For the past week or two, my 17-month old grandson, Ryder, has been saying, “Be Happy!” several times every hour.  It is good advice and we should all follow it.

Ryder says, “Be happy!”

Back in the 1960s, there were many posters and note cards featuring pictures of Indian saint Meher Baba and the words “Don’t worry, be happy.”  He was famous for giving that advice to his disciples.  Meher Baba died in 1969 and it seems that over the next few years there were some people who began worrying once again, just like in the old unenlightened days.

Jazz singer Bobby McFerrin saw one of the Meher Baba posters and was inspired to write a song – this song.

Well, actually, he was inspired to say, “Don’t worry, be happy” with an affected Caribbean accent and the rest of the words sort of came together during a recording session with help from others who were present.  It was originally part of the soundtrack for a critically panned but financially successful Tom Cruise movie called Cocktail in 1988.  Shortly thereafter it was released separately and the rest, as they say is history.

People everywhere quit worrying.  Happiness surrounded us.  It seems that one could not go anywhere in 1988 without hearing this song – nor would anyone want to.  “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” won Grammy Awards in 1988 for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Performance.  It is the only acappella song to ever reach Number One in the Billboard Hot 100.  It may sound like there are various percussion instruments, but Bobby McFerrin created all of those sounds with his voice.

The video of the song (below) is worth watching because it features Robin Williams and Tony Award winning actor Bill Irwin, with McFerrin

Many people think of Bobby McFerrin as sort of a “one hit wonder” because nothing else he has done has ever been as universally loved as “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”  In fact, however, he won five Grammy awards before 1988, and has won another since then.  He has released dozens of albums, been named Creative Chair of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, conducted symphony orchestras around the world each year, performed and recorded with many of the greats of jazz and continues to be a dynamic, creative force in the world of music.

Bobby’s father, Robert Keith McFerrin, Sr. (Bobby was a “Jr.”) was an operatic baritone – the first African American man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.  Robert, Sr. was the one who sang the songs Sidney Poitier lip-synched in the movie version of Porgy and Bess.  Bobby’s mother was also a classically trained singer.

One thing Bobby learned from his parents was to perfect his craft.  He practiced and experimented with his voice for years before releasing his first recording in 1982, at the age of 32.  He has continued to use his voice as an amazing instrument that produces scat singing, polyphonic overtones, vocal percussion and other amazing and melodic sounds.

Unfortunately, I have noticed that there are some out there in cyberspace – and the real world – who have begun to worry once again.  Please, y’all, heed what Ryder says and be happy!

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As I am writing this, it has been 47 years and a day or two since Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles.  He had just won the California Primary Election and seemed on his way to the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.  I remember shortly before that night I was being a smart-aleck  and said something to the effect of, “I think I’m like Bobby Kennedy.  I mean, there are those who look at things the way they are and ask ‘why’; but I look at those things and ask ‘how come.’*

After Kennedy’s death, though, it no longer seemed clever or humorous to say such things.  The murder happened only two months after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, and it rekindled memories of the assassination of John Kennedy (which I have previously remembered here.)  Lyndon Johnson had dropped out of the race for president because of popular opposition to the Vietnam War; there were riots in Detroit and Baltimore and Paris and many other cities; universities were being shut down by student protests across the country.  It just did not seem like a humorous time for most folks.

Several good songs were written to memorialize Bobby Kennedy and the things for which he stood – songs like Dion’s “Abraham, Martin and John” and John Stewart’s “Shoot All the Brave Horses.”  However, I have decided to choose “Simple Song of Freedom” by Bobby Darin as the Song of the Week.**

The baby who would become Bobby Darin was born May 13, 1936, into the family of Polly and Sam Cassotto, and given the name Walden Robert Cassotto.  Polly and Sam had a 17 year old daughter named Nina, who was still at home; but Sam, who was an associate of a New York organized crime boss, contracted pneumonia while in prison and died shortly before Bobby was born.

As a child, Bobby Darin suffered several bouts of rheumatic fever that left his heart in a very fragile condition.  Doctors said he would be lucky to live until his 16th birthday, and that he would almost certainly die before age 25 – or 35 at the outside.  The thought of having such a short lifetime before him spurred Bobby to try to achieve as much as possible in whatever time was available.

He began his career as a songwriter supplying material to other artists, but soon became a recording star in his own right.  Even if he had done nothing else, we would still remember him for recordings like “Splish Splash,” “Dream Lover,” “Beyond the Sea,” and, of course, “Mack the Knife.”

He did more than sing, though.  He became the owner of a successful music publishing company.  He was a successful television performer and motion picture actor, earning an Academy Award nomination for his work in Captain Newman, M.D.  He married movie star Sandra Dee.  He had a very successful career performing in Las Vegas.

Polly Cassotto suffered a stroke and died in early 1959, but Bobby remained close to Nina.  Over the next decade, his success continued but he suffered other personal losses, including the dissolution of his marriage to Sandra Dee in 1967.  He became more serious and by 1968 was an ardent supporter of Bobby Kennedy’s campaign for the presidency.

Darin even thought seriously of pursuing national political office, himself.  When Nina heard of those plans she became concerned that a high profile political campaign would lead to the exposure of anything that might be hidden in Bobby’s past, so she made a confession to him.  Polly Cassotto was not his mother; she was his grandmother.  Nina was really his mother, and she would not disclose the identity of his father.

Suddenly, Bobby felt that his whole life had been a lie.  That disclosure, combined with Kennedy’s assassination affected him very profoundly.  He dropped out of the public eye and moved into mobile home in the Big Sur, California area, where he spent many months, reading, chopping wood, digging his own septic system and thinking about those major questions that come with life on this planet.

When he emerged from his seclusion, Bobby had several new songs – songs that were different from the kind he had written and sung before.  One of those was “Simple Song of Freedom.”

Bobby did manage to beat the odds given to him by his childhood doctors.  He passed his 25th birthday as a major star.  By age 35, he was still very active professionally, though he had gone through a heart valve replacement and was constantly bothered by cardiac problems.

In 1973, at the age of 37, Bobby had some dental work done.  Because of his heart condition, he should have taken antibiotics before visiting the dentist, but he failed to do so and bacteria from his teeth caused a serious systemic infection that damaged one of his heart valves.  His condition did not not heal and another surgery became necessary a few months later.  Due to his weakened condition and his diseased heart, he did not survive that second surgery.

The following YouTube video is of a live performance by Bobby of “Simple Song of Freedom.”  There are some seeming incongruities in this rendition.  This is an overtly anti-war song with lyrics that even us old hippies can appreciate, but the performer is wearing a tuxedo and bow tie.  The song was written at an emotional time in Darin’s life and is meant to evoke strong emotions from the listener, but the performance sometimes seems emotionless and “wooden.”

Nevertheless, it works.  As the title says, this is a simple song, and it is a song for all people from all social classes and walks of life.  There is no reason for the singer to shout or be dramatic.  He has a simple statement to make and he is making it in the simple words of a simple man.

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Charles Austin Miles was a New Jersey pharmacist, born in 1868, who, at the age of 24 decided to abandon his career and devote his life to gospel music and hymns.  For the next 37 years he was an editor and manager at the Hall-Mack Company, a publisher of such music.  After retiring, he continued living in New Jersey and Pennsylvania until his death in 1946.  During his life, he wrote and published hundreds of hymns, the most famous being “In the Garden,” which he wrote in 1912.  Miles summed up his life with these words:  “It is as a writ­er of gos­pel songs I am proud to be known, for in that way I may be of the most use to my Mas­ter, whom I serve will­ing­ly al­though not as ef­fi­cient­ly as is my de­sire.”

Shortly after it was written, “In the Garden” became a regular theme song of revival meetings held across the country by evangelist, prohibitionist and former major league baseball player, Billy Sunday.  In the early 20th Century it would be hard to get more exposure than that.  During the course of his career, Sunday is estimated to have preached, in person, to more than 100 million people.  Since the mid-20th Century, it has been recorded by almost everyone – from Elvis Presley to Jim Reeves to Roy Rogers to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to Dolly Parton to Perry Como.

The popularity of “In the Garden” is easy to understand.  It is a good song.

Miles composed this hymn in the “Garden State”‘ but not in an actual garden.  He was in a cold, dreary, leaky basement in New Jersey that didn’t even have a window.

Miles once explained that he was an amateur photographer and was in the basement waiting for some film to develop.  He picked up a Bible and turned to one of His favorite chapters – Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel – which tells the story of Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus outside the tomb after the Resurrection and mistaking Him for the gardener.  When she finally did recognize Him, she knelt and cried, “Rabboni.”

He said he then held the Bible and stared at the wall in front of him, when suddenly he seemed to be looking into the entrance of a garden where he saw Mary Magdalene walking along a path beneath olive branches, then saw the apostles Peter and John run to an empty tomb and then saw Mary kneeling before Jesus.  Miles seemed to lose consciousness for a short time, but when he awoke the words to “In the Garden” were in his mind; and he wrote the music that evening.

That is a good story, and I do not doubt its veracity.  However, with all due respect, I am pretty sure the song is not really about Jesus and Mary Magdalene.  It is about you and your relationship to the divine.

I believe that Miles’ experience that led to his composition is an example of the power that is possible in the ancient practice known as lexio divina (albeit inadvertent or spontaneous on Miles’ part), which seems to have been begun by the Desert Fathers, was written of by Origen and St. Augustine, formalized by St. John of the Cross, practiced by Protestant reformers such as John Calvin and revitalized in the modern Church following Vatican II.

Lexio divina does not consider sacred scripture as mere text to be studied, but as the “Living Word” to be experienced.  Its traditional steps are read, meditate, pray and contemplate.  I would like to go into more detail – and I may later – but this post is becoming quite wordy.  Let me simply say that like most meditative or mystical practices, lexio divina recognizes that the rational mind is limited by its attachment to the physical world.  In order to transcend the physical and understand the reality beyond the physical, the rational must be set aside so that God or the Universe or whatever is the stuff of existence may be experienced.

Miles seems clearly to have gone beyond his physical mind with the experience he described.  The resulting song invites the listener to go within (whether in a basement or an actual garden) to that beautiful place where he or she may experience communion and communication with the divine.

Almost every traditional country singer who has had a recording contract has released a gospel album which includes “In the Garden.”  Willie Nelson once wrote that Ray Price had the best voice in country music, so I have picked Ray Price’s version of “In the Garden” for the Song of the Week.

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Last week’s song began in Paris, took us to England and ended up fishing in the Caribbean.  It was an epic journey, though not a pleasant one.  The Caribbean is a place where many people live and vacation for the enjoyment of life, however – and few songs express that joie de vivre better than Harry Belafonte’s “Jump in the Line.”

I could probably end my commentary there and all would be fine, but there is so much that is very interesting to know about the song.

“Mardi Gras” or “Fat Tuesday” or “Shrove Tuesday” is a time for celebration in many places throughout the world.  Of course here in the United States the biggest party is in New Orleans.  Rio de Janeiro probably is the largest of these gatherings anywhere.  However, throughout the Caribbean each island has its own celebration.  One of the most famous is that which occurs each year on Trinidad and Tobago, the birthplace of calypso.

The parade held each year on the island includes a Carnival Road March competition in which musical compositions are played by competitors at “judging points” along the parade route.  Since the early 1930s, a prestigious award has been given to the song judged the best.  The most successful of the composers over the years was a local musician known as Lord Kitchener, who was the winner 11 times.  His first win was in 1946 with the song “Jump in the Line.”

Lord Kitchener’s original version was never popular in the United States.  I don’t think there is a really good recording of it, and his accent is difficult for American audiences to understand.  Perhaps more importantly, the original version did not include the “Shake Senora” chorus.

I can’t say for certain when that chorus was added.  By the mid-1950s there was a recording by another Calypso musician, Lord Invader, that included the lyrics “jump in the line shake off your body line” (though his song, entitled “Labor Day (Jump in the Line)” is much different lyrically); and another by Jamaican mento (a close relative to calypso and precursor of reggae) musician, Lord Flea, that began the song with “Shake shake shake Senora [or Sonora, it is hard to tell]”, but did not include that chorus.

Anyway, Harry Belafonte liked the song and recorded it in 1961.  His version included the great chorus, an uptempo arrangement and singing easily understood by Americans.  It became another big hit for Belafonte.

Harry Belafonte’s parents were immigrants from Jamaica and Martinique, living in New York City when he was born in 1927. He lived with his grandmother in Jamaica from the time he was 5 until age 13, when he returned to the U.S.A.  He served in the Navy during World War II, and then decided that he wanted to be an actor.  He sang at clubs in New York to pay acting school tuition, and earned a contract with RCA Victor in 1952.  He had some early success (notably “Matilda”) before his breakthrough album,Calypso, became the first record ever to sell more than one million copies in a year in 1956.  The most famous song from that album was “Banana Boat Song” or “Day-O.”

For the rest of the 20th Century and the early 21st, Belafonte continued to record songs from many different genres, he acted on television and in the movies, he had his own television shows, he received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000.

He was also active in many political and humanitarian causes.  He was an adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., and bailed King out of the Birmingham City Jail in 1963.  In 1985, he helped organize the “We Are the World” multi-artist campaign to raise funds for starving people in Africa.  He has worked on campaigns involving HIV/AIDS and educational opportunities in South Africa and Kenya, and was a staunch anti-Apartheid activist.  He has been active in causes related to prostate cancer.

Belafonte has been a long-time critic of American foreign policy, especially during the Bush administrations.  That stance was placed in the public eye when, during an interview, he compared African-American leaders Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to slaves who got the privilege of living in the house by doing exactly as the master wanted.  He has called the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “immoral.”

Harry Belafonte has retired from performing, but his music continues to entertain.  “Jump in the Line” was used to great effect in movies such as Beetle Juice and The Little Mermaid.  Anyone who has vacationed in the Caribbean or Mexico or even Hawaii probably remembers hearing the song a few times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk3sLHZzZRI

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“He Went to Paris” is a song from Jimmy Buffett’s 1973 album, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean.  It tells the story of a young man – perhaps American, perhaps British – who went to Paris after The First World War “looking for answers to questions that bothered him so.”  He quickly lost his focus in the easy flow of French life and after a few years he went to London “to play the piano.”  He married, became a father, enjoyed his life and forgot about those philosophical questions that had once been so important to him.  When World War II broke out, his son went into the military and lost his life.  During the German bombing of England, his wife was killed and he lost an eye.  In fact, with his family gone, he had lost everything; so he left England for the Caribbean islands to live a solitary but satisfied life – some of which was magic and some tragic, but all of which he could ultimately see as good.

According to Jimmy Buffett, the song was inspired by the story of one Eddie Balchowsky.  When Jimmy was beginning his career in Chicago, a club at which he played had a one-armed “janitor” who would counsel the performers and after the concerts would sit down and play beautiful piano music with only his left hand.  That “janitor” was Eddie Balchowsky, who as a 20-year old Jewish boy from the Chicago area in the 1930s had gone to Spain to fight against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War.  He came back with only one arm to a society that was completely unsupportive. He had fought on the losing side – the “communist” side – of a war that his country had officially ignored.  He turned to alcohol and heroin to ease his pain, but remained a poet, an artist and a musician.  A more detailed account of his life may be seen in a short eight-minute video called “Peat Bog Soldier” that is available here.

Both Balchowsky’s true story and Buffett’s fictional one are compelling.  Let us take just a moment to consider a few thoughts that the song – the fiction – have raised for me.

First, Paris in the years between the World Wars was a gathering place for writers, artists and intellectuals, many of whom gathered in the circle that formed around American expatriate Gertrude Stein.  In the centuries before, such men and women had gathered in Athens, in Alexandria, in Rome, in Vienna, in the courts of the Borgias and of the Sun King, in Krakow and in New York’s Algonquin Round
Table.

Later, the Beat Generation flocked to San Francisco and the Beatles Generation gathered around Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh.

They were all going somewhere looking for answers to the eternal human questions, the ones that bothered them so.  Some may have found answers among their fellow seekers, or at least have been inspired to look further.  Others, though, were like the protagonist in Buffett’s song.  The inertia of everyday living created a flow that all but extinguished the burning questions that had once seemed so important.

Finally, if the answers are found, they are not actually in the courts or salons or universities.  Instead, they are within the questions, and the within the questioners.  Returning to the Tao Te Ching, we learned from Lao Tzu in Chapter 47 that “one may know the world without going out of doors” and “may see the Way of Heaven without looking through the windows.”

Some may reach that inner knowing by staying in their home, some must travel the short distance to a Walden Pond, and some must travel the world with its tragedy and its magic before they can recognize the answers they have always had within their souls.

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

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I am still pretty much in “Break Week” mode and just back from La Belle France, so this post may not seem as well researched as some others have been.  Anyway, as I was riding a train from Versailles to Paris last week, a short, white-haired gentleman walked through the cars with an accordion and tip jar playing “La Vie en Rose” for the tourists.  “Ah,” I thought, “what could be better for a Song of the Week than the signature song of the renowned French chanteuse, Edith Piaf?”

Since then, my mind has been changed.  “La Vie en Rose” was written 70 years ago, and Piaf has been dead for more than 50 years.  The song was written at about the same time as the German occupation of Paris was ending.  It is a song about rediscovered love and symbolized the hope and excitement of a nation that had regained its independence and identity.

Times are different now.  The problems with the Nazis and World War II still impact some aspects of French thought, but they are mostly seen as just a “blip” in thousands of years of French history.

The song, itself, is also dated.  The singer is able to see the world “through rose colored glasses,” with her own hope and excitement because she is in the arms of a man whom she loves, and whom she believes is a being superior to herself.  When the song was published, Piaf was required to share composing credits with a man (Louis Guglielmi) because she did not have the qualifications necessary to copyright the work under the strict rules in force at the time.  The sea change in the role of women in today’s society reinforces the realization that times are just different now.*

So, I have chosen a song that I heard several times while I was in France – making it contemporary.  It is called “Mon Petit Pays” by Fréro Delavega.

Fréro Delavega is two guys named Jérémy Fréro and Flo Delavega who got together in 2014 to audition for the French version of the television musical competition, The Voice.  It seems they were very popular, but were eliminated in the quarter final round in April of that year.  They signed a recording contract and quickly released an album in July that became the number one album in the country the first week it was out.

“Mon Petit Pays” was on that album, and it was released as a single in October of 2014.  The album contained a few original songs and several cover versions of a weird assortment of other people’s songs.  I have been unable to determine who wrote “Mon Petit Pays.”

It is easy to see why the song is popular.  It has a very “catchy” tune, is melodic and the lyrics are intriguing, if ambiguous.  The title may be translated as “My Small Country.”  The singer tells of being away from “you” and dreaming about “you” and learning what it is like to be “far from home.”  I am not certain whether the song is really being sung to and about the singer’s homeland,or whether the “country” is a metaphor for a girlfriend or family or neighborhood or dog.  It could be any of those things.  I have included a rough translation of the lyrics at the end of this article; but since I don’t know what was originally intended, I think I have only added to the ambiguity.

I am going to go with assumption that it really is a song to the homeland; and it is nice (for me) to be back.

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I am heading into another Break Week and have given myself 15 minutes to research and complete this post.  A cursory inspection has determined that, at the moment, there ain’t no bugs on me.  Having completed that research, I have chosen “There Ain’t No Bugs on Me” as the Song of the Week.

When most of us think of songs recorded for children we consider Sesame Street and Raffi and the late Jerry Garcia.  Back in 1993 Uncle Jerry was taking his own break from the Grateful Dead and got together with fellow musician extraordinaire David Grisman to produce an album called Not For Kids Only.  The songs, which Garcia and Grisman described as “our answer to Barney,” were all well known, acoustic and found in the Old Time-String Band Songbook (which was formerly called The New Lost City Ramblers Songbook).

The record has the feel of two old friends sitting on the porch singing to the neighborhood children – though occasionally they would have to bring percussion, trombones, violins and cellos, a piano and other instruments onto their imaginary porch.  It is a well-produced collection of songs, but it evokes the flavor of Woody Guthrie’s Songs To Grow on for Mother and Child, which was recorded in 1947 and released in 1956.  That record was, I believe, simply Woody and his guitar in a very low-key recording session.

Woody did not record well-known songs as Garcia and Grisman did.  In fact, it seems that he probably made several of them up as he was singing.  Here are some sample lyrics:

“I’m a little baby one day old,
I’m a little sweet thing two days old,
I’m a little doodlebug three3 days old,
I’m a little cutie pie four days old.”
(From “One Day Old”)

“Grass, grass, grass,
Tree, tree, tree,
Leafy, leafy leaf,
1-2-3.”
(From “Grassy Grass Grass”)

Coming back to Uncle Jerry and Uncle Dave, in 1999 those two “wrote” a 40-page children’s book called There Ain’t No Bugs on Me, which consisted of a cassette recording of the song accompanied by illustrations by Bruce Whatley, who is one of Australia’s most highly regarded writers and illustrators of children’s books.

Now my 15 minutes is up, so here is the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TY8vLI4buo

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A few days ago, I was part of a group of friends discussing The Way of Mastery, as we do most Thursdays.  The focus of the discussion was on “needs.”  I won’t rehash that here.  I will just mention that as we talked I was reminded of the song “Needless To Say” by Loudon Wainwright III.

Today, Wainwright is probably best known as the father of singer-songwriter-musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, but there was a time in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was heralded as the “Next Bob Dylan.”

His father, Loudon Wainwright, Jr., was a successful columnist and editor for  Life Magazine.  It would be nice to use this as an example of the way in which good writing can be fostered from generation to generation when one has a supportive family.  However, Wainwright’s family life – at all levels – seems to have been quite dysfunctional; or at least that is the impression given by a long article in Vanity Fair a few years back.

I guess, then, it could be genetic.

In reality, Loudon Wainwright III was not cut out to be a superstar.  In a career spanning six decades he has had exactly one song that made it as a top-20 hit.  That was “Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road)” from his 1972 album that was cleverly titled “Album III.”  I have read that after the song made it up to Number 16, Wainwirght began wearing a fake beard out in public because he was afraid that someone might recognize him.

The “B” side of the “Dead Skunk” single was “Needless To Say.”  On Album III, there is a song called “B Side,” but it is about bees and was not actually a “B” side of a single; and that is just a part of Wainwright’s slightly twisted sense of humor.

“Dead Skunk” is also an example of that humor, as are many of his other songs.  Even his most recent, 2014’s Haven’t Got the Blues (Yet), keeps pace with lyrics like  “When I wake up in the morning, life seems so unfair/ Although my woman hasn’t left me yet, and there’s a cleaning lady there.”

At first blush, “Needless To Say” sounds like a play on words seasoned with a bit of sarcasm; but there is more to it.  If you really listen to it, and perhaps read the lyrics, you will find some insightful comments on the human condition.

No, Loudon Wainwright III was never a superstar, and never will be.  His music seems to fit much better in a coffee house than a stadium.  But it is more fun to listen to than most of the songs that are meant to be performed in stadiums.

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

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