Carved In Stone

Originally posted October 14, 2009

It’s a tale that I think every Minnesota kid of Swedish descent knew when I was young: In 1898 in west-central Minnesota, Olof Öhman was clearing his land when he found a slab of stone tangled in the roots of a tree. The stone – about thirty inches by sixteen inches, and six inches thick – had carving on one face and one edge.

Wikipedia says:

“Soon after it was found, the stone was displayed at a local bank. There is no evidence Öhman tried to make money from his find. An error-ridden copy of the inscription made its way to the Greek language department at the University of Minnesota, then to Olaus J. Breda, a professor of Scandinavian languages and literature there from 1884 to 1899, who showed little interest in the find. His runic knowledge was later questioned by some researchers. Breda made a translation, declared it to be a forgery and forwarded copies to linguists in Scandinavia. Norwegian archaeologist Oluf Rygh also concluded the stone was a fraud, as did several other linguists.”

But what did the stone say? Here’s a fairly common translation from the runes:

Eight Goths and 22 Norwegians on a journey of exploration from Vinland very far west. We had camp by two rocky islands one day’s journey north from this stone. We were out fishing one day. After we came home we found ten men red with blood and dead. AVM save from evil. Have ten men by the sea to look after our ships fourteen days’ journey from this island. Year 1362

(“Goths” has generally been interpreted to mean Swedes, and “AVM” is an abbreviation for “Ave Virgo Maria,” a supplication to the Virgin Mary.)

At the time, there was no proof for the supposition that the Viking explorers had ever reached North America, much less traveled as far inland as the area that would become Minnesota. The discoveries of Viking settlement ruins in Newfoundland were about sixty years in the future. The idea that Scandinavians had reached the American Midwest seemed ludicrous. But was it?

Well, I don’t know. I’ve known about the runestone for most of my life, and from time to time, it makes the news when some scholar or another brings new eyes, new historical context and new technology to bear on the runestone, providing another piece to a puzzle that will likely never be solved. (The Wikipedia page on the runestone, a generally skeptical account, reviews the century of research in detail that can become mind-numbing, especially during its review of the actual runes found on the stone.)

The most interesting bit of recent geologic research that I’d been aware of compared the weathering on the stone and its runes to the weathering on gravestones of similar rock in the eastern United States. The conclusion was that the Kensington stone was likely underground between fifty to two-hundred years before it was unearthed in 1898, which means the stone was buried sometime between 1698 and 1848. I’m not certain when the area was settled, but there would have been few, if any, settlers in the area by 1848, which almost certainly would mean that whoever carved it and left it there did so while the land was wild.

Is the stone authentic? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else knows, either. There are some indications that it’s a hoax, and some – like the geological analysis mentioned above – that raise more questions. As a good Minnesotan, and half Swedish at that, I’d like the runestone to be authentic. If it’s a hoax, okay, but what was the point? No one’s ever provided what seems to me to be a persuasive answer.

The Kensington Runestone in its display case in Alexandria, Minnesota.

I hadn’t thought about the runestone for years, but a couple weeks ago, I saw a promotion for a film on the History Channel titled The Holy Grail in Minnesota, which had as its starting point the Kensington Runestone. I set the film to record, and I finally got back to it the other evening.

The film, produced by Minnesotans Andy and Maria Awes, begins with a pretty good look at the runestone’s known history, though it does tend to skim over some of the skepticism. And then it looks at the history of the Knights Templar and the order’s dissolution by the Vatican in the early fourteenth century. So far, so good. But then the hints began: The Knights Templar had searched for something precious on the site of the ruins under Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and a fleet of ships later sent out from France by the Templars was never seen again.

In a segment filled with the words “might,” “maybe,” “could” and “possibly,” I saw the film’s destination: It was the Knights Templar who carved the Kensington stone when they brought the Holy Grail to America in 1362. I wasn’t in the mood for that much historical theorizing, so I quit watching. I imagine I’ll look at the film again someday, and until I do, I’ll reserve judgment. I suppose that the idea of the Knights Templar in Minnesota is no more unlikely than the idea that Vikings got here. (A little digging turned up a link to a book that seems to look at the same idea; I’ll likely see if it’s in the library.)

These days, the Kensington Runestone is displayed in a museum in Alexandria, Minnesota, a town of about twelve thousand people that’s about seventy miles northwest of St. Cloud. The city is also home to Big Ole, a twenty-eight foot statue of a Viking whose shield proclaims Alexandria as the “Birthplace of America,” a claim based on the ownership of the runestone. Never mind that the stone was found near Kensington, the town where it was displayed in the bank window, about twenty miles west of Alexandria. Near there, Öhman’s homestead, the site of the stone’s discovery, has been turned into a park, with, I believe, a replica of the runestone. There’s also a replica of the stone in a park on the east end of Alexandria, where the main U.S. highway used to come into town before the opening of Interstate Highway 94.

I’ve seen the stone once, in 1975, when my Danish brother and a friend of his were traveling the U.S. and stopped in St. Cloud for a few days. And I’ll likely see it again soon; the Texas Gal has said she’d like to see it. Maybe next spring, we’ll take a Saturday and head off to see the evidence of those eight Goths and twenty-two Norwegians.

A Six-Pack of Stone
“Murdering Stone” by the Walkabouts from New West Motel [1993]
“Dr. Stone” by the Leaves from Hey Joe [1966]
“I’m Stone In Love With You” by the Stylistics, Avco 4603 [1972]
“Rollin’ Stone” by Johnny Rivers from Last Train To Memphis [1998]
“Stoney End” by Barbra Streisand, Columbia 45236 [1970]
“Tombstone Shadow” by Creedence Clearwater Revival from Green River [1969]

On first listen, the Walkabouts’ “Murdering Stone” lies on the ears as a discomfiting bit of recent Americana: Not being sure what a murdering stone is, the listener might shrug, thinking it all sounds all right, but what does it mean? But I get the sense that meaning isn’t important here; what matters is connection. And “Murdering Stone,” with its fiddle and its piano and with its unsettling narrative, pulls me back to an early 1970s classic of country rock, Mason Proffit’s “Two Hangmen.” From there, it seemed to me that “Murdering Stone” also links to the country tale of “The Long Black Veil.” Numerous great versions of that classic of Americana are easy to find; the first that come to my mind are those by The Band on Music From Big Pink and Johnny Cash’s version on his 1965 album Orange Blossom Special. Wikipedia notes that Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin wrote the song for Lefty Frizzell, whose 1959 recording of it went to No. 6 on the Billboard country chart. (JB at The Hits Just Keep On Comin’ noted this week that Rosanne Cash’s new album, The List, includes a performance of the song by Cash and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco; he also found a video of a television performance of the song by Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell.) I’m not sure that “Murdering Stone” is quite on the level of “The Long Black Veil,” but it certainly sent a chill or two up my spine – and not for the first time – when I listened to it this morning.

So what type of medicine does one get while visiting the Leaves’ “good friend” Dr. Stone? Well, in the Los Angeles of 1966, one can make a few guesses. But more important than pharmaceutical guessing games is the intoxicating rhythm track and the garage band sound that “Dr. Stone” celebrates

“I’m Stone In Love With You” was just one of the seemingly uncountable hits that came from the songwriting team of Thom Bell and Linda Creed during the early 1970s. In the wrong production hands, Creed’s lyrics might have been unbearably sappy, gooey to the point of parody, but Bell’s production and the talent of the vocal groups he was recording made the listener believe Creed’s insistently romantic words. And the pairing of the Stylistics’ talents and those of Bell and Creed on “I’m Stone In Love With You” worked exceedingly well, despite some risks. Using “stone” as an adjective was probably risky in 1972 for two reasons: First, because of the word’s drug connotations, and second, because its meaning in what was at first a jarring phrase had to be inferred and then accepted by the listener. But it sounded good as a lyric, and the Stylistics and Bell pulled it off in the studio; the record went to No. 10 in the autumn and early winter of 1972-73.

I have a number of versions of “Rollin’ Stone” I could have put on this list, from the 1950 original by Muddy Waters onward. (I have shared at least once the version by Johnny Jenkins from his Ton-Ton Macoute! album with Duane Allman as part of the backing band.) Johnny Rivers’ cover from Last Train To Memphis is the most recent I have of the song, which is one of the sturdiest in the history of the blues. Rivers’ performance isn’t ground-breaking, but it’s solid, like the rest of the album, on which Rivers pays tribute to the music he grew up with. The album is worth a listen or two.

There are times when I admire Barbra Streisand for her vocal abilities, her range of talents, her ambition and her success. And there are times when I cannot stand the woman. And that’s all me and has nothing, really, to do with her. But whether I wake on the pro-Babs or anti-Babs side of the bed, I’ll always enjoy hearing “Stoney End,” the Richard Perry-produced title tune to Streisand’s 1971 album and a No. 6 single during the winter of 1970-71.

As for “Tombstone Shadow,” all I really need to say is that it’s a slice of tight, brooding and slightly spooky rock ’n’ roll from one of the best American bands ever to strap on guitars and set up a drum kit.

Saturday Single No. 771

One thing I’ve not done a lot of here is look at the annual Billboard pop charts. I’ve got them, at least for the entire Twentieth Century, gathered in one of Joel Whitburn’s publications, A Century Of Pop Music.

I recall using the book once, when I checked the ranking of a tune in connection with a post about my mom’s Uncle Henry. I might have used the book more often than that – I can’t imagine I didn’t – but it comes off the shelf on the other side of the room far less often than a lot of the other books do.

Maybe that’s because it doesn’t provide many surprises, at least in the charts from the years I write about most – 1964 to, say, 1976. I may not know what the No. 40 record for 1965 was, but I’m pretty sure it’s something I’ve heard, likely often. (And I’m right about that; the record listed at No. 40 for 1965 is “Let’s Hang On” by the 4 Seasons.)

But I’m going to play with it a little today and, I think, off and on for the next few weeks, looking each time at the top five records in the years I consider my sweet spot – 1969 through 1975 – and then taking a listen to the No. 40 record of the year, whatever it may be.

We’ll start in 1969, because that was the year that I heard Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” coming from the radio in the training room during a break in the two-a-days that started football practice at St. Cloud Tech High School. Not long after that I moved Grampa’s old RCA radio from the basement shelf to my nightstand and began to seriously listen to Top 40 radio.

The top five singles for 1969 were:

“Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” by the 5th Dimension
“In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)” by Zager & Evans
“Get Back” by the Beatles with Billy Preston
“Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies
“Honky-Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones

Nothing at all surprising there. And they’re everywhere, certainly in my corner of the world. Three of them – the records by the 5th Dimension, the Beatles/Billy Preston, and the Rolling Stones – are here as records (with “Aquarius” on a 45 – the first music 45 I ever bought – and the other two on albums). All three of those are here on CDs and as mp3s.

The records by the Archies and Zager & Evans are likely here on CD compilations and are certainly here as mp3s. And four of the five were on the iPod this morning, and thus among my essential day-to-day listening. The one I missed – and it was an oversight that’s been corrected – was the Stones’ record.

But what was the No. 40 record for 1969, the record we might call the least of the best? Well, it’s one that I never particularly liked: “Down On The Corner” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I’m not sure why it never got on my good side, but I rather enjoyed the flipside, “Fortunate Son,” which also got some airplay in late 1969. So it’s not in my iPod. But it’s here as today’s Saturday Single.

Saturday Single No. 703

We’re going to dabble, as we often do, in 1970 this morning, looking at the No. 1 records in the various Billboard charts from fifty years ago today. Those records were:

“War” by Edwin Starr on the Hot 100.
“Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” by Stevie Wonder on the R&B chart.
“Don’t Keep Me Hangin’ On” by Sonny James on the country chart.
“Snowbird” by Anne Murray on the easy listening chart
Cosmo’s Factory by Creedence Clearwater Revival on the pop album chart.
ABC by the Jackson 5 on the R&B album chart.
Charley Pride’s 10th Album on the country album chart.

As might be expected, I know everything but the country stuff from that list. And even though I should probably know more about Sonny James and Charley Pride than I do, I’m going to pass on them today, and we’re going to take a look at Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Cosmo’s Factory.

Even though I liked hearing CCR’s singles coming out of my radio in the years from 1969 to 1972, I never thought to get any of the group’s records until the summer of 1988, when I came across Willy And The Poorboys and Green River (probably used at a garage sale). The rest of the group’s catalog landed on my shelves during the years of vinyl madness in the late 1990s, with today’s topic – Cosmo’s Factory – coming home with me in October 1998.

Is it my favorite Creedence album? No, I think Green River take that label. But it’s got three Top Five double-sided singles: “Travelin’ Band/Who’ll Stop The Rain” (No. 2), “Up Around The Bend/Run Through The Jungle” (No. 4), and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door/As Long As I Can See The Light” (No. 2), as well as the eleven-minute jam on “Heard It Through The Grapevine.” So it’s got some cred.

Fifty years ago today, the album was in the second week of a nine-week run atop the Billboard 200, so here’s my favorite track from the album, “Long As I Can See The Light.” It’s today’s Saturday Single.

As The End Of The Year Draws Near

Originally posted August 27, 2008

As August enters its last days, we’re coming to the end of another year.

Forget that December 31/January 1 stuff. That’s bookkeeping. For me – and for many, I think – the years turn over sometime during the first weeks of September.

During my school days, for thirteen years, the new year began on the day after Labor Day with the first day of school. For another six years – I went to college on the extended plan – the year began sometime in September when the fall quarter started. If I’d pondered that sense of timing at all in those days, I would have expected it to change when I went into the adult world. But it didn’t. Years still turned as August ended and September began.

Part of that was because of my work: Small town newspapers find so much of their content in the local schools that their calendars are tied to the schools’ calendars. In between my newspaper years, I went to graduate school and then taught and worked at several colleges and universities, so my life continued to be tied to a literal calendar that ran from September onward.

But it’s been more than ten years since I was a reporter. My day-to-day life has no connection with the schools, with colleges and universities, with the regular events that command the attention of reporters and editors. And still, it feels to me as if a year is ending in these few days. And it feels as if a new year is about to begin.

Maybe it’s conditioning from all those early years in school. Maybe it’s something so instinctive in the human mind, perhaps something tied to the harvest-time, that we’ve lost track of where it comes from. (It occurs to me that, if the perception of years turning at this time of year is innately tied to the harvest, folks whose forbears were native to the Southern Hemisphere would have a different perception. Anyone from those precincts have a thought?)

Whatever the reason, this time of year has always felt like a time of renewal and change. One such time, an August/September that stands out clearly (I know I’ve mentioned it before), came in 1969, when I spent daytimes of the last weeks of summer at football practice, lugging equipment and supplies around for the Tech Tigers and then hanging around the locker room, sharing ribald stories and the music that came from the training room radio.

In a way that very little else does, music marks our years. And here are some tunes that are markers for me from late August and early September of that year.

A Baker’s Dozen from 1969, Vol. 3
“Goodbye Columbus” by the Association, Warner Bros. 7265 (No. 95 on the Billboard Hot 100, August 23, 1969)

“Going In Circles” by the Friends of Distinction, RCA 0204 (No. 90)

“Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home” by Joe South, Capitol 2592 (No. 84)

“I’m Gonna Make You Mine” by Lou Christie, Buddah 116 (No. 66)

“Everybody’s Talkin’” by Nilsson, RCA Victor 0161 (No. 49)

“Keem-O-Sabe” by the Electric Indian, United Artists 50563 (No. 39)

“Share Your Love With Me” by Aretha Franklin, Atlantic 2650 (No. 31)

“Marrakesh Express” by Crosby, Stills & Nash, Atlantic 2652 (No. 28)

“Soul Deep” by the Box Tops, Mala 12040 (No. 24)

“Easy To Be Hard” by Three Dog Night, Dunhill/ABC 4203 (No. 18)

“Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” by Kenny Rogers & the First Edition, Reprise 0829 (No. 11)

“Green River” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fantasy 625 (No. 7)

“Put A Little Love In Your Heart” by Jackie DeShannon, Imperial 66385 (No. 6)

A few notes:

I’ve always been surprised that “Goodbye Columbus” – the theme from the film of the same name – didn’t do better. The record peaked at No. 88 on September 6 and then fell off the chart.

“Everybody’s Talkin’” is one of those tunes that has a few different versions out there. It was used in the film Midnight Cowboy, and two different versions of it are on the official soundtrack. Neither of them sounds like the one I remember coming from my radio. The version here is from Nilsson’s 1968 album Aerial Ballet, and I think this was the version that got airplay as the single, which reached No. 6. I could be wrong. Anyone know?

“Keem-O-Sabe” was one of those instrumentals that occasionally popped up in the Top 40, and the thought occurs that it likely wouldn’t have a chance of doing so today, given changes in attitudes. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits notes that Electric Indian was actually a group of studio musicians from Philadelphia; some of them later were members of MFSB. The record peaked at No. 16.

I liked Kenny Rogers when he was with the First Edition; the group had four more Top 40 hits after “Ruby” peaked at No. 6. They were “Ruben James” and “Something’s Burning,” which I recall, and “Tell It All Brother” and “Heed The Call,” which I don’t. (I have “Heed The Call” but I don’t remember hearing it in 1970.) After those four, Rogers was absent from the Top 40 for seven years, until “Lucille” began his remarkable run of success as a country crossover artist, a string of tunes that didn’t interest me much.

I imagine that, if asked to pick the perfect CCR record, lots of folks would go with “Proud Mary.” Nothing wrong with that one, but something about “Green River” grabbed me the first time I heard that opening guitar riff, and it’s never let me go.

A Friday Walk Through The Junkyard

Originally posted March 14, 2008

My to-do list has gotten longer as the week has progressed. Tomorrow is the annual tabletop hockey competition here, and I have much left to accomplish. I do have some interesting albums to rip: I’ve gotten five fairly rare albums in the mail in recent weeks, with another – the Blue Rose album I mentioned Wednesday – on the way.

But time is short today, so instead of trying to rush one of those albums along and botching it, I thought I’d take one of my regular random walks through the junkyard and see what we find from the years 1951-2000.

“Fridgidaire Woman” by Son Seals from Living In The Danger Zone, 1991

“Screamer for Phlyses” by Shawn Phillips from Contribution, 1970

“Mack the Knife” by Bobby Darin, Atco single 6147, 1959

“Sad, Sad Day” by Muddy Waters from King Bee, 1981

“Corrina” by King Biscuit Boy with Crowbar from Official Music, 1970

“Wild Horses” by Leon Russell from Stop All That Jazz, 1974

“Little Girl” by Redbone from Redbone, 1970

“Pleasure” by the Peanut Butter Conspiracy from The Great Conspiracy, 1968

“Make Love To You” by the Stills-Young Band from Long May You Run, 1976

“The Working Man” by Creedence Clearwater Revival from Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1968

“Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” by the Eurythmics & Aretha Franklin, RCA single 14214, 1985

“Let Your Lovelight Shine” by the Buddy Miles Express from Expressway To Your Skull, 1968

“Don’t Make Promises” by the Beau Brummels, Warner Bros. single 7014, 1967

“Heavy Church” by Three Dog Night from Naturally, 1970

“Feels So Good” by Chuck Mangione from Feels So Good, 1977

A few notes:

Every three years or so from 1973 through 2000, blues fans could count on a release from Son Seals, an Arkansas-born blues guitarist discovered in a Chicago nightspot by Alligator Records owner Bruce Iglauer. “Frigidaire Woman” comes from Living In The Danger Zone, which, in terms of quality, falls right in the middle of Seals’ nine-album series of works. Seals – who died in 2003 – never made a bad album; his best was most likely Midnight Son from 1976.

I heard “Mack the Knife” the other day as I pulled into the supermarket a parking lot. I waited to leave the car until the song ended, thinking, “I need to get that song into the blog,” and now, the universe has done that for me. The song originated in The Threepenny Opera, a 1928 piece of musical theater by writer Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill. The story of Macheath and his murderous ways was eventually translated to film in the 1950s and continues to be presented on occasion as live theater. Darin’s swinging version of the show’s opening number contrasts greatly with the staid and stiff version I heard when I listened to a recording of the opera. Louis Armstrong recorded a similar version of the tune, but it was Darin’s version that was the hit, going to No. 1 for nine weeks in the autumn of 1959. (Darin’s version – as did Armstrong’s before it – name-checks “Miss Lotte Lenya” during the final verses. In the mid- to late Sixties, when I heard the song, I was confused, as I knew Lotte Lenya only as the haggard and unappealing actress who’d played Soviet agent Rosa Klebb in the James Bond film, From Russia With Love. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that Lotte Lenya had been Kurt Weill’s wife, had acted in various stagings of The Threepenny Opera and had earned a Tony award for one of them, in the mid-1950s.)

King Bee, produced by Johnny Winter, was – from what I can tell – the last album in the long career of Muddy Waters. For the most part, the album is new versions of Waters’ work on the Chess label (including “Sad, Sad Day”), but the album is still a pretty good way to spend some time.

The Peanut Butter Conspiracy was a Los Angeles-based psychedelic band, and The Great Conspiracy was the group’s second album. Some of the songs on the record stretch out a little into some trippy mid-Sixties noodling and jamming. “Pleasure” isn’t one of those; it’s a fairly concise song that’s typical of second-level psychedelic pop rock. Good for what it is.

Pretty much right from the start, Creedence Clearwater Revival was a great band. The misfortune that John Fogerty and his bandmates had to face was that, at the time, bands that recorded long, trippy songs full of obscure allusions sold lots of records and were taken seriously, while bands that recorded good three-minute singles were relegated to a less-serious room, kind of like eating at the kids’ table on Thanksgiving. But listening to CCR’s records today, even the stuff that wasn’t released as singles has aged an awful lot better than the work of a lot of those groups that were taken so seriously four decades ago. (Yeah, CCR stretched out sometimes, as on its version of “Suzy Q.” and “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” But those are the group’s less successful efforts, I think; the group’s strength was the three-minute single, and CCR did that about as well as anyone ever has. My favorite happens to be “Green River.”)

I think the 1985 collaboration between the Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin tends to get lost in the memory of the Eighties as a decade of synths, drum machines and big hair (and the Eighties were all that). But “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” truly cooks. And it’s probably Aretha’s last great record.

I mentioned the other day the breadth of writers from which Three Dog Night got its material. “Heavy Church,” a record I’ve always liked a lot, ever since I got Naturally as a Christmas gift in 1971, was written by Alan O’Day, with whom I had a brief correspondence about “Rock & Roll Heaven” a while back. O’Day’s own version showed up on his 1973 album, Caress Me Pretty Music.

Chuck Mangione had a No. 4 hit in early 1978 with a single edit of “Feels So Good.” This is the nine-minute album version.

CCR, Neil Diamond & Bobby Sherman

Originally posted March 6, 2008

There’s an absurdity of riches on YouTube connected to yesterday’s post. Some Thursday mornings, I have to scramble to find something to post here, but today, I had to decide what not to present.

So I’m presenting three videos today, and even with that, it was hard to choose. But it’s a nice problem to have; leaving some behind means I have some backup, a surplus of material if I come to a Thursday when absolutely nothing is available that ties into recent posts.

First, from sometime in the early 1970s – the group disbanded in October 1972, according to the Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits – here’s a concert performance of “Travelin’ Band” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The start is a bit abrupt, but that minor flaw is redeemed by the great performance and by the great shots of the audience chooglin’ to the music.

I looked for a video of the Hollies doing “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” but I found something that might be better. It’s Neil Diamond, who wrote the song, performing at a small venue.* Based on the haircut, it’s sometime around 1970, when the Hollies’ version went to No. 7 early in the year and Diamond’s version – from his album Tap Root Manuscript – went to No. 20 in the autumn. Neil gets a little melodramatic here, but it’s a pretty good performance.

And last, well, once I found a video of Bobby Sherman performing “Easy Come, Easy Go,” how could I resist? The video was obviously taken from one of the retrospectives on VH1, and there might be a clue somewhere as to its original source. But I’m not worried about it, as it’s too much fun! The classically horrible shirt, the hair, the ladies behind him who come to life only during the instrumental – this isn’t just cheese, it’s Gorgonzola! (A question for the women who were teens back then: Did anyone really think this guy was good-looking? Because I don’t see it. Enlighten me, please.)

*As readers quickly pointed out when this entry was first posted, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” was written by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell, giving me another lesson in checking the fine print on LP jackets. Note added June 15, 2011.

A Baker’s Dozen Under No. 1 From 1970

Originally posted March 5, 2008

As I’ve mentioned a fair number of times, it was in late 1969 and early 1970 that I began to listen regularly to Top 40 radio. Every once in a while, I wander over to one of the sites that catalog local radio charts from those years. I choose a station and a weekly chart almost at random and let my eyes wander up and down the list, with my internal radio playing snippets of songs first heard long ago.

I did that this morning, casting about for a theme for a Baker’s Dozen. I had at first thought about a list of songs with “Road” in their titles, as I’ve long wanted to share Elvis Presley’s version of “True Love Travels On A Gravel Road.” But I ran part of a random search and then thought to myself, well, maybe another day. So I looked at the charts for March of 1970, thinking I might just present the top thirteen songs of one week. But during that month, one of the top records everywhere I looked was Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that record at all. It’s a truly great record (as is the album from which it came). But I shared it here last August, and – besides that – it’s one of those omnipresent records. I don’t think anyone ever hears it and thinks, “Wow, when was the last time I heard that?” And that reaction is one I hope that at least some of the things I share here will generate.

So I looked at 1969, and I looked at 1971 and 1973 and 1975. And I was dissatisfied by what I saw. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood today, I thought. Then I had the thought that maybe I should go ahead and pretend that the Simon & Garfunkel record wasn’t there, present records Nos. 2 through 14 as a Baker’s Dozen Under No. 1 or something like that. So I went back to the WDGY (Twin Cities) chart for March 6, 1970, and looked at those records. Not a bad batch, but I’d have to go find two of them, Frijid Pink’s version of “House of the Rising Sun” and “Easy Come, Easy Go” by Bobby Sherman. (Now that I have the external hard drive, I can afford to use storage space for frivolities like songs by Bobby Sherman.)

And I got sidetracked. I not only found those two songs, but also found – and saved to the hard drive – Sherman’s “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” and “Seattle.” Being at least a little bit of an archivist, I wanted to find the catalog numbers for those. “Julie” was easy, but it’s a bit harder to track down the genesis of “Seattle,” which was Sherman’s version of the theme song for the 1968 TV show Here Come the Brides. (Sherman was one of the stars of the show.) Wikipedia says that Sherman’s version of the song reached the Cash Box Top 100 in 1969, but twenty minutes combing through the online charts cast doubt on that; I found Perry Como’s version of the song listed, but not Sherman’s. Another search left me looking at a picture of a record cut from the back of a cereal box. I doubt that was the only way “Seattle” was released, but by that time, I’d already spent thirty minutes on a record that’s not in my plans for today. So I’ll get back to it later and go ahead and present my rather odd idea.

A Baker’s Dozen Under No. 1, March 6, 1970

“Ma Belle Amie” by the Tee Set, Colossus single 107

“Who’ll Stop The Rain”/“Travelin’ Band” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fantasy single 637

“Give Me Just A Little More Time” by the Chairmen of the Board, Invictus single 9074

“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by the Hollies, Epic single 10532

“Easy Come, Easy Go” by Bobby Sherman, Metromedia single 177

“Thank You”/“Everybody Is A Star” by Sly & the Family Stone, Epic single 10555

“No Time” by the Guess Who, RCA single 0300

“House of the Rising Sun” by Frijid Pink, Parrot single 341

“Rainy Night In Georgia” by Brook Benton, Cotillion single 44057

“Oh Me, Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby)” by Lulu, Atco single 6722

“The Rapper” by the Jaggerz, Kama Sutra single 502

“Hey There, Lonely Girl” by Eddie Holman, ABC single 11240

“Kentucky Rain” by Elvis Presley, RCA single 9791

A few notes:

One of the quandaries facing me here is one that I think almost any radio lover encounters when trying to assess a cluster of songs from the past. Most of these songs are old friends, and it’s hard to look at them, to listen to them, objectively.

I think the best of this list are the Creedence sides along with “A Rainy Night In Georgia,” “Kentucky Rain.” and “Oh Me, Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby).” (That last should not be a surprise to regular readers.)

Of the rest of them, some have aged well, some haven’t, and some never had a chance.

“Give Me Just A Little More Time” and the two Sly & the Family Stone records still sound pretty good, although “Everybody Is A Star” sounds to me a little bit better than its A side, the full title of which is “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” The Hollies, the Guess Who and Eddie Holman are still good listening, too, though maybe a notch lower.

Frijid Pink’s “House of the Rising Sun” sounded better this morning – hearing it for the first time in years – than I expected it to, but my expectations were, I admit, low. I guess I won’t hit the skip button when it comes up again, though. The same holds true for “Ma Belle Amie,” which I kind of like, as clunky as it may be.

As for “The Rapper” and the Bobby Sherman record, well, if I had to trim these thirteen down to ten, they’d be the first ones cut. After that, well, I suppose the Frijid Pink song would fall, if only because I like to sing along during the French lines in “Ma Belle Amie.”

I’ve presented the B sides of the two double-sided singles because I think they’re less likely to be heard on the radio.

A Baker’s Dozen Of Moons

Originally posted February 20, 2008

I must have been about seven, which would put it sometime during the winter of 1960-61, when my dad showed me the darkened and red moon.

I’d been in bed a few hours, I imagine, with bedtime for a seven-year-old being about eight o’clock back then. But Dad woke me and had me look to the south, out the bathroom window. Floating above the trees, there rode the Moon, looking larger than usual, its normally pale white face colored a dusky red.

“It’s a total eclipse of the moon,” he told me. “The Earth comes between the Sun and the moon, and we can see the Earth’s shadow on the moon.” We looked for a while. I asked why the moon was red. He said he thought it had to do with the atmosphere, with the weather. (He was right.)

We looked at the moon for a little while longer and then went back to bed. It’s been nearly fifty years since Dad showed me the red moon. I imagine other total eclipses have come and gone, maybe many times, since then. There’s another one tonight, visible in most of North America. Starting at 7:43 Central Time, the Earth’s shadow will fall across the Moon. From 9:01 to 9:51, according to NASA, the eclipse will be total.

I hope lots of dads show their kids the darkened moon tonight.

A Baker’s Dozen of Moons
“Under the Darkest Moon” by Boo Hewerdine and Darden Smith from Evidence, 1989

“Moon River” by Henry Mancini from the soundtrack to Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961

“Neon Moon” by Brooks & Dunn from Brand New Man, 1991

“Love on the Moon” by the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver from Reach For The Sky, 1975

“Moonlight Feels Right” by Starbuck, Private Stock single 45,036, 1976

“Blue Moon” by Elvis Presley , RCA single 47-6640, 1956

“All Around The Sun And Moon” by Joy of Cooking from Castles, 1972

“Copper Kettle (Pale Moonlight)” by Bob Dylan from Self Portrait, 1970

“Blue Moon of Kentucky” by Levon Helm, from Coal Miner’s Daughter soundtrack, 1980

“Desert Moon” by Dennis DeYoung, A&M single 2666, 1984

“Yellow Moon” by the Neville Brothers from Yellow Moon, 1989

“Underneath the Harlem Moon” by Randy Newman from 12 Songs, 1970

“Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fantasy single 622, 1969

A few notes:

“Under the Darkest Moon” comes from one of my favorite albums, one I shared here a while back. When I found it, I began to follow the solo careers of the two artists. In the past few years, though, I’ve pretty much quit following Hewerdine while continuing to track Smith, whose music continues to inhabit the intersection of rock, country and folk. (He’s issued nothing since 2005’s Field of Crows, so I’m waiting patiently.) Why did I quit following Hewerdine? His melodies are artful, sometimes beautiful, and his words are often eloquent, but, to me, the more I listened, there was a lightness in his work that was unrelieved; they needed a little more weight.

When I was working at the newspaper in Eden Prairie in the early 1990s, one of my colleagues, an ad man, was a country music fan, though he liked oldies as well. On his recommendation, I ordered through my music club one of Brooks & Dunn’s albums. I listened to it a couple of times, shrugged, and passed it on to Alan. Since the Texas Gal came into my life eight years ago this month, I’ve listened more to country music than I ever had before, and Brooks & Dunn are quite likely my favorite country performers. (Whenever they pop up on the RealPlayer, the little message box tells me that the only recording duo that has sold more records than Brooks & Dunn is Simon & Garfunkel. If that’s true, and I have no reason to doubt it, that’s an astounding fact.)

For most of the summer of 1976, the Starbuck tune was as inescapable as it is catchy. It spent fourteen weeks in the Top 40, beginning in mid-May, going as high as No. 3. It has to be one of the few Top 40 hits with a marimba solo. (I think it’s a marimba.)

When it was released in 1970, Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait was greeted with confused stares and derision. Among other things, critic Greil Marcus wrote, “I once said I’d buy an album of Dylan breathing hard. But I’d never said I’d buy an album of Dylan breathing softly.” “Copper Kettle (Pale Moonlight)” has been one of the few tracks that, over the years, has been given some respect. Wikipedia reports that it was written by “Alfred Frank Beddoe (who was ‘discovered’ by Pete Seeger after applying for work at People’s Songs, Inc. in 1946).” (Exactly who was doing the applying there is unclear, but never mind.) To me, “Copper Kettle (Pale Moonlight)” is not just the best track on the album, but one of Dylan’s best tracks ever.

I was never a Styx fan, but I found I enjoyed 1984’s Desert Moon, the first solo album by the band’s keyboard player and vocalist, Dennis DeYoung. Part of that was no doubt familiarity with the title track, as the song’s video was in heavy rotation on MTV that year, the first year I had cable. It’s still a nice song, but it sounds a little bit slight after twenty-four years.

We Write What We Know

Originally posted December 28, 2007

It was a year ago this week that I got my USB turntable, which means I’ve been involved in this blogging adventure for almost a year now. For about a month after I got the turntable and was happily ripping vinyl to mp3s, I was posting the results only at two bulletin boards I frequent. At the same time, however, I was digging deeper into the music blogs I knew about, and began to think . . .

For a month, I looked carefully at the blogs I visited regularly, trying to figure out if I could find a niche that was uninhabited and assessing how I should present my own commentary. I decided that when I posted full albums, they were going to be almost always out of print or at least hard to get, and when I posted collections of singles, they would mostly be from the years before 1990.

But what was I going to write about? I’ve taught some writing – mostly in the venue of teaching journalism – and I’ve had several friends who have taught college composition and creative writing. And for most of the students involved, the first instruction is to write what you know. And in the context of music, what I knew was what I liked, how the music I liked came to be, and how it was that I came to know about that music in the first place. And that’s what I wrote about, in contexts as varied as the music I listen to.

I wondered sometimes if there was too much of me in my posts, but a comment I received one day from JB, the DJ at The Hits Just Keep On Comin’, helped me clarify things. JB said – and I’m paraphrasing here – that when he began his blog, he thought that there would be posts so personal that no one save himself would be interested in them. He soon found, he said, that it’s impossible to handicap readers in blogworld: frequently, the posts he thought would be ignored generated traffic and comments, and the posts that he thought would be hot stuff weren’t. He basically told me: Do what you do and let others sort it out.

So I did. And I found myself having more fun than at almost any time in my life.

So, my thanks to JB, and to the other bloggers in my links list, who share their lives and their music in various proportions. With only a few days left in 2007, I’m looking forward to 2008 and to sharing more music. One of my hopes for the year is to get an external hard drive for my music, so I have room to expand and no longer have to go though the process, every six months or so, of deleting about 10,000 MB of music after burning it onto CDs, just to keep a comfortable amount of free space on my internal hard drive.

(One of those humorous laws of human behavior – I forget which one it is – notes that work expands to fill the time allotted for it. I guess that’s true. I guess whiteray’s corollary to that law says: Music always expands to fill the space allotted to it. And thank goodness it does!)

Here are fifteen random stops from the years 1950-1999:

A Walk Through whiteray’s Junkyard
“Traveling Blues” by Spencer Bohren from Full Moon, 1991

“Think It Over” by Buddy Holly from The Buddy Holly Story, 1959

“ABC” by the Jackson Five, Motown single 1163, 1970

“Run Through The Jungle” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fantasy single 641, 1970

“Payday” by Mississippi Heat from Handyman, 1999

“Love On The Wrong Side Of Town” by Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes from Havin’ A Party With Southside Johnny, 1979

“Don’t Take Away My Heaven” by Aaron Neville from The Grand Tour, 1993

“Day is Done” by Peter, Paul & Mary, Warner Bros. single 7279, 1969

“Somewhere They Can’t Find Me” by Simon & Garfunkel from Sounds of Silence, 1966

“Another Lonesome Morning” by the Cox Family from Beyond the City, 1995

“Prayer in Open D” by Emmylou Harris from Cowgirl’s Prayer, 1993

“Let Love Carry You Along” by Joy of Cooking from Castles, 1972

“Cocaine” by J.J. Cale from Troubadour, 1976

“The Rumor” by The Band from Rock of Ages, 1972

“Nitty Gritty Mississippi” by Jim Dickinson from the Crossroads soundtrack, 1986

A few notes on the songs and the artists:

I’ve mentioned Spencer Bohren here before. He’s good, if not all that well-known, and if you like rootsy music – generally far more rootsy than today’s offering of his work – you’d be doing yourself a huge favor if checked him out. Here’s his website.

Mississippi Heat is a group formed in the Chicago in 1992 with the aim of resurrecting the sounds of 1950s Chicago-style blues. Handyman is the fourth of eight albums the group has issued, and it’s representative of the group’s efforts, which are always listenable and sometimes inspired.

Because of their common place of origin and some common personnel, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes will forever be linked in the minds of casual listeners with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. All-Music Guide notes that Johnny and the Jukes are more of a “white R&B horn band in the Memphis Stax Records tradition” than anything like the Boss and his band. Still, the influences are there, especially when Springsteen so frequently provided production assistance and material. The track offered here, for instance, came from the pens of Springsteen and one-time Asbury Juke Steve VanZandt.

“Somewhere They Can’t Find Me” is one of the lesser tracks on Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence album, an album put together rapidly in the wake of the radio success of the duo’s single, “The Sound of Silence.” Lesser track or not, it’s still one of my favorite tracks on the album, along with “A Most Peculiar Man” and the lovely “Kathy’s Song.”

The Cox Family hails from Louisiana and has been performing since 1976. In 1990, the group came to the attention of Alison Krauss, who brought the group to Rounder Records, for whom the Cox Family recorded a couple of albums. One of those was Beyond the City, with its combination of neo-folk and progressive bluegrass elements. “Another Lonesome Morning” is pretty representative.

When one hears in these days “Cocaine,” J.J, Cale’s cryptic ode to excess, one realizes how greatly the world has changed in twenty-eight years. A great riff, a great song, yet utterly out of synch with the times, one would think. Oh, the activity is still out there, sure, but we act like we don’t notice, and we don’t sing about it anymore. To steal a line from the late – and mourned – Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes.

A Baker’s Dozen For Minneapolis

Originally posted August 3, 2007

Things like this aren’t supposed to happen. Bridges aren’t supposed to fall down.

No, we didn’t lose anyone. No relatives or friends were on the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis Wednesday evening when it groaned and tumbled into the Mississippi River. But in the larger sense that I think everyone out there understands, those were our friends and neighbors: those who stood dazed on a section of highway sitting on the water, those who helped get the crying children out of that precariously perched school bus, those who crawled up the steep remnants of the bridge and helped others do the same, and yes, those – evidently and thankfully few – who remain lost and in the water still.

The Texas Gal’s sister called us about 6:30 Wednesday evening, asking if we were okay, adding that she knew that sometimes the Texas Gal has to go to Minneapolis for her work. I was confused by her question. We were watching the news, but we were running about fifteen minutes behind, as I’d put the television on pause while we got dinner together. When she told me what had happened, all I could say was “What?” The words made no sense.

Listening, I carried the phone into the living room. The Texas Gal said later that from the look on my face, she thought that someone in one of our families had died. We changed the channel to bring the television up to current time, said goodbye and hung up. Then the Texas Gal and I sat there, stunned, and watched the news for more than three hours.

I called my sister’s house and talked to my brother-in-law. Everyone was safe. We got a couple more calls from Texas, friends seeing if we were okay. And we were, of course. Except that we weren’t. From time to time, things happen that shred the verities in our lives: The doctor has bad news. Someone swallows something the wrong way. A summer storm spawns tornadoes. A car runs a red light into another car’s path. And a bridge falls into the river.

We live less than a mile from the Mississippi River and cross it frequently – the Texas Gal does so everyday and I do a couple times a week. When I lived in Minneapolis eight years ago, I drove on the I-35W bridge every day on my way to work. Crossing the river safely is something we’ve taken for granted, just like those folks who were driving on Interstate 35W Wednesday night took it for granted. We might not for a while. So we – like most Minnesotans and like our friends all around the country – weren’t entirely okay. We were better off than those souls caught in the horror and better off than their families and friends, certainly, but we were shaken.

Now, all the various agencies will go about their jobs. In not that long a time, the last unfortunates will be found and identified. The shattered and twisted bridge will be removed and studied. A new one will be designed and begin to rise. People will point fingers in blame, some in honest outrage and some, sadly, for political gain.

And as all of those things happen, shock and grief will eventually wane – not for some time yet, but eventually – and the wounded will heal. We’ll move forward, having been reminded that every day, we are all no more than one instant from disaster. We always have been and we always will be. It sometimes takes something like a bridge falling into a river to remind us of that and thus to remind us to take nothing for granted, ever.

So if you have children, if you have parents, if you have brothers and sisters, if you have friends, then let them know how much they matter to you. Today.

A Baker’s Dozen for Minneapolis:

“Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel from Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)

“Follow” by Richie Havens from Mixed Bag (1968)

“East of Ginger Trees” by Seals & Crofts from Summer Breeze (1972)

“Every Grain of Sand” by Bob Dylan from Shot of Love (1981)

“The Circle Game” by Tom Rush from The Circle Game (1968)

“Whispering Pines” by The Band from The Band (1969)

“Get It While You Can” by Janis Joplin from Pearl (1970)

“Long As I Can See The Light” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fantasy single 645 (1970)

“Page 43” by Graham Nash & David Crosby from Graham Nash/David Crosby (1973)

“We Are Not Helpless” by Stephen Stills from Stephen Stills (1970)

“Seems Like A Long Time” by Rod Stewart from Every Picture Tells A Story (1971)

“I Shall Be Released” by Joe Cocker from With A Little Help From My Friends (1969)

“Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, The End” by the Beatles from Abbey Road (1969)