Category: Music

I have always liked Bob Lind’s music – and there probably aren’t that many people who can say that.  He was a one-hit wonder (“Elusive Butterfly”), but a lifetime writer.  His songs (mostly the ones from the mid-1960s) have been covered by over 200 artists ranging from Cher to Dolly Parton to Eric Clapton to the Four Tops to Hugh Masekala to the Blues Project.  His elusive success, combined with an overindulgence in alcohol and various pharmaceuticals, caused him to leave the music business for many years.  He became a staff writer for the Sun and the Weekly World News, those famous supermarket tabloids.  He also wrote award-winning plays, screenplays and novels (at least one of which was published – a work called East of the Holyland.)

Despite his musical and writing talents, and despite the fact that I like a lot of his stuff, it is not difficult to see why he had only one real hit.  His songs have often been called “cloying,” he regularly mixes metaphors (even in a 3-minute song) and he has a tendency to use three or four words to express what could better be said in one.  As an example, look at one of his early songs called “Mister Zero” – which, by the way, Keith Relf, the lead singer of the Yardbirds, chose for his first solo record.

“Mister Zero” is about a less than perfect relationship between Mr. Zero and Little Miss Someone.  It begins like this:  “Diamonds of silvery rain in the fountains,/And ten-cent red roses from department store counters,/Watching the moonlight reflect off the river,/Beside where the trains cross the bridge and slow down,/Trains with white letters on black iron sides,/And white rushing water that all rolls away,/And Little Miss Someone does not want to stay.”   Wordy, yes; and that is not even a whole verse.  Nevertheless, Keith Relf must have thought it was good.

It is not surprising that Bob Lind became disenchanted with the music industry because the industry did not seem to understand him.  He was essentially a troubadour with a guitar, but the producer for all of his “popular” songs was Jack Nitzsche, who thought his songs should have a lush background with strings and things.  The backing musicians were good, including Leon Russell and others, and the production did work fairly well on “Elusive Butterfly”; but most of his songs would be better if the production was a little more sparse.

Having said all that, I will repeat that I have always liked Bob Lind’s music.  Despite some major flaws, he wrote songs that are melodic and sound good and are memorable.  I mean, I remembered the words to “Mister Zero” though I have not heard the song for several decades.  I also recall seeing Bob Lind in concert in 1972.  He sang a song for which I have never found a recording that began something like, “Down at Danny’s Diner over ham and eggs, you got me in trouble for looking at your legs.”  I still remember parts of it.

“Go Ask Your Man” is one of those catchy, memorable ditties.  Darcy and I were out for our dog walk the other day and this song sort of popped into my head.  There is a line about “rolling toward the ocean in your trusty Morris Minor.”  As we turned the corner, coming up the street toward us was a red and white Mini Cooper, which is the current version of the Morris Minor of the 1960s.  That was the sign that this should be the song of the week.

By the way, Bob did release a CD of new songs in 2012, at about the time of his 70th birthday.

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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:

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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.

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

A couple of weeks ago for the Song of the Week, we heard, “After me say,’How many wishes can you wish in a day?'”

This week, after me say, “wo-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh.”

“Best Day of My Life” is a song by the American indie rock group, American Authors, that was released in 2013.  The members of the band first met while attending Berklee College of Music in Boston in 2006.  They originally called their group The Blue Pages.  They moved to Brooklyn in 2010, and changed the name to American Authors in 2012. “Best Day of My Life” was quite well received, as it became a Top 10 hit on music charts in places as diverse as the USA, Australia, Poland, Mexico, Sweden and many other countries.

I didn’t realize until I did a little research into the song that it has been used in commercials shown during the Super Bowl, as well as commercials for Hyundai in Europe, for Telecom New Zealand in New Zealand and for Nissan in Indonesia.  It was used by ESPN in the opening of its World Series of Poker coverage, as a theme song for NBC’s coverage of the Stanley Cup playoffs and was played at the conclusion of the Miss America Pageant..  It has been used in the soundtrack of various movies and TV shows. I can see, then, how the song easily fits in with one of the most American of holidays – Black Friday, which is being celebrated even as I post this piece..

Beyond that, it is certainly a song about life and its enjoyment; and that is the main reason it was chosen for this week.

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In the years since Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, millions of songs have been recorded by tens of hundreds of thousands of commercial recording artists, and more are being recorded every day.  With all of that music to choose from, what are the chances that two weeks in a row a song by Donovan from 1967 would be picked as the Song of the Week?

If you don’t want to do the math, or can’t remember the precise formulas (formulae?) for permutations and calculations, or feel that  I have provided insufficient data, I can just give you the answer.  The chances are not very good – but still, it has happened.  It makes you wonder how random the selection process is.

Let me ignore that issue, however, and briefly describe my employment history over the course of the 21st Century.  As the new Millennium dawned, I had started a new business – a title company.  A few years later, I sold that business to a larger corporation and began to work for that company.  A few years after that, my employer was purchased by a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 company.  I continued working, but learned reasonably soon that I don’t like working for huge mega-corporations, so I retired in January of 2012 and began doing some independent consulting.

About six weeks later, I was asked if I could come back to work for my former employer to do “special” projects on a part-time basis, and for a smaller hourly wage (and without benefits).  That sounded good (?), so I have been doing that, plus some “consulting” ever since.

I became a grandfather in January of 2014.  When my daughter returned to work, I agreed that I would care for my grandson, Ryder, while she and her husband were working.  That way, he would not have to go to daycare.  Hanging out with a grandchild is more fun than title work, but it is time consuming.  Recently, I decided that I really don’t have time to work anymore, and I am now re-retiring.

That brings us to Donovan’s song.  By 1966, Donovan had experienced commercial success with songs like “Catch the Wind” and “Josie.”  However, like other contemporary “folk singers” of the time (most notably, Bob Dylan), he wanted to incorporate more electrical instruments and rock rhythms into his music.  His next album, Sunshine Superman, moved in that direction; though it was more “jazzy” than “rocking.”  It was also not released for many months after it was recorded due to to litigation between Pye Records, for which he had been recording, and Epic Records, with which he had agreed to record in the future.

Also in 1966, Donovan was arrested for possession of marijuana, and the United States refused to let him enter the country.  Thus, he was unable to tour and promote his songs.

Facing those various problems, Donovan wondered if he would ever be able to record and perform commercially again, so he did what most of us would probably do under the circumstances:  He took up residence on a Greek island for a few months.  It was there he wrote “Writer in the Sun.”  He was an aging 20-year-old looking back and moving away from the hectic city life of his youth.  The song was included on his 1967 album, Mellow Yellow, and here it is:

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Ah, 1967, the Summer of Love, when all the groovy and mellow flower children migrated to the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco to live, high on life, in communion with Nature and all her creatures.

Actually, not quite all of the flower children.  Perhaps the most laid-back and mellow was in the UK, a Scottish singer, songwriter and musician named Donovan Leitch, who recorded simply as Donovan.  He had first gained recognition with folk-influenced works like “Catch the Wind” and “Try for the Sun,” but became a true international superstar with his “rocking” numbers like “Sunshine Superman” and “Mellow Yellow.”  Though neither of those hits really rocks by today’s standards, the Sunshine Superman album included “Season of the “Witch,” which has been covered by many artists ranging from Dr. John to Vanilla Fudge to Brian Auger and the Trinity, and which truly can rock your socks off.

When Donovan went back to the studio to record the album to follow up Mellow Yellow, he decided to record two new albums.  One, called Wear Your Love Like Heaven, featured electric instruments and was intended for listeners of his generation who were – or would become – parents.  The other, called For Little Ones, was acoustic and meant to speak to the children.  The two were released together in a boxed set entitled A Gift from a Flower to a Garden.  It was perhaps the first rock boxed set and included not only the two albums, but also artwork, lyrics to the songs on For Little Ones, an infrared cover photo and more.

As if Donovan was not sufficiently mellow on his own, he had, by 1967, become a student and devotee of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and a photo of the Maharishi is on the back cover of the set.  I have read that “Isle of Islay,” from For Little Ones, was the Maharishi’s favorite song.

To escape the stress of modern life, a person could sit down and listen (really LISTEN) to almost any track on either of the albums – three minutes that could save years of meditation practice or psychotherapy.  This week’s Song of the Week is “Little Boy in Corduroy” from Wear Your Love Like Heaven.  It is the song that has been in my head, and it has a great duet between an organ and a whistler.  Although it is probably not the best song from the set, it doesn’t really get any better than this.

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A tragic event occurred in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, on September 22, 1927.  A 16-year old jockey named Earl “Sandy” Graham was riding a horse named Vesper Lad, leading the field when the horse stumbled and his rider was thrown to the track and trampled by the horses behind him.  He suffered a broken back, injuries to his chest and internal injuries.  He was carried by other jockeys to the tack room, but there was no medical treatment available and no ambulance service.  His friend and fellow-jockey Tommy Luther begged racetrack officials to take Graham to the hospital, but they refused.  Other jockeys may have wanted to help, but all were without funds and under contract to ride in later races.  If they did not ride, they would lose their only means of livelihood..

Tommy Luther took up a collection for cab fare, but those present did not have enough money between them to provide Graham a ride to the hospital.  Instead, he lay in the tack room for hours until the day’s races had all been run.  Only then was he taken to the hospital, where he died 10 days later.  As a jockey, he had no life insurance or other benefits.  His family could not afford to bring the body back to his home in California, so the final resting place for Sandy Graham was a pauper’s grave in Winnipeg.

Tommy Luther continued to ride.  The following year, he won what was then the world’s richest race, the Agua Caliente Handicap.  When he retired a quarter of a century later, he trained thoroughbred racehorses for another 26 years.  Tommy Luther did not forget Sandy Graham, though.  They had been best friends – and Tommy had been scheduled to ride Vesper Lad on that September afternoon, but his mount was changed at the last minute.

In 1940, Tommy became one of the founders of the Jockeys’ Guild, a professional trade association, which was ultimately able to bargain with the owners and racetracks to secure safer working conditions for the jockeys.  His involvement resulted in his being banned from racing for one year.  That’s how it was in those days.

I first heard the story about Tommy Luther and Sandy Graham when I read Laura Hillenbrand’s book, Seabiscuit:  an American Legend, back in 2001 or 2002.  A singer-songwriter named Slaid Cleaves, who is part of the Austin, Texas, music scene read the same book and wrote a great song about the incident.  “Quick as Dreams” was released on his 2004 album, Wishbones.  I listened to the song today for the first time in several months, and decided it should be the Song of the Week.

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