This post is being written on December 12, 2015.  One century earlier, on January 12, 1915, Francis Albert “Frank” Sinatra was born.  It seems appropriate, then, to choose one of Sinatra’s signature songs as the Song of the Week.

Sinatra began his career in the mid-1930s, singing with the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey bands.  He began his solo carer in the 1940s, becoming one of the most famous and influential singers of all time.  Although he could not read music, is credited as a co-writer on only about half a dozen songs and appears to have had a perforated eardrum (at least that was the official reason given for his avoiding military service during World War II), Sinatra had a good voice and charisma and excelled in his ability to interpret songs written by others.

Some of those songs were interpreted so well by Sinatra that they have become almost indelibly linked to him – songs like “My Way;” “Strangers in the Night;” and this week’s Song of the Week, “Luck Be a Lady,” which was written by Frank Loesser¹ for the musical Guys and Dolls.

In Guys and Dolls, “Luck Be a Lady” is sung by a gambler named Sky Masterson who is trying to salvage his relationship with the girl of his dreams, Sarah Brown, an evangelist working with the Save-a-Soul Mission.  After a falling out, Sky had promised Sarah that he would deliver a dozen genuine sinners to her revival meeting.  She refused to believe him and walked away,  To prove that his word was good, Sky started a crap game, betting all the other players $1,000 against their souls.  In other words, if he lost he had to pay each of them $1,000; and if he won, each would attend the revival.  Sky won.

I am also picking “Luck Be a Lady” as Song of the Week because it may work as a bit of sympathetic magic as I referenced earlier when we needed some rain.  I have been participating in a football pool this season, trying to predict the winners of each week’s NFL games and assigning confidence points to each pick.  Before last week’s games I was first with respect to the number of games picked correctly and third in total points.  However, last week I was out of town and did not give much thought to my choices².  I got 8 right and 8 wrong.  I dropped to third in number of correct picks and remained in third for total points.  I need to try to catch up this week; and that is going to take a little bit of luck.

Returning to the brief discussion of Frank Sinatra, let add that he was controversial because of his alleged connections to organized crime and his friendship with such politicians as John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.  He suffered a heart attack and died in 1998.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1nQANoQT7Q

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While reading about the poet E. E. Cummings earlier this week, I came across a website called shmoop.com.  It is a site that provides help for students in a variety of ways – some of it free and some for a fee.  Among other things, the site has numerous learning guides that are supposedly prepared by university Ph.D. candidates.

One of those guides was an extended discussion of Cummings’ poem, “all in green went my love riding.”  The author continued for more than 20 web pages talking about how Cummings used a ballad form, though the meter was in trochees rather than iambs; the repeated lines and repeated references to colors; the movement from the water to the meadow to the mountains to death; and many possible themes for the poem.

After reading through all of that, I was not impressed.  I am afraid I started off with a negative attitude because the second paragraph of the Shmoop introduction began, “Edward Estings Cummings was born the son of a Harvard professor . . .”

Cummings’ middle name was actually Estlin, and he often used the name Estlin rather than Edward when he was young.  I don’t know if the Shmoop author was guilty of a mere typographical error or poor scholarship, but that mistake made me suspect of the rest of the extensive article.

My suspicions were justified because the article failed to even recognize the actual subject of the poem.  The Shmoop summary of what the poem is about reads as follows:

“Once we get to the end of the poem, we realize that our speaker is pretty linguistically dexterous. The whole poem turns upon a pun, one that the speaker is building up rather craftily right from the very beginning. The speaker thinks about the heart as a “hart”—a deer—and the entire poem springs from that metaphor. He invents an entire scene in which deer (or harts) get chased by a clever huntress. Then the deer (or, um, his heart) is captured—by love. All of the elaborate imaginings, the green meadows and the steep mountains, could be read as figments of a very, very love-struck imagination.”

In fact, Cummings did not “invent” the scenes of the poem.  Rather, he was poetically retelling of the ancient Greek myth about Artemis and Actaeon.  Granted, the use of the first person in the poem implies that the myth is metaphor.  Still, the poem clearly finds its genesis in that myth.

Artemis, who was known as Diana by the Romans, was a goddess of the moon and the hunt and the patroness of wild animals.  She was also a virginal deity, and one day as she was bathing in the woods a hunter named Actaeon passed by and saw her without clothing.  Artemis felt that her chastity had been compromised and told him that if he ever said another word, he would be turned into a stag.  Just then, Actaeon heard a bugle call from his hunting party and he called out to his friends.  As soon as he did, he became a stag.  He did not realize what had happened until he came to a stream and saw his reflection in the clear water.  He raised his head to Mt. Olympus to petition the gods for mercy, but it was too late.  His trained hunting dogs did not recognize him.  They saw only the stag he had become and killed him.

At least that is the gist of the story as recounted by the Hellenic poet Callimachus.  An alternative version says that Artemis turned Actaeon into a stag as punishment for his competing with Zeus for the favors of the beautiful Semele.  Perhaps that is the story Cummings was telling here because at the time he wrote it, right after World War I, he was famously involved in an affair with a married woman – who later became his first wife.

Or perhaps not.  It is hard to tell with these poets.  I could probably go on for 20 pages about the poem, just as the Shmoop author did; but I will spare the reader that discussion for now.  I need, instead, to explain how this poem becomes a Song of the Week.

Peter Schickele is a composer, musician, musicologist and radio host who is best known for his comedic “discovery” of the works of P. D. Q., Bach, a fictional character who was supposedly the youngest and least talented of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach.  During the 1960s, Schickele worked as an arranger for various musicians, including folk singers like Buffy Ste. Marie and Joan Baez.

In 1968, Baez put out a very interesting album called Baptism, made up of poetry read and sung by her, set to music composed by Schickele.  It included works by such luminaries as James Joyce, Federico Garcia Lorca, John Donne, Arthur Rimbaud and others.  One of the best “songs” from the album is her version of “all in green went my love riding.”  I would like to play it for the Shmoop writer so he could be calm and focused enough to complete his research; but he’s not here.  So, I would like to play it for whomever has a three minutes to listen.

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I have to admit that last week’s Song of the Week post was not an upbeat one.  It did say that we can, and should, make the world a better place than it is now.  However, the mention of the existing problems rather overwhelmed the hope of improvement.  Here for a change is a song that is positive and uplifting; a song for “Feeling Good.”

This song sort of found me by accident.  Our local recreation center has a class at 7:00 on Monday and Friday mornings that is described as “tai chi fusion.”  I had been meaning to see what that entailed, and I finally tried a class last week.

The instructor began by saying that she was going to start the music.  That, in itself, was different from any other tai chi class I have attended.  The first song she played (this song) was by Michael Bublé; and I felt I was going to be disappointed,  I have never been much of a Michael Bublé fan.

As I listened, and moved, though, I concluded that the song was quite appropriate.  Tai chi developed in China.  While it is not necessarily a Taoist discipline, it was certainly influenced by Taoist concepts like balance and yielding.  Also, Tao is an integral part of the natural world, and the goal of wu wei is to do nothing contrary to Nature.

In commenting on the Tao Te Ching, I have made several references to the practice of tai chi – with respect to Chapters 10 and 36, for example – so I won’t repeat that here.  I will only point out that the names given to many of the movements in the tai chi set come directly from, and are integral with, Nature – like white crane spreads wings, snake creeps down, golden cock stands on one leg, snake sticks out its tongue, etc.

The song “Feeling Good” places the singer within the flow of the natural world as he or she recognizes an affinity with birds and fish, dragonflies and butterflies, rivers and trees, the sun and the whole world.  Thus, the song fits with Tao; tai chi fits with both; and the outcome should be a good feeling for the participant in the practice.

The song, itself, is from the musical theater, written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd, which was first performed in 1964.  That play is an allegorical look at the relationship between the upper and lower classes in British society.  A character named “Cocky,” who represents the lower class, is continually thwarted in the “game of life” by the upper class representative, “Sir,” because Sir keeps changing the rules.  However at one point, while “Sir” and “Cocky” argue over those rules, a character called “the Negro” sneaks behind their backs to “win.”  He sings “Feeling Good” to celebrate the accomplishment.

“Feeling Good” has become a “standard” recorded by the likes of Sammy Davis, Jr., Jack Jones and Julie London, besides Michael Bublé.  John Coltrane released a great jazz instrumental version and Traffic presented the song as an extended jam on its Last Exit album.  A modern rock version was done by Muse in 2001.  The Pussycat Dolls had a minor hit with it in 2005; and it was redone as a single and Volvo commercial by Swedish electronic musician Avicii in May of 2015.

Many, many other versions of the song are available, but THE definitive rendition is the one by Nina Simone from 1965.  She did it like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Y11hwjMNs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Y11hwjMNs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Y11hwjMNs

I remember back in 1970, I was working as a mailman in the Denver area, saving up the money I would need to go to law school.  The job was sort of stressful in the early morning when I had to get all the mail “up” and organized so I could take it out on the route.  Once I left the post office, though, it was mostly pleasant.  I was outside, working on my own with no supervision.  I could have lunch in the park, or wherever I liked; and the days when I finished early, I could read or write a song or poem until it was time to get back to the post office.  In September, 1971, I quit that job and went back to school.

At the same time, there was a mailman in the Chicago area writing songs while he was out on his route.  His name was John Prine.  He had delivered mail for a few years before he was drafted and went back to that job after he left the Army.

John Prine was then, and is today, a better songwriter than me; plus, he could sing and play the guitar.  He began performing at open mic nights in Chicago folk clubs, with other up and coming musicians like Steve Goodman.  He and Steve were recommended to Kris Kristofferson, who heard them perform and remarked that the songs John wrote were so good “we’ll have to break his thumbs.”  Instead, Kristofferson took Prine and Goodman to New York and helped them obtain recording contracts.

John Prine’s first album, entitled John Prine, was released by Atlantic Records in 1971 – and he also quit his job at the post office.  That debut album contained some of the really good songs he had written as a mailman – songs like “Illegal Smile,” “Sam Stone,” “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” “Donald and Lydia,” “Hello In There” and our Song of the Week, “Angel From Montgomery.”

“Angel From Montgomery” is an amazing song in so many ways.  It begins, “I am an old woman named after my mother.”  When it came out, John was a 25-year old man.  Yet, the song rang true.  It brought the listener into the thoughts and dreams of a middle aged woman who feels she has grown old and life has passed her by.  In an interview, Prine said of this song:  “I didn’t realize all this at the time, but if you come up with a strong enough character, you can get a really vivid insight into the character that you’ve invented. You let the character write the song. You just dictate from then on. You stick to it, and whatever the character is saying, you have to figure out how to keep that in the song. You know? That’s how I do it. I almost go into a trance.”

“Angel From Montgomery” has been recorded by many other artists, and the most famous version is that by Bonnie Raitt on her 1974 album, Streetlights.  The YouTube video that is embedded below is a live recording of Raitt doing the song.

One image in the song that stays with a listener is the line, “There’s flies in the kitchen, I can hear ’em buzzin’.”  Well, it has been unseasonably warm here in Colorado this Fall – at least until the snow that came a couple of days ago.  All week, there has been a fly in our kitchen.  I couldn’t get it to leave, so I naturally thought of this song.

I might mention in passing that my wife, Cathy, retired from her position as a nurse and lactation consultant this week; but I would probably be in trouble if I thought, even for a minute, that this choice for Song of the Week was influenced by that fact.

So, here’s Bonnie ………

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In an earlier post, I wrote that some songs are prophetic – or at least seem to be.  Well, Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin'” is prophecy in any sense of the term.  The song was written in the Fall of 1963 and released in January 1964 as the title track of the album of the same name.  However, it was not until two years later – in April of 1966 – that Congress adopted a national Daylight Savings Time, and the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.

Of course, there had been legislation concerning time before that.  Time zones, as we know them (Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, etc), had only been created in November of 1883.  That was done not by the act of any government, but by the large railroads which needed some uniformity in their schedules across a country (actually, two countries – the United States and Canada) in which the establishment of time was strictly a local matter based on the position of the Sun.

In March 1918, those standard time zones were adopted by the federal government.  At the same time, the first official Daylight Savings Time was decreed to begin on March 31, 1918.  This was during World War I, and in an effort to conserve fuel, many other countries had instituted Daylight Savings Time in 1916 and 1917.  The United States followed along, and observed the Daylight Savings Time for seven moths in 1918 and again in 1919.

When the War ended, so did Daylight Savings Time in this country.  However, it was not too many years until there was another war – World War II.  During that struggle, a year-round Daylight Savings Time, called “War Time,” was in effect from February 9, 1942 until September 30, 1945.

After the War, there were some states that continued to use Daylight Savings Time, and some did not.  Sometimes parts of a state would change the time, and others would not.  There were calls for uniformity, but most people resisted the idea that the national government should have the power to tell them what time it was.

Dylan’s song clearly prophesied the eventual federal action, though, as he sang, “Come Senators, Congressmen, please heed the call.”  And heed it they, did, enacting the legislation starting Daylight Savings Time on the last Sunday in April of each year, and ending it on the last Sunday of October (though giving states the power to opt out by state law).  Clearly, it was a good call by Mr. Dylan.

There have been changes in the implementation over time.  In 1974, Daylight Savings Time was in effect from January 6 through October 27; and in 1975, from February 23 through October 26.  In each case, the longer period was decreed in the hope that it would result in energy savings.  In 1986, new legislation made Daylight Savings Time begin at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday in April and end at 2:00 a.m. on the last Sunday of October.  Since 2007, the starting date has been 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday of March, and the ending date 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday in November.

Wait a minute . . .   I have just been informed that “The Times They Are A-Changin'” is not about Daylight Savings Time at all.  I don’t know what to do.  Tomorrow is the first Sunday in November and I need to change all of our clocks, so there is no time to do more research.

I am just going to pretend that I didn’t get the new information, and move on to the song:

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Ireland has produced some fantabulous poets over the centuries.  Keeping to fairly modern times, we think of William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Brendan Behan – and the list goes on.  Come October, when the leaves on the trees are falling to the sound of the breezes that blow, we are reminded to include Van Morrison on that list.

“Moondance” is a great song from sort of turning point in the life of Sir George Ivan “Van” Morrison, Jr.  He had been immensely popular in Belfast as a founding member of Them (which was the seminal Irish band for two years, much as U2 has been for the past several decades).  Then, in 1966, Morrison left the group to pursue a solo career.  His first solo single, “Brown Eyed Girl,” has become one of the most popular rock and roll songs of all time.  However, due to contractual issues, he received almost no payment, and was nearly destitute when he left Bang Records and began recording for Warner Brothers.

It seems that Warner signed him because it believed, based on songs like “Gloria” and “Brown Eyed Girl,” that Morrison would create commercially successful pop music.  However, his first album for the new label was Astral Weeks, a complicated enigmatic song cycle that is recognized as a work of genius; but did not sell well when it was released in 1968.  Within a few months, though, listeners began to appreciate the gift he had given them, and that album presaged his marvelous career that followed.

His next album was Moondance, released in 1970.  As dark and mystical as Astral Weeks had seemed, this one was optimistic and upbeat; and it continued the display of Morrison’s genius.  Many critics have named it to lists of the greatest albums of all time – and deservedly so.  It has sold millions of copies over the years, and many of its songs continue to be popular today, 45 years later (“It Stoned Me,” “Caravan,” “Into the Mystic,” “Crazy Love,” “These Dreams of You”).

The most popular of them all is the title track.  Everyone knows that song; and obviously I was thinking of it here under the cover of October skies.  Listening to the song, I felt I should choose one of the many hundreds of great songs Morrison has recorded to be the Song of the Week.

I spent the day doing Fall cleaning and maintenance chores around the house, so I thought a good choice might be “Cleaning Windows,” which is another feeling good song about a working man in his prime, and is based on memories of one of Morrison’s early jobs.

I also considered “Rough God Goes Riding.”  I have thought that to be a great song since it was included on Morrison’s 1997 album, The Healing Game; and earlier this year he gave us a new version, singing with his daughter Shana on his Duets album.

An obvious feature of the “Moondance” song is its jazzy feel and arrangement.  To follow up on that aspect, I thought maybe it would be good to listen to “Lonely Avenue,” which is a great cover he did of a song recorded by Ray Charles in 1956.

Those are all terrific songs.  However, this is the time of year when “Moondance” seems perfect. So, popular and well-known as it may be, it is the Song of the Week.

Van Morrison has never given many interviews, so it is not easy to find great insight into the background of his compositions.  It seems that “Moondance” was written about the time he married his first wife, Janet Planet, and moved to Woodstock, New York.  He has said that the tune came to him first.  For several weeks he would play it whenever he picked up his saxophone.  When it came time to make an album, he added words.

Here it is:

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