as any. Years ago, I might have called it folk-rock, balancing the intersection of the acoustic guitars with the rock rhythm section. But that’s a crowded intersection at which to stand, and it’s too easy a label. Maybe it is Americana. Whatever it is, from the opening moments of “All These Things We Dream” through the end of “Anna,” The Living Daylights is one of those CDs that – without being self-consciously and artificially hushed – provides me with a gentle place from which to view the world.
Ten of the eleven songs on the CD were written by the group, with acoustic guitarist and singer Rick Barron being the chief writer, having been credited on all of them. The only cover is a version of Jonathan Edwards’ “Sunshine.” (It’s a decent version of a song that I’ve never particularly liked.) The highlights? Beyond the opener, “All These Things We Dream,” I like “I’ll Be Good To You” with its organ foundation and fills; I also find the wordy “Life Is,” the spare “Medicine Lake” and the melancholy closer, “Anna,” worth attention.
Members of the Living Daylights were: Rick Barron, vocals and acoustig guitar; Paul Peterson, vocals, upright and electric bass, keyboards and percussion programming; Joe Finger, vocals and drums; Troy Norton, vocals and electric and acoustic guitar; Wayne Cullinan, vocals and percussion; and Don LaMarca, acoustic piano, Hammond organ and keyboards.
Tracks
All These Things We Dream
I Am Here
We All Shine On
I’ll Be Good To You
Sunshine
All These Tears
Strong Man
Somebody’s Gonna Love You
Life Is
Medicine Lake
Anna
The Living Daylights by the Living Daylights [1996]
62.17 MB zipfile, mp3s at 192 kbps
Afternote
I should mention the two sites I’ve found that mention the Living Daylights. One is the website of Paul Peterson, also known as St. Paul Peterson, a former Prince protégé. A page on his site about his album Blue Cadillac notes that Rick Barron of the Living Daylights helped on his album. (Thanks for reminding me, Steve!) The other is a site called Professional Drum Tracks, which lists The Living Daylights and shows the CD cover.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Saturday Single No. 144
Originally posted August 8, 2009:
This week, we finish catching up with historical July, checking out the records that found their ways to my home during Julys since 1990. (This will necessarily be an overview, as I began to find my vinyl madness during these years, for a time bringing home more LPs each month – sometimes thirty or more – than could be easily listened to.)
In July of 1990, I was living in Conway Springs, Kansas, planning my exit to Columbia, Missouri. I found ten LPs to bring home that month, all but two in Columbia, with the first batch being garnered on a trip there to find a place to live and the latter group coming to me after I’d moved to the city. The best of the month? Rick Danko’s 1977 self-titled solo debut, by a large margin. The least compelling? Probably Gord’s Gold Volume II, Gordon Lightfoot’s second hits package, on which the Canadian singer-songwriter offers newly recorded – and ultimately lesser – versions of his better-known songs from about 1976 on. One of the songs thusly diminished is the classic “The Wreck of the Edmund Fizgerald.” The record was made essential for Lighfoot completists, however, by the inclusion of a newly released track, “If It Should Please You.”
In 1991, July was a month of transition. I was completing my reporting project for my master’s degree in Columbia and traveled to Minnesota for a high school reunion and to find a place to live come August, as it was time to get back home. On my way in July, I stopped first to visit a friend in Menomonie, Wisconsin. It was my first visit to that university town, and of course, I checked out the record shops, finding a couple of LPs by Bonnie Raitt and a few other things. Once settled back in Minnesota, I added just one more record that month, a dismal outing by singer-songwriter John Dawson Read.
Finally ensconced in 1992 on Pleasant Avenue in south Minneapolis – a place I would stay for seven years, the longest I’ve stayed in one place during my entire adult life – I began to explore my new neighborhood’s vinyl assets, including Cheapo’s, just five blocks away. I brought home only nine records that first Pleasant July. The best of them was likely Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, a 1967 release I’ve loved for years. Or maybe Sandy Denny’s Sandy. (I should note that one of the LPs I found that month was the Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds, which many critics and listeners place among the top ten or fifteen albums of all time. I don’t agree.)
By the summer of 1993, I was in the middle of my years at the Eden Prairie newspaper, and the vinyl was beginning to crowd the books off my shelves. The records I got that July were good but not superb, with the best being maybe Emmylou Harris’ Evangeline. A Taste of Honey’s 1978 self-titled disco fest was likely the least compelling.
The pace had accelerated by the time July 1994 came through, with twenty-six record coming home with me that month, the vast majority of them from Cheapo’s, which was still – I believe – just five blocks away. (Sometime during my last years on Pleasant Avenue, Cheapo’s took over what had been a Best Buy store on West Lake Street, moving about ten blocks further from my home. I didn’t let that stop me.) The best of July 1994? Either Buffalo Springfield or Buffalo Springfield Again, although I do have an odd affection for the Fine Young Cannibals’ The Raw & The Cooked. The least interesting? Likely Cat Stevens’ Buddha and the Chocolate Box.
The summer of 1995 found me preoccupied with switching jobs, leaving my suburban reporting job and taking on the position of editor at a weekly based in downtown Minneapolis. Although I loved working downtown, neither the job nor the weekly were right for me, and the decision to make the move was, frankly, one of the worst I’ve made in my life. In any event, I bought only two records during July that year: One was Bob Dylan’s Uplugged. I was relieved to find the album on vinyl, as Dylan’s two preceding albums, World Gone Wrong and his third greatest hits package, were not released on vinyl; they were the first – and, I think, only – Bob Dylan albums so distributed. The other LP was Wendy Waldman’s Gypsy Symphony, a decent singer-songwriter record.
By July 1996, I’d left the weekly paper downtown and was beginning a little more than two years of scuffling and temp jobs. Eleven records came home with me that month. The best? Maybe The Beatles Live at the BBC or maybe Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3 [Rare and Unreleased] 1961-1991. There really was no worst; all the records I got that month were pretty good; the least significant was likely an Atlantic R&B anthology titled Super Hits.
July 1997 found twenty-two new records on my shelves. The best was likely Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, although Little Richard’s The Rill Thing is pretty darned good, too. The most odd? An instrumental album by Benedict Silberman titled Traditional Jewish Memories. My sister had owned a copy of it when we were young, and it brought back fond memories. Ringo Starr’s traditional pop excursion, Sentimental Journey, was a little strange, too.
By 1998, vinyl madness was at its peak. Forty-eight newly found records came to my shelves that July. The best? Ann Peebles’ I Can’t Stand the Rain or maybe Don’t Leave Me Here, an anthology of country blues from the late 1920s and early 1930s. The most disappointing? Love, the 1966 psychedelic workout by the group of the same name. Over-rated.
By July of 1999, I was packing to leave Pleasant Avenue for Bossen Terrace, a location further south in Minneapolis. I brought home only thirteen LPs that month. Tops on that list might have Smokey Robinson’s Being With You. The least compelling? The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Rick Wakeman. Also over-rated.
In my new location, I found new record shops to frequent and new neighborhoods in which to find garage sales. The seventh month of 2000 found twenty-two new LPs on the shelf. The best was likely Aretha Franklin’s This Girl's In Love With You, and the least worthy was probably Juice Newton’s Greatest Hits. I moved to the suburbs in June 2001 and then to St. Cloud in the autumn of 2002, and my record buying became much less frequent: Five July albums in 2001, with Asylum Choir II by Leon Russell and Marc Benno being the best. (I’ve generally looked past anthologies for the “best of the month” choices here, but I should note that July 2001 was when I picked up the Beatles’ One, which would certainly be in the running for the title of best anthology of all time.)
I bought some vinyl online in July 2002, and the Texas Gal would surprise me with the occasional LP or set. The month saw thirteen new LPs, most of them very good. The best was either Cold Blood’s First Taste of Sin or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s I do not play no rock ’n’ roll. As I was being very choosy, and as the Texas Gal knows my tastes very well, there was nothing from that month that was a disappointment.
And with the exception of a Loggins & Messina LP and one from Three Dog Night, both in 2004, that’s it for all the Julys past. So what do I pull out of this wealth of madness today?
Well, since I’ve shared the Rick Danko solo album here, and since I don’t see a lot listed here that’s not widely available, I can make an idiosyncratic choice. (As if I never do that, anyway.)
So here’s “Visions” from Cold Blood’s First Taste of Sin, today’s Saturday Single.
“Visions” by Cold Blood from First Taste of Sin [1972]
This week, we finish catching up with historical July, checking out the records that found their ways to my home during Julys since 1990. (This will necessarily be an overview, as I began to find my vinyl madness during these years, for a time bringing home more LPs each month – sometimes thirty or more – than could be easily listened to.)
In July of 1990, I was living in Conway Springs, Kansas, planning my exit to Columbia, Missouri. I found ten LPs to bring home that month, all but two in Columbia, with the first batch being garnered on a trip there to find a place to live and the latter group coming to me after I’d moved to the city. The best of the month? Rick Danko’s 1977 self-titled solo debut, by a large margin. The least compelling? Probably Gord’s Gold Volume II, Gordon Lightfoot’s second hits package, on which the Canadian singer-songwriter offers newly recorded – and ultimately lesser – versions of his better-known songs from about 1976 on. One of the songs thusly diminished is the classic “The Wreck of the Edmund Fizgerald.” The record was made essential for Lighfoot completists, however, by the inclusion of a newly released track, “If It Should Please You.”
In 1991, July was a month of transition. I was completing my reporting project for my master’s degree in Columbia and traveled to Minnesota for a high school reunion and to find a place to live come August, as it was time to get back home. On my way in July, I stopped first to visit a friend in Menomonie, Wisconsin. It was my first visit to that university town, and of course, I checked out the record shops, finding a couple of LPs by Bonnie Raitt and a few other things. Once settled back in Minnesota, I added just one more record that month, a dismal outing by singer-songwriter John Dawson Read.
Finally ensconced in 1992 on Pleasant Avenue in south Minneapolis – a place I would stay for seven years, the longest I’ve stayed in one place during my entire adult life – I began to explore my new neighborhood’s vinyl assets, including Cheapo’s, just five blocks away. I brought home only nine records that first Pleasant July. The best of them was likely Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, a 1967 release I’ve loved for years. Or maybe Sandy Denny’s Sandy. (I should note that one of the LPs I found that month was the Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds, which many critics and listeners place among the top ten or fifteen albums of all time. I don’t agree.)
By the summer of 1993, I was in the middle of my years at the Eden Prairie newspaper, and the vinyl was beginning to crowd the books off my shelves. The records I got that July were good but not superb, with the best being maybe Emmylou Harris’ Evangeline. A Taste of Honey’s 1978 self-titled disco fest was likely the least compelling.
The pace had accelerated by the time July 1994 came through, with twenty-six record coming home with me that month, the vast majority of them from Cheapo’s, which was still – I believe – just five blocks away. (Sometime during my last years on Pleasant Avenue, Cheapo’s took over what had been a Best Buy store on West Lake Street, moving about ten blocks further from my home. I didn’t let that stop me.) The best of July 1994? Either Buffalo Springfield or Buffalo Springfield Again, although I do have an odd affection for the Fine Young Cannibals’ The Raw & The Cooked. The least interesting? Likely Cat Stevens’ Buddha and the Chocolate Box.
The summer of 1995 found me preoccupied with switching jobs, leaving my suburban reporting job and taking on the position of editor at a weekly based in downtown Minneapolis. Although I loved working downtown, neither the job nor the weekly were right for me, and the decision to make the move was, frankly, one of the worst I’ve made in my life. In any event, I bought only two records during July that year: One was Bob Dylan’s Uplugged. I was relieved to find the album on vinyl, as Dylan’s two preceding albums, World Gone Wrong and his third greatest hits package, were not released on vinyl; they were the first – and, I think, only – Bob Dylan albums so distributed. The other LP was Wendy Waldman’s Gypsy Symphony, a decent singer-songwriter record.
By July 1996, I’d left the weekly paper downtown and was beginning a little more than two years of scuffling and temp jobs. Eleven records came home with me that month. The best? Maybe The Beatles Live at the BBC or maybe Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3 [Rare and Unreleased] 1961-1991. There really was no worst; all the records I got that month were pretty good; the least significant was likely an Atlantic R&B anthology titled Super Hits.
July 1997 found twenty-two new records on my shelves. The best was likely Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, although Little Richard’s The Rill Thing is pretty darned good, too. The most odd? An instrumental album by Benedict Silberman titled Traditional Jewish Memories. My sister had owned a copy of it when we were young, and it brought back fond memories. Ringo Starr’s traditional pop excursion, Sentimental Journey, was a little strange, too.
By 1998, vinyl madness was at its peak. Forty-eight newly found records came to my shelves that July. The best? Ann Peebles’ I Can’t Stand the Rain or maybe Don’t Leave Me Here, an anthology of country blues from the late 1920s and early 1930s. The most disappointing? Love, the 1966 psychedelic workout by the group of the same name. Over-rated.
By July of 1999, I was packing to leave Pleasant Avenue for Bossen Terrace, a location further south in Minneapolis. I brought home only thirteen LPs that month. Tops on that list might have Smokey Robinson’s Being With You. The least compelling? The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Rick Wakeman. Also over-rated.
In my new location, I found new record shops to frequent and new neighborhoods in which to find garage sales. The seventh month of 2000 found twenty-two new LPs on the shelf. The best was likely Aretha Franklin’s This Girl's In Love With You, and the least worthy was probably Juice Newton’s Greatest Hits. I moved to the suburbs in June 2001 and then to St. Cloud in the autumn of 2002, and my record buying became much less frequent: Five July albums in 2001, with Asylum Choir II by Leon Russell and Marc Benno being the best. (I’ve generally looked past anthologies for the “best of the month” choices here, but I should note that July 2001 was when I picked up the Beatles’ One, which would certainly be in the running for the title of best anthology of all time.)
I bought some vinyl online in July 2002, and the Texas Gal would surprise me with the occasional LP or set. The month saw thirteen new LPs, most of them very good. The best was either Cold Blood’s First Taste of Sin or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s I do not play no rock ’n’ roll. As I was being very choosy, and as the Texas Gal knows my tastes very well, there was nothing from that month that was a disappointment.
And with the exception of a Loggins & Messina LP and one from Three Dog Night, both in 2004, that’s it for all the Julys past. So what do I pull out of this wealth of madness today?
Well, since I’ve shared the Rick Danko solo album here, and since I don’t see a lot listed here that’s not widely available, I can make an idiosyncratic choice. (As if I never do that, anyway.)
So here’s “Visions” from Cold Blood’s First Taste of Sin, today’s Saturday Single.
“Visions” by Cold Blood from First Taste of Sin [1972]
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