Thanksgiving Tales

Originally posted November 25, 2009

Well, tomorrow morning, like millions of others here in the U.S., the Texas Gal and I – joined by my mother – will head off for Thanksgiving. In our case, we’ll be going to my sister’s home in the Twin Cities suburb of Maple Grove for turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Our contribution will be a plate of deviled eggs, a dish that’s become a holiday tradition for us since the Texas Gal first brought them along in 2000.

We missed Thanksgiving at my sister’s last year due to some health issues. And the plan to return there got me thinking about the various places I’ve celebrated Thanksgiving over the years.

For years – until I was out of  college, I think – we gathered at my grandparents’ home, first on their farm outside the small town of Lamberton, Minnesota, and then at their home in Lamberton itself. Sometime in the mid-1970s, after Grandma passed on, the Thanksgiving celebration shifted to my parents’ home here in St. Cloud. And after about twenty years there, the annual feast shifted venues again, and my sister and brother-in-law have hosted Thanksgiving since then.

Besides last year’s celebration, I can recall two other Thanksgivings that have found me in different places. In 1980, I think it was, the woman who was then my wife had the idea of hosting Thanksgiving in a restored 1860s cabin owned by friends of hers. We prepared the food in our own home and then moved the entire feast about two miles to the cabin. The food was fine, but the cabin was uncomfortably cold despite the presence of a fireplace. It was an interesting experiment, but I’d rather flip it: I’d be interested in using Nineteenth Century recipes and work from a modern kitchen.

The other Thanksgiving that found me in another place was during the time I spent in Denmark. The Danes don’t celebrate the holiday, of course, but my ladyfriend – another American – and I decided to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving meal for my Danish family and a few other students, both American and Danish.

There was no turkey for sale in Fredericia, so we made do with a couple of chickens. Potatoes were easy enough, as was flour for the gravy. Green beans amandine went well enough after a tussle with the Danish language. Not knowing where the nutcracker was, I looked up the word in my Danish/English dictionary and called my Danish mother at her office. Danish uses some sounds that are, well, foreign to English, so it took some time before she understood that I was trying to say nøddeknækker.

Beyond the linguistic difficulties, the main challenge of the day was the pumpkin pie. We could find neither canned pumpkin nor a fresh pumpkin in Fredericia. Luckily, my ladyfriend had made pumpkin pie from scratch with her mother, and she assured me that an orange winter squash would meet our needs. We cleaned it, cut it up and cooked it with the appropriate seasonings and then baked it in a homemade shell. As dinner came to a close that evening, our Danish guests were a bit puzzled by the pie, but our American guests marveled at how close we’d come to the Thanksgiving dessert they’d all had for years.

That may have been my most memorable Thanksgiving ever. Does that mean it was the best? Well, no. As the fourth Thursday of November comes along year after year, each Thanksgiving somehow seems better than the one before it . . . as long as I share that table with my loved ones, especially the Texas Gal.

A Six-Pack of Thanks
“Now Be Thankful” by Fairport Convention, Island WIP 6089 [1970]
“Thank You” by Led Zeppelin from Led Zeppelin II [1969]
“I Thank You” by Mongo Santamaria from All Strung Out [1969]
“Thank You For The Promises” by Gordon Lightfoot from Shadows [1982]
‘Thanks to You” by Jesse Winchester from Humour Me [1988]
“Be Thankful for What You Got (Pt. 1)” by William DeVaughn, Roxbury 0236 [1974]

Of these six, only the Fairport Convention tune really seems to fully address the sentiments of the holiday. The others generally work with only their titles; their content has at best only a glancing connection to the day. But that’s good enough for me.

The Texas Gal and I wish you a joyful Thanksgiving. May you all have many reasons to be thankful.

Saturday Single No. 513

Some of my favorite posts from nearly ten years of blogging here are meditations on autumn. Rather than try this morning to do what I’ve already done, I’m offering a post I wrote on the second day of October in 2010. Some of the things mentioned no longer apply: I am now sixty-three, this year’s mix of annuals was different, and neither the red nancy nor the bronze bugleweed we planted along the sidewalk ever flourished. Still, much of this piece applies yet:

Autumn is the season when the ending becomes clear. Like the plot point in the movie that foreshadows the climax and the untangling of plot strands, autumn shows the way to the end – the end of the warm times, the end of the year and – metaphorically – the end of our time here.

Autumn has also always been a season of beginnings, and that’s clearly tied with the first weeks of school, bridging the time between late summer and early autumn. Having been a student or teacher for twenty-six of my fifty-seven autumns and a reporter – small-town newspapers are tied closely to the schools everywhere I know in this country – for another ten of those autumns, the days of September and October seem like a time of new starts as well as a time of preparation for endings.

When one is not involved in the doings of schools, though, it’s easier in autumn to see endings than it is to see beginnings. When I walk past our flower beds on the way to the mailbox these days, the returns are mixed. The marigolds and petunias are still blooming, as are the coral impatiens and the begonias; I wonder how many more days that will be true, as the temperature dropped to 36F sometime early this morning, only a few degrees away from freezing. Around the front of the house, at the northeastern corner where there is little sunshine, the lilies of the valley are already brown and bedraggled, leading the other flowers in the dance of decay that comes every year at this time. Very soon, the rest will follow.

Some will be back next year. We planted some bronze bugleweed along the walk this year, and being a perennial, it will return next spring, as will the red nancy a little further down the walk. And the lilies will crowd their sunless corner again, as well. As fragile as those lilies look, they retreat and get through the winter to come back every spring.

Metaphors abound, of course. And I wonder about my long-time romance with the fall. All my life, I’ve waited through the other seasons for the first signs of autumn: the slight chill in the air of a late summer morning, the first hint of leaves turning orange or yellow, the first photo in the newspaper of anyone – from peewees to pros – in football gear. And every year, it’s been in October that my infatuation with autumn fully blooms.

Yesterday, October 1, marked the first time this year that I had to kick leaves lightly out of my way as I made my walk down the sidewalk to the mailbox. As I did, I glanced at the oak trees lining the way; they have plenty of leaves still on their branches, so we are some days away from raking and from climbing the ladder and cleaning the gutters. So, free for a while yet from those mundane chores, I kicked leaves with the joy of the seven-year-old I once was, delighting for an instant in the rustle of leaf on leaf on leaf.

And yet, autumn always ends. It will end this year almost certainly as it has other years, in a four-week slice of rain and gloom and bitter wind. My romance with the season begins every year with joy and sunlight, bright colors and smiles and ends every time with grim and grey days and colder and colder nights. No matter how many years we’ve counted, the last weeks of autumn are a hard ending. If our lives followed that pattern of the season, living would be a grim business indeed. But most of our lives, I like to think, reject that pattern. I know that not all of us are so favored, but I’d hope that most of us have sources of joy and colors and smiles in our lives all year ’round, thus magnifying the beauty of autumn’s beginning and providing a counterbalance to the bleakness of its ending.

That is the case with me, of course. I can pull out of my autumn reverie and know that my Texas Gal is here, along with all the other things that ease my life. I am reasonably certain at the age of fifty-seven that I have more autumns behind me than I do ahead of me, but that’s a good thing to know, as I think it helps me to appreciate more the passing of all our seasons, not just autumn.

But as much as I may appreciate all the seasons, autumn will remain my favorite, and it will always bring with it that slight sense of melancholy, a sense of endings approaching, of business left undone and dreams left behind. I don’t immerse myself in those feelings as I kick the leaves, but at fifty-seven, I know they’re there.

And here is an early version of one of my favorite autumnal songs: Fairport Convention’s take on “Who Knows Where The Time Goes,” written by its own Sandy Denny and included on Fairport’s 1969 album Unhalfbricking. I imagine this version has been posted here before, but it’s always worthy of a listen, so it’s today’s Saturday Single.

‘My Burden Is Heavy . . .’

As the RealPlayer settled the other night on Joe Cocker’s version of Bob Dylan’s “Dear Landlord,” I wondered, as I regularly do with so many tracks, about other covers of the tune. So I headed off to Second Hand Songs and a few other places.

Dylan’s original was on his 1968 album John Wesley Harding, and Cocker covered it in 1969 on Joe Cocker! And I came up with several other versions, including one that was a real surprise to me. We’ll get to that one in a bit, because as I looked, I had an idea. Cocker’s album, his second, has long been one of my favorites, and I wondered about putting together kind of an alternate version of the Joe Cocker! album, seeking out other versions of the ten tunes, some of them perhaps the originals but most of them other covers.

And I headed out into the wilds of the ’Net to see if that were possible. And yes, it is. So this is the first in a series of posts offering those tunes. We might at times do two or more tracks in a post as we make our way down this road, but today, we’ll satisfy ourselves with one.

During the 1969 sessions for the album Unhalfbricking, the British folk-rock group Fairport Convention took a stab at “Dear Landlord.” The track didn’t make the album, but it showed up years later as a bonus track when Unhalfbricking was released on CD. (If I’d ever replicated my Fairport Convention collection on CD, I would have known about the track long ago; there’s only so much money and so much shelf space, you know.)

The YouTube poster who uploaded Fairport’s “Dear Landlord” offered a quote from an unidentified member of the group, a comment that I would guess was taken from the notes that accompanied the CD release: “An out-take from the Unhalfbricking sessions. We would have added more instruments to this Bob Dylan-composed track had it been chosen to be on the album. As it is, its simplicity is one of the strongest points.”

With that, here’s the first track in our journey:

Saturday Single No. 471

As I write, the Texas Gal is in the living room, watching television coverage of yesterday’s carnage in Paris. After I finish here, I will likely read what the Minneapolis Star Tribune brought to my doorstep this morning and later, I will probably read more up-to-date accounts online, maybe at the sites of the New York Times or Washington Post.

It was as I wrote that opening paragraph that I realized what is bothering me this morning. First, of course, is that carnage in Paris, with more than a hundred dead and scores more injured in the service of an ideology I have no chance of understanding. As I said above, when I am done here, I will likely go learn as much as I can about what is actually known about what happened yesterday evening in a city I visited long ago and loved.

But there’s another thing bothering me this morning.

The Texas Gal and I first heard of the attacks in Paris from Scott Pelley on his evening broadcast on CBS. The reporting was sober and the analysis was careful, and the topic took up most of the program’s allotted half-hour. After that, we watched a few things we had recorded, and then I took my leave and watched a football game in my study. The Texas Gal switched to CNN to continue gathering information.

And on my occasional trips through the living room what I heard from CNN sounded shrill and breathless and sensational. I have no doubt that the same would hold true for the coverage of other twenty-four-hour news networks, Fox News and MSNBC. And that annoys and bothers me. After a massive event like yesterday’s, the truth about what actually happened, as well as the truth about who was responsible and why, rises from the chaos in its own time.

Time, however, is the enemy of any television station running live coverage of an event. When the facts available take, oh, fifteen minutes of air time and there are forty-five minutes left in the hour, then “What do we know?” is replaced by “What do we think we know?” Then comes “What do we think might have happened?” The answers to those three questions can easily become woven into a fabric of suppositions, and when that fabric is stretched to cover the time that needs to be filled, then the truth of what actually went down in Paris yesterday might be stretched as well.

There are, I’m certain, no malign conspiracies among those who work at those news networks (well, maybe except for Fox News), but reporting can be a messy and tedious business, and trying to do it live on the air and make it look polished is a risky thing. The result, as I noted above, is coverage that can sound – and does to my ears – breathless, sensational and shrill.

And those are not qualities I want in my news.

Having wandered far afield from what we usually do here on a Saturday morning, I’m in need of a little bit of mellowness. Here’s a suitable track that I heard on the CD player in the car yesterday evening as I waited for the Texas Gal to leave work. It’s Fairport Convention’s cover of “The Ballad Of Easy Rider” with Sandy Denny on lead vocal. It was recorded in October 1968 during the sessions for Fairport’s 1969 album Liege & Lief, and it’s today’s Saturday Single.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here’s something that showed up in this space four years ago:

Well, it’s Thanksgiving, at least here in the United States.

Other places, I imagine it’s an ordinary Thursday, but here, it’s a day when we feast – those of us who can, that is. As we feast, however, we should also consider the lives of others, both near and distant.

From news reports over the past few days, it’s evident that even here in one of the most blessed nations on Earth, there are people who need the help of others to afford even the most basic of Thanksgiving dinners. The Galilean told his disciples, “The poor we have always with us.” He’s still correct two thousand years later, and I often wonder why we in this nation, in this community of nations, aren’t doing more to be proving him wrong.

And I don’t know the answer. I think the answer – if there is one – gets lost in a morass of politics, economics, theology and ethics. And all the wrangling through those topics doesn’t get us one step closer to putting onto the plate of a poor child a meal of beans and sausage, never mind turkey with the trimmings.

I think, however, that more and more frequently in years to come, those of us fortunate to live in basic comfort – a comfort that must seem like unimaginable affluence to many in the world – will learn what it is like to live on the edge of want and need. It might do us some good, as it might instill in us as people a caring awareness of how fragile life and wellness have been for many who have lived on that edge for years, for decades, for centuries.

Many of us already have that caring awareness, that empathy necessary for us to understand the lives of others, an empathy that one would hope would lead to a driving desire to improve the lives of those others. Perhaps, in what appears to be a coming time of constraint and restraint, those who have not yet shown that trait can learn it. And when better times come again – as we all hope they will – perhaps more of us will be able to feast without the aid of others, and those of us so blessed will be able to lead still more of the world to the table to join us.

In the meantime, on this Thanksgiving Day, may your blessings be – as are the Texas Gal’s and mine – too numerous to count.

Here’s Fairport Convention’s “Now Be Thankful” from 1970’s Full House. (The lyrics point toward martyrdom, which is not something to which I aspire, but the chorus, at least, works today.)

‘Just Say I’m Gone . . .’

A hint that a reader named Larry left in a comment the other day falls into the category of good ideas I should have thought of a long time ago. I’d mentioned the difficulty of sorting versions of different songs with the same title – in this case, covers of Phil Ochs’ “Changes” – while using the information at All-Music Guide. Larry suggested using the online databases at ASCAP and BMI, the institutions that keep track of such things.

It sounded like a good idea, so I gave it a shot this morning, looking up versions of “Gone, Gone, Gone,” the Everly Brothers’ single that entered the Billboard Hot 100 on October 17, 1964, forty-seven years ago yesterday. I’d already scrummed around a bit at AMG and I’d come across four cover versions of the tune, but I was thinking there might be more. And the AMG listings were crowded with other songs with the same or similar titles, including tunes by Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins, Joe South and the trio of George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward.

But BMI, for whatever reason, lists only three of those four cover versions of “Gone, Gone, Gone.” So I would hope that the four cover versions I found complete the field. First, though, let’s take a look at the original.

“Gone, Gone, Gone” was the Everly Brothers’ next-to-last Top 40 hit, getting to No. 31 in December 1964. (Their last Top 40 hit was “Bowling Green,” which barely made it, sitting for two weeks at No. 40 in 1967.) I wanted to share a video of the single, but the copyright holder evidently doesn’t allow videos of the studio version of the song. I found, however, a live performance of “Gone, Gone, Gone” from a 1964 episode of Shindig!

That performance, I think, took place on October 14, 1964, evidently just as “Gone, Gone, Gone” was released. The brothers performed “Gone, Gone, Gone” twice as part of the Shindig! opening medley – once in the autumn of 1964 and again in June of 1965 – but from what I can tell, the only time they performed the song in its entirety was on the October 14, 1964, telecast.

Now, on to the covers: The first to cover the tune, evidently, were the Ventures, the instrumental group that had twenty-five records in or near the Hot 100, including Top Ten hits in 1960 and 1964 with two versions of “Walk – Don’t Run” and then in 1969 with “Hawaii Five-O.” The Ventures’ version of “Gone, Gone, Gone” showed up as an album track in 1965 on The Ventures Knock Me Out! It’s a typical Ventures track, which means I like it.

The cover version not listed at BMI came next, when the British folk-rock group Fairport Convention performed the tune live on the BBC’s show Top Gear hosted by the famed John Peel. The show aired on August 26, 1968, and the track eventually showed up on the album Heyday, subtitled “BBC Radio Sessions 1968-69.”  I think the duet on the performance is by Sandy Denny and Ian Matthews (before he changed the spelling of his first name), and it’s also one I like very much.

That last statement should, I suppose be annotated: I like very much all five versions of “Gone, Gone, Gone” that I’ve dug up this morning. Do I have a favorite? Yes, and we’ll get to it shortly. First, though, we’ll look at the most unlikely cover I’ve found of the song. In 1970, the Minneapolis group Crow got hold of the Everlys’ song and transformed it from a sprightly pop folk song with rockabilly hints into a lengthy blues-rock jam that slides its way along, stopping for a guitar solo and an odd choral segment backed with an ethereal wordless vocal and some organ chords. By the time the eight-minute track finds an ending, it hardly seems like the same song.

And that brings us to the most recent version of the song (and my favorite cover): Performers Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, along with producer T-Bone Burnett, added a subtitle and included “Gone, Gone Gone (Done Moved On)” on their Grammy-winning 2007 album Raising Sand. Returning the song to its rockabilly roots, Plant and Krauss share the spotlight with drummer Jay Bellerose.

Some Thoughts On Thanksgiving 2008

Originally posted November 27, 2008

Well, it’s Thanksgiving, at least here in the United States.

Other places, I imagine it’s an ordinary Thursday, but here, it’s a day when we feast – those of us who can, that is. As we feast, however, we should also consider the lives of others, both near and distant.

From news reports over the past few days, it’s evident that even here in one of the most blessed nations on Earth, there are people who need the help of others to afford even the most basic of Thanksgiving dinners. The Galilean told his disciples, “The poor we have always with us.” He’s still correct two thousand years later, and I often wonder why we in this nation, in this community of nations, aren’t doing more to be proving him wrong.

And I don’t know the answer. I think the answer – if there is one – gets lost in a morass of politics, economics, theology and ethics. And all the wrangling through those topics doesn’t get us one step closer to putting onto the plate of a poor child a meal of beans and sausage, never mind turkey with the trimmings.

I think, however, that more and more frequently in years to come, those of us fortunate to live in basic comfort – a comfort that must seem like unimaginable affluence to many in the world – will learn what it is like to live on the edge of want and need. It might do us some good, as it might instill in us as people a caring awareness of how fragile life and wellness have been for many who have lived on that edge for years, for decades, for centuries.

Many of us already have that caring awareness, that empathy necessary for us to understand the lives of others, an empathy that one would hope would lead to a driving desire to improve the lives of those others. Perhaps, in what appears to be a coming time of constraint and restraint, those who have not yet shown that trait can learn it. And when better times come again – as we all hope they will – perhaps more of us will be able to feast without the aid of others, and those of us so blessed will be able to lead still more of the world to the table to join us.

In the meantime, on this Thanksgiving Day, may your blessings be – as are the Texas Gal’s and mine – too numerous to count.

A Six-Pack of Thanks
“Be Thankful For What You Got” by William DeVaughn from Be Thankful For What You Got, 1974

“I Want To Thank You” by Billy Preston from That’s The Way God Planned It, 1969

“Thank You Lord” by Rick Nelson from Rudy the Fifth, 1971

“Thank You” by Led Zeppelin from Led Zeppelin II, 1969

“I Want To Thank You” by the Staple Singers from Let’s Do It Again, 1975

“Now Be Thankful” by Fairport Convention, Island WIP 6089, 1970

Saturday Single No. 78

Originally posted June 28, 2008

I imagine my friend Rob and his wife, Barb – like many parents in any year – look at themselves sometimes and say, “How did this happen so quickly?”

Earlier this month, their younger daughter, Diedre, the third of three children, graduated from high school, and when late summer arrives and she heads off to college, Rob and Barb will have an empty nest. I imagine it feels odd now and will feel more so come the late summer.

The Texas Gal and I have no children. Parenthood wasn’t in the plans this time around. But we’ve seen our friends’ and relatives’ children grow, mature and prosper, watching those young folk separately in the years before we met and together for the past eight years. Twice before, we’ve been to Rob and Barb’s home in St. Francis for receptions celebrating graduations. Next summer, no doubt, we’ll head down to New Ulm to celebrate the graduation of Rick and Ellen’s son; we’ve been to their home for one previous reception, somehow missing the graduation of their elder daughter.

And today, we’ll go to Rob and Barb’s for the third time, for the reception celebrating Diedre’s accomplishments. Like the others before her, she is a bright and capable young person, and we wish her all the joys she can find, as she moves into the next stage of her life.

Also moving into the next stages of their lives are her parents, and we wish them well, too, of course. I have no advice for any of them: Diedre is by this time no doubt utterly weary of advice from well-meaning adults. And Rob and Barb – having navigated the rocks and shoals of parenthood – need no counsel from me.

What I have for the parents is a rumination, pulled from an album I’ve frequently brought to Rob and Barb’s home during visits. (“You always bring that record with the picture of the old people on the cover,” Rob would say when he saw Fairport Convention’s Unhalfbricking in the pile of records I’d selected for whatever occasion. But whenever I put the record on the stereo, he always enjoyed it.) As the two of them find moments after today’s busy-ness, I’m sure they’ll contemplate the passage of time.

So, for Rob and Barb – and for all parents everywhere pondering how their small ones grew up so fast – here’s Fairport Convention’s “Who Knows Where The Time Goes,” today’s Saturday Single.

Fairport Convention – “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” [1969]

A Baker’s Dozen Of Thanks

Originally posted November 23, 2007

It’s quiet here this morning.

There’s no noise from the parking lot outside, where most morning, the college kids and younger adults who make up a good portion of the folks in our apartment complex start the public portions of their days with laughter, the sounds of auto engines rumbling and the more frequent sounds of the heavy low bass of rap or hip-hop. In fact, more than half of the parking spaces are empty, evidence of Thanksgivings spent elsewhere.

The Texas Gal is taking advantage of the opportunity a rare vacation day presents: She’s sleeping in past her normal rising time of 6:30. It’s 7:47, and I’ve shut the bedroom door so that our two rampaging catboys – Clarence and Oscar – leave her alone. They’ll no doubt come through here, demanding attention, while I write.

We had a pleasant day yesterday: dinner with my family at my sister’s home in a Twin Cities suburb, and then we spent the evening with friends Sean and Stephanie at their new apartment on the west end of St. Cloud.

I had planned to rip an album this morning, Dobie Gray’s Drift Away from 1973, but I think I will leave that for Monday and move Monday’s planned share – Color Him In, a 1967 album by Bobby Jameson – for a week from today. Instead, though, I thought I’d offer a Baker’s Dozen in the spirit of yesterday’s holiday.

And no, I’m not going to go all rhapsodic about Thanksgiving and the things I am grateful for. Just let it suffice to say that I have a great deal for which to be grateful, starting, of course, with the Texas Gal and her love for me and extending throughout the various aspects of my life – my friends, my critters and all the rest – to those folks who stop by Echoes In The Wind to listen to the music that moves me.

A Baker’s Dozen of Thanks
“Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)” by Sly & the Family Stone, Epic single 10555, 1970

“Thanks for the Pepperoni” by George Harrison and friends from Apple Jam, All Things Must Pass, 1970

“Thank You Lord” by Rick Nelson from Rudy the Fifth, 1971

“Now Be Thankful” by Fairport Convention, Island WIP single 6809, 1970

“I Wanna Thank You Baby” by Delbert McClinton from Plain From The Heart, 1981

“Thanks To You” by Emmylou Harris from Cowgirl’s Prayer, 1993

“Be Thankful For What You Got” by William DeVaughn, Roxbury single 0236, 1974

“Thank You” by King Floyd from Think About It, 1973

“Thank You Mr. Poobah” by the Butterfield Blues Band from Paul Butterfield Blues Band, 1965

“I Want To Thank You” by Billy Preston from That’s The Way God Planned It, 1969

“Thanks For Saving My Life” by Billy Paul, Philadelphia International 3538, 1974

“Thank You Girl” by the Beatles, Vee-Jay single 587, 1964

“Thank You For The Promises” by Gordon Lightfoot from Shadows, 1982

A few notes on some of the songs:

“Thanks For The Pepperoni” was one of the five tracks on the third LP of All Things Must Pass, George Harrison’s first solo album. That LP, titled Apple Jam, was made up of five long jam sessions recorded by Harrison and his friends during the recording of the album. Listened to as a whole, the jams could become tedious. Taken one at a time, they’re fun to listen to, for the most part. There are no specific credits for tracks, so one has to listen and guess. Guitarists on the album sessions were Harrison, Clapton and Dave Mason; bass players were Klaus Voorman and Carl Radle; on drums were Ringo Starr, Jim Gordon and Alan White; and playing keyboards were Gary Wright, Bobby Whitlock, Billy Preston and Gary Brooker. Which of those actually played on “Thanks For The Pepperoni” is left to speculation, informed supposition and wild guesses.

Rudy the Fifth was a pretty good country rock album from Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band. Made up for the most part of originals – “Thank You Lord” is one of them – the album also featured covers of Bob Dylan’s “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” and “Just Like A Woman” and of the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women.” Although fairly obscure today, it’s an album worth seeking out. (It’s available from various on-line retailers at a two-few with the album Rick Sings Nelson.)

William DeVaughn was a one-hit wonder who, according to All-Music Guide, “was working for the government when he paid $900 for a recording session at Philadelphia’s Omega Sound Inc. (basically a ‘vanity record’ operation).” The session, which was backed by MFSB’s main rhythm section, so impressed Omega’s vice-president Frank Fioravanti, that he shopped “Be Thankful For What You Got” to various labels, finally getting it released on Roxbury. The song went to No. 1 on the R&B charts and to No. 4 on the Billboard Top 40. (DeVaughn had R&B hits with “Blood Is Thicker Than Water” and “Figures Can’t Calculate” but never hit the Top 40 pop chart again.)

I’ve listed “Thank You For The Promises” by Gordon Lightfoot here before but it’s too lovely a song to leave out of this selection.

‘Well, It’s Sugar For Sugar And Salt For Salt . . .’

A couple of days ago, my mom and I were out running some of her errands, including a stop at the tailor shop at the far end of Waite Park, the city west of St. Cloud. Now, the St. Cloud area is not all that large, and the tailor shop is really not all that distant; when we were in the Twin Cities, the Texas Gal and I would drive that far for a quart of milk. But during the nearly eight years of living once more in the small scale of the St. Cloud metro area, my sense of distance has shifted back, and going to something “all the way on the other end of town” seems like a longer trip than it used to.

And on this trip, as we left the tailor shop with a few more stops left, the sky gave us the rain it had been promising all morning. As we wended our way east, we did so to flashes of lightning, the rumble of near-constant thunder and the heavy splash of rain on the car as it came down almost faster than the windshield wipers could deal with it. I drove slowly, but was never forced to stop as we made our way back to the East Side and her home in Sauk Rapids. The rain eased a little as we got near her place, and I realized I was half-humming, half-singing a Bob Dylan tune under my breath: “Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood).”

The first time I heard the song was on Dylan’s second greatest hits package, which included an informal version of the tune recorded with Happy Traum. Here’s how the song sounded on New Year’s Eve 1971, when Dylan joined The Band at the New York Academy of Music near the end of the concert that wound up being released by The Band as Rock of Ages. (This performance and three others featuring Dylan with The Band were released in 2001 as part of a remastered and expanded version of Rock of Ages.)

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At All-Music Guide, one can find listings for about a hundred CDs that contain versions of the song, whether it’s called “Down In The Flood” (as it was on that second Dylan hits set in the early 1970s), “Crash on the Levee” or “Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood),” as it’s currently listed on Dylan’s website. And there are some interesting versions of the song out there. One of them comes from what seems to me an unlikely source: Blood, Sweat & Tears covered the song for the opening track of its New Blood album in 1972. It’s an odd arrangement. I don’t think the horn parts work, but there’s a nice groove that would otherwise have worked nicely if it had been left alone.

Another performer who covered the song early was British folksinger Sandy Denny, who included it on her 1971 album, The North Star Grassman And The Ravens. Here’s Denny performing the song as a member of Fairport Convention. I believe the performance is from May 4, 1974, at the Sanders Theater on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Thanks to The Night Owl Presents for some information.)

I wrote the other week about current bands I listen to, and I missed one: The Derek Trucks Band. Trucks is, of course, the nephew of Butch Trucks, long-time drummer for the Allman Brothers Band; that association brought the younger Trucks an apprenticeship that would be hard to match anywhere, and the Derek Trucks Band has been recording and releasing music since 1997. Last year’s Already Free led off with a blistering performance of “Down In The Flood.”

That should do it for today. Have a good Monday, and I’ll most likely be back here Wednesday with another installment of the Ultimate Jukebox.