As I write this, it is late afternoon on New Year’s Eve and for some reason I have had the thought that somewhere out in the world someone may be waiting for the Ralston Creek Review  Song of the Week to be posted so he or she would know what music to play for a New Year’s Eve dance party.  I hope this is not too late.

Critics and others sometimes talk about needing a good “hook” to make a pop music song successful.  It seems that for 21st Century dance music, it is better for the whole song to be a “hook.”  That is pretty much what Caribou did in “Can’t Do Without You.”

Caribou is the stage name for a gentleman named Daniel Victor Snaith.  He is an interesting musician who holds a Ph.D. in mathematics (his thesis being on Overconvergent Siegel Modular Symbols).  He is originally from Canada, but I believe he now lives in the UK.

Snaith previously performed and recorded under the name Manitoba, but “Handsome Dick” Manitoba of the Dictators, a New York punk rock band, threatened to sue him; so he he took the moniker Caribou.  Trial lawyers often speak of going to trial as “throwing the dice” because we have an imperfect judicial system and you can never predict how a case will be determined by a judge or jury.  It would be interesting to see how a legal proceeding between a punk rocker and an electronic dance music composer/performer might play out.  I guess we will never know.

Here is the song “Can’t Do Without You” from Caribou’s 2014 album, Our Love:

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A few days ago, I had thought that I would probably sit down to write about this week’s song on December 26th, which is the feast day of St. Stephen, and would say something about the Grateful Dead’s “St. Stephen.”  Then, on December 22nd, Joe Cocker passed away and so a short remembrance seems appropriate.

On August 17, 1969, Joe Cocker opened the final day of the Woodstock festival, playing for nearly half a million fans of music and the counterculture.  Another group on the Woodstock stage that day was the British blues-rock band, Ten Years After.  I was not there.

One week later, on August 24, 1969, both Cocker and Ten Years After were playing for perhaps half a thousand fans at a roller skating rink in Denver called Roller City Central.  I was at that concert.

I had worked that summer for the Post Office as a seasonal letter carrier.  My job had ended the previous week because school was about to start.  I had spent a couple of days camping in the area around Guanella Pass in the Colorado Rockies; then, on the night of the concert, I met my friend Annette at the home of her friend Ann, which was less than a mile from Roller City.

There was also a third band called Apple West on the bill that night.  I don’t remember anything at all about its music.  I recall that when Ten years After played I was amazed at how fast Alvin Lee could move his fingers on the guitar.  However, I want to talk about Joe Cocker here.

He was touring with a group of musicians known as the Grease Band.  His first American record had been released that Spring, and he had played a short set at the Denver Pop Festival in June; but most people knew very little about him.  After he was introduced, the band began a jazzy instrumental.  It wasn’t exactly what one would call “cool” jazz.  It was a little farther down on the temperature scale and brought to my mind the song by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band called “Jazz Delicious Hot Disgusting Cold.”  Annette asked me, “Which one is Joe Cocker?” and I said that I didn’t know.

None of them was Joe Cocker, it turned out.  It was just the Grease Band.  When the song was over, the band began the intro to the next number – I believe it was Bob Dylan’s “Dear Landlord” – and Cocker came out and sang it beautifully (in his own inimitable style).  At the end of the song, he acknowledged the applause, rubbed his eyes, and said “Thank you.  It’s great to be back in Denver.  This is Denver, isn’t it?”

What I recall about Joe Cocker over the years is that inimitable style.  He was singer, and not so much a musician or composer.  Back in those days, critics referred to him as a white version of Ray Charles; which led me to wonder why we needed such a thing when we still had the original Ray Charles.  Cocker was more, though.  His delivery was certainly influenced by Charles, but it was his personal “soul” that made his music so much fun to hear.

For nearly 20 years before his death, Joe Cocker’s home was in Crawford, Colorado – a town of some 400 residents on Colorado’s Western Slope.  There, he was appreciated for his philanthropic work with youth in the area and for being “a great guy to hang out with.”

Somewhere along the line I read a review of his version of “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” that said his entry was more like a fat man slipping on a bar of soap. That is sort of how I remember him appearing on the stage at Roller City (though he was not fat).  It had been sort of quiet and boring for a few minutes – and then whooom!, what a voice.  Here’s the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkdjMxTdrU8

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It is hard to write a good Christmas song.  With the traditional carols and the sentimental tunes from the 1940s and 50s and the “Nutcracker” and other more serious music and each listener’s personal memories of the Holidays, anything that a person writes would almost necessarily fall short.  Years ago, I thought that I had come up with the perfect new Christmas song, but no one has ever wanted to listen to it all the way through.  I would say, “Listen to this.  It starts like . . .”

Don’t stand under the mistletoe with anyone else but me,
Anyone else but me
Anyone else but me . . .

By that point, whoever was listening thought I wasn’t serious and walked away.

Steve Goodman is someone who actually did write a good “modern” Christmas tune; and since Christmas is a time for families, his words are meaningful for me.  Steve was born in Illinois, just a few miles from my birthplace, and about 4 months after me.  He was a gifted song writer, best known for “City of New Orleans,” but he passed away too young, in 1984, from complications of leukemia.

You may not know it, but there are many forms of leukemia.  Steve Goodman was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia while he was still in college, in 1968.  Eventually he developed a more serious form – myelodysphasia.  He received a stem cell transplant and had periods of remission, but eventually the cancer did what cancers do.

As I was growing up in Colorado, the person with whom I spent the most time was my brother, Lonny.  Many years later, he was diagnosed with a bone marrow disorder called myelofibrosis.  He also received a stem cell transplant, for which I was the donor.  It looked as though the procedure had been a success, but a year later he developed acute myeloid leukemia, a condition that could not be cured.  He passed away a little over two years ago.

I don’t mean to be maudlin.  I am happy and grateful for all my family and friends and for the Holidays which are here once again.  I just wanted to explain why this last-week-before-Christmas Song of the Week is the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band version of Steve Goodman’s “Colorado Christmas” – and it is not a sad song.

Merry Christmas!

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It is barely two weeks until Christmas, and it seemed appropriate to choose something nice and Yule-related for the Song of the Week.  One of the choices I considered was Roger Miller’s “Old Toy Trains.”*  That reminded me, though, of Miller’s “Our Hearts Will Play the Music,” which is perhaps closer to the way I have been feeling of late (or for many years, for that matter).

Roger Miller was an interesting “country” performer who said it took him 20 years to become an overnight success.  His father died when he was only a year old.  His mother was unable to provide for her three children, so Roger was separated from his brothers and went to live with his aunt and uncle on a small Oklahoma farm.  His cousin’s husband, Sheb Wooley, became a minor celebrity based on his hit song, “Purple People Eater,” and Roger wanted to follow those footsteps.  He ran away from home while still in high school, but was arrested for stealing a guitar.  Rather than go to jail, he was permitted to join the army, where he was assigned to “Special Services” and required to play fiddle.  After his discharge, he moved to Nashville and began song writing.

Some of his songs became hits for other artists, but his performing career was mostly restricted to playing in backup bands for more well-known singers.  What turned out to be his big break came in 1963 when he signed a contract with the relatively new Smash Records.  Smash was a very eclectic label which recorded artists as diverse as Jerry lee Lewis, James Brown, Mother Maybelle Carter, Eric von Schmidt, the Left Banke and Sheep on Drugs (really).  Miller’s first big hit, “Dang Me” was released early the next year.

Also in 1964, he recorded his best known song, “King of the Road,” which was released as a single and on the album, The Return of Roger Miller.  That album included our Song of the Week, “Our Hearts Will Play the Music.”  Miller continued to produce popular songs until Smash Records was discontinued by its parent company, Mercury Records, in 1970.

Miller was known as an eccentric, hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-smoking guy who dashed off his songs quickly and never looked back.  However, in the early 1980s he seemed to become more focused and spent over a year writing the score to a musical called Big River that was based on Mark Twain’s stories of Huckleberry Finn.  The show opened on Broadway in 1985 with Roger Miller playing the role of Huck’s father, Pap, for several months after the original actor, John Goodman, left for Hollywood.

Miller’s unhealthy ways did catch up with him.  He developed a cancer that took his life in 1992, at the age of 56.

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It has been a strange couple of weeks.  I learned that a long-time friend was diagnosed with a very serious dis-ease, the mother of another friend suffered a stroke, I had a long conversation with yet another friend whose wife passed away only a few weeks ago; and I have been trying to deal with a roofing/exterior company to get the rest of the hail damage to our house repaired, which should have been finished months ago.  Times like these can turn one’s thoughts to (as Bob Dylan says) “the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse.”

It is obviously time for healing, and listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Minute Prologue” will help.  The song is about 76 seconds long, and is worth hearing all the way through – maybe twice.

I have written about Leonard Cohen several times (for instance here and here and here), so I won’t say any more about him right now.  “Minute Prologue” was recorded at a concert in London, England and included on the 1972 album, Live Songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ8ETB2mVQQ

Minute Prologue
By Leonard Cohen

“I’ve been listening
To all the dissension
I’ve been listening
To all the pain
And I feel that no matter
What I do for you
It’s going to come back again
But I think that I can heal it
But I think that I can heal it
I’m a fool, but I think I can heal it
With this song.”

© Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC