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Jennifer Warnes & Leonard Cohen - Joan of Arc

Leonard Cohen is a renowned Canadian poet, author, songwriter and performer (in spite of a “love it or hate it” voice). Jennifer Warnes is best known for recording three Oscar-winning songs, “Up Where We Belong”, “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” and “It Goes Like It Goes” (naming the films left as an exercise for the reader). In 1987 Jennifer recorded Famous Blue Raincoat, a tribute to Leonard and his songs. He contributed two new songs to the album and performed on “Joan of Arc”. The song is written as a duet between Joan and Fire, a duet performed to perfection by Jennifer and Leonard. Lyrically, it fits right in with “Story Of Isaac”, “Sisters Of Mercy” and “Bernadette”.

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Goodbye Leonard

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Five for Fighting - 100 Years

Five for Fighting is the performance name of singer-songwriter John Ondrasik. He is best known for “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” which became an anthem for many Americans post 9/11. I missed that boat since I wasn’t listening to radio very much. I was also lost at sea when “100 Years” was released as a single in 2003. It was three years later when I first heard it and thirty seconds into the song when I was totally captured by it. Your mileage may vary, but give it a chance as it winds and rewinds through a life.

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Etta James - All I Could Do Was Cry

In 1961 Etta James released the album that would make her career, At Last. The title track became her signature song, but there was plenty of other good stuff in a range of styles. “All I Could Do Was Cry” featured Etta’s bluesy vocals, strings and girl group backup singers, all trying very hard to jerk a few tears.

According to Wikipedia, here’s the back story: The song was written by Billy Davis, Berry Gordy and his sister Gwen Gordy. The song was said to be inspired by James’ former boyfriend Harvey Fuqua ironically dating Davis’ former girlfriend, who was Gwen. Gordy and Fuqua later married the same year the song was recorded, which likely added to the tension in James’ vocals.

Sure makes my life seem pretty boring in comparison.

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Jennifer Warnes & Leonard Cohen - Joan of Arc

Leonard Cohen is a renowned Canadian poet, author, songwriter and performer (in spite of a “love it or hate it” voice). Jennifer Warnes is best known for recording three Oscar-winning songs, “Up Where We Belong”, “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” and “It Goes Like It Goes” (naming the films left as an exercise for the reader). In 1987 Jennifer recorded Famous Blue Raincoat, a tribute to Leonard and his songs. He contributed two new songs to the album and performed on “Joan of Arc”. The song is written as a duet between Joan and Fire, a duet performed to perfection by Jennifer and Leonard. Lyrically, it fits right in with “Story Of Isaac”, “Sisters Of Mercy” and “Bernadette”.

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The Who - I Can See For Miles

Let’s see: British Invasion, a song full of stutters, game-changing rock opera, wildest/best drummer in rock, loudest concert in my life, windmill guitar, best pinball song… for My Generation, all of this means getting on the Magic Bus with Happy Jack and Tommy, looking at Pictures of Lily, playing a Squeeze Box and swearing we Won’t Get Fooled Again when we ask Who Are You.

“I Can See For Miles” is one of The Who’s finest songs, complex, dramatic and trippy. For an excellent in-depth analysis of the song, I recommend Richie Unterberger’s allmusic.com review. Or, you can just crank up the volume and rock out.

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Ronee Blakely - Tapedeck In His Tractor

Nashville is Robert Altman’s portrait of the country music industry. It’s a mosaic made of many characters in complex relationships deeply rooted in the music itself. Altman chose not to use existing songs or established country singers. Instead, the actors did all their own singing and in most cases wrote their material. Keith Carradine, Henry Gibson, and Karen Black all sang in character and did it well.

Ronee Blakely’s background was the exception. She was a relatively obscure singer-songwriter undertaking her first movie role as a Loretta Lynn-like star with a bad case of nerves. Her voice is the standout in the movie and “Tapedeck In His Tractor” lets her turn it loose, backed by top-notch Nashville players. Oh, and she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

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Joni Mitchell - Borderline

One of my favorite Canadian gifts to the U.S. is Joni Mitchell, a singer/songwriter whose first six albums from 1968 to 1974 gained her commercial success and critical acclaim. After twenty years of expanding her musical palette, she returned to a simpler sound with 1994’s Turbulent Indigo. A stream of dissatisfaction and despair runs through the album and “Borderline” rides that current with deft lyrics of boundaries and separation.

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Ezio Pinza & Mary Martin - Twin Soliloquies

South Pacific is special to me for two reasons. In 1958 my first date was to see the film version of the musical. It was an enchanted evening (at least in my memory). In 2000 I retired from Goddard Space Flight Center and had plenty of time to devote to doing the lighting design for Goddard’s theater group’s production of the show. We put on a great show and my emotional, color-drenched design remains one of my favorites.

The first scene of the show sets everything up with four songs. For today, I’ve chosen “Twin Soliloquies.” Emile and Nellie have met and are lost in their separate thoughts about one another and their differences. Kids, this is how the masters do exposition and character development.

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Harry Belafonte - Turn Around

Harry Belafonte has been in the public eye since the early 1950’s as a singer, actor, social activist and humanitarian. Initially, he achieved fame for introducing calypso to the American public with hits like “Matilda” and “Banana Boat Song”. His talent and vision were too broad for one genre, so by 1958 he also released albums focused on blues, standards and folk material.

Love Is A Gentle Thing WAS a gentle thing, comprised of ballads, lullabies and love songs. In 1959, my fifteen-year-old ears were drawn to both rock ‘n’ roll and lush sentimentality so Elvis and Harry took turns on the turntable regularly. Malvina Reynold’s “Turn Around” nailed sentimentality so well that to this day any wedding reception DJ better have Harry’s version ready for the Father and Bride dance.

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Bobby Womack - Across 110th Street

Bobby Womack’s musical career started at the age of 10 in a gospel group with his four brothers. By the time he was 20 the now-secular group had produced two 1964 R&B hits. The second, “It’s All Over Now”, was rising on the charts when The Rolling Stones covered it. Bobby was initially angry until he saw his first songwriter’s royalty check for the single that became The Stones’ first No. 1 hit.

Eight years later Bobby wrote and performed the songs for the blaxploitation film, Across 110th Street. The title cut may be more familiar to people younger than Bobby and me from its use during the opening and closing scenes of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Whether you first heard it 42 years ago, 17 years ago or in the last five minutes, the song still pulses with the excitement of the street.

Sadly, thirteen days after this post first appeared Bobby died on June 27, 2014 at the age of 70.

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Al Stewart - On The Border

Al Stewart is a Scottish-born singer-songwriter whose career peaked in the 70’s with two exquisite albums, The Year Of The Cat and Time Passages. We’re not talking a guy and his guitar here, but rather Continental narratives enhanced by the lushness of Alan Parsons’s production style. In the case of “On The Border” this means piano, bass, drums, strings, castanets and Spanish guitar riffs framing lyrics both impressionistic and specific. By turn we’re “smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border” and seeing “the spirit of the century telling us that we’re all standing on the border.” So give it a listen and take a trip that requires neither passport or peyote. If you get bored, contemplate the beautiful Hipgnosis album cover for The Year Of The Cat.

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Grateful Dead - Ripple

The Grateful Dead have left us a sprawling legacy of studio and live recordings containing elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock. The core of my Dead experience is 1970 and their two folk rock masterpieces, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. Of those 18 songs, my heart is drawn to “Ripple” inexorably. I will not attempt an exegesis here, lacking the skill or the space. Let’s leave it at the calm, the sense of inclusion in something greater, the mystical ambiguity of existence that I feel while listening to it.

Today’s artwork is the cover of American Beauty rendered in needlework on the back of my jean jacket by an old friend, Kevin Throwe.

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Michael Nesmith - Silver Moon

When you try to use The Monkees and skilled musician in the same sentence, people may ask if you also dig Milli Vanilli. But Michael Nesmith’s musical chops are no joke. In the early 60’s he worked at L.A.’s folk music magnet, The Troubadour, and had a publishing deal. After The Monkees finished their TV run, he formed The First National Band and released a string of albums on RCA. “Silver Moon” is an excellent example of their work and shows why they are counted among the founders of country-rock.

Bonus trivia: Nesmith’s secretary mother invented a typewriter correction fluid later known commercially as Liquid Paper. Kids, “correction fluid” is like the backspace key, only wetter.

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Dionne Warwick - Anyone Who Had a Heart

If ever there were a musical ménage à trois made in Hit Parade Heaven, it was Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Each has other successes, but nothing like their magic together. Just from 1963 to 1966, Dionne’s first six studio albums contained 50 songs written by Bacharach & David, many of them hits. In fact, Dionne Warwick is second only to Aretha Franklin as the most-charted female vocalist of all time, principally due to the trio’s work. “Anyone Who Had a Heart” was their first Top Ten hit, recorded in one take the same day “Walk On By” was completed.

I was in college during those first years of success and had no trouble finding time for Dionne while I was mostly listening to folk and rock. A highlight of my graduation weekend was seeing her perform at a seashore club.

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Glenn Miller - Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)

Glenn Miller was another of Dad’s favorite artists. He had a set of ten 45 rpm EP’s with all the classic Miller pieces, so I heard more of The Glenn Miller Band than any other 40’s music. I’ve chosen “DSUTAT(WAEBM)” to represent Glenn because it still sounds very fresh and because it was released in 1942.

In 1942 Dad was a fully trained tank commander due to be sent to Rommel’s North African theater - the wrong place at the wrong time. However, a serious heart condition led to his discharge which led to his marriage which led to my birth a month after D-Day. Five months later, the plane taking Miller from England to Paris disappeared without a trace. It’s just a head trip, but I feel a mystic binding of Glenn, Bob and Den.

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