Snappy's Songbook

Thoughts on music by Dennis Cook, former writer-editor at Dirty Impound, JamBase, and Harp Magazine

[snappyssongbook]

A Year Of Songs #60: “The Bargain Store” by Dolly Parton

“My life is likened to a bargain store 

And I may have just what you're looking for

If you don't mind the fact that all the merchandise is used

But with a little mending it could be as good as new”

A lot of things about Dolly Parton generate a lotta talk - the outfits, the hair, the movies, the boobs, the theme park, the philanthropy, the rodeo dinner theaters, the awards, the collaborations - but least discussed is her status as one of the greatest and most prolific songwriters of the past 50-plus years.

Besides “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” few cite the hundreds of released songs she’s penned, which doesn’t touch the literal hundreds more she’s written in her daily practice of tinkering on new material. She’s too humble to brag about it but Dolly’s deadly serious about the craft of songwriting and keeps her knives sharp and powder dry. 

“The Bargain Store” was the lead off single and title track of Parton’s 15th solo album released February 17, 1975. In just over two and a half minutes, she offers a master class to aspiring composers. 

The arrangement is a seduction, Parton’s fluttering Southern songbird voice pushed forward as layers of guitars and standup bass twirl over a shuffling barroom beat, dropping down to a single guitar a few times, a lonely reflection of the solitary narrator, before the music builds to a quiet swirl of upright piano, banjo and more in the last 30 seconds, a hopeful rise that’s still a touch muted behind Dolly’s pleading but defiant vocal.

The song was pulled from a number of radio stations because a line in the chorus - “The bargain store is open/ You can easily afford the price” - was considered a veiled allusion to prostitution despite Parton stating in the next breath that “love is all you need  to purchase all the merchandise.” Boycotts notwithstanding, the song still hit Number One on the Country Charts.

Most of the 1975 release is Parton originals alongside a Porter Wagoner tune and a nice reading of Merle Haggard’s "You’ll Always Be Special to Me.” It’s a fine spot to start in exploring Dolly The Songwriter, and boy howdy, will the title cut stay with ya. 

“Why you take for instance this old broken heart

If you will just replace the missing part

You would be surprised to find how good it really is

Take it and you never will be sorry that you did”

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A Year Of Songs #59: “The Rootwitch > I Carry Your Heart”

Joseph Campbell put the zap on a lot of heads in the late 1980s. Visionary guitarist-composer Michael Hedges, spiritually switched-on by Campbell, took his recommendation to “write your own mythology” to considerable lengths, composing an unpublished autobiographical mythology with an accompanying score, 1990’s Taproot. 

The backstory is unnecessary to enjoy Taproot but it adds rings and tendrils to know Hedges is Taproot, the central protagonist, family members & friends appear as stalks and cuttings, and “The Rootwitch” is his chiropractor. 

The pleasant snap, crackle and pop of the instrumental suggesting deep tissue work and bold adjustments, the piece showcases Hedges’ vibrant, frequently flashy style as he knocks the wood percussively whilst making the strings dance in a manner seemingly impossible for only two hands. While John Fahey and Oregon’s Ralph Towner pioneered many elements Hedges was celebrated for, his bold individuality is evident on “The Rootwitch.”

This aggressive exuberance gives way to a nicely underplayed, consciously simple musical setting for e.e. cummings’ poem “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in).” Hedges’ sweet, earnest voice takes lead with pals David Crosby and Graham Nash chipping in backing vocals. Longtime Hedges collaborator fretless bass wonder Michael Manring further boosts the skipping warmth of Taproot’s closer.

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A Year Of Songs #58: “Please Be With Me” by Cowboy

Another perfect jewel shaped at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in the early 70s, an acoustic rock ballad that lingers because every detail and line phrasing sticks. Clear and spare, “Please Be With Me” is a heartfelt lover’s prayer that resists unnecessary filigree, understanding how a tender voice gently bolstered by close harmonies and a couple guitars are plenty to get ‘er done. 

“I sit here lying in my bed

Wondering what it was I said

That made me think I lost my head

When I knew I lost my heart instead”

Penned late in the recording process in just a few minutes in Boyer’s hotel room, “Please Be With Me” wrestles with really needing someone and being vulnerable enough to confess that need aloud. 

“So won't you please read my signs?

Be a gypsy

Tell me what I hope to find deep within me

And because you can find my mind

Please be with me”

Cowboy lead singer-songwriter Scott Boyer plays acoustic guitar accompanied by Duane Allman on dobro. Allman got Cowboy signed to Capricorn Records and plays on “Please Be With Me” and adds electric guitar to “Lookin’ For You” on 1971’s 5’ll Getcha Ten, a cult classic that deserved more airplay and attention in its day.

Eric Clapton covered “Please Be With Me” on his second solo album, 1974’s 461 Ocean Boulevard, nicking the arrangement and even Boyer’s singing style, only adding more prominent female backing vocals. It’s a pleasant but inferior version compared to the original.

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A Year Of Songs #57: “Ganges Delta Blues” by Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt

An unplanned, unrehearsed meeting of two master guitarists presents the concept of music as a universal language as a ringing reality. 

Ry Cooder plays bottleneck slide on acoustic guitar, and in his capable, bewitching hands and encyclopedic knowledge powered brain, the instrument sings like a symphony here. His partner in this largely improvised encounter is Vishwa Mohan Bhatt playing a Mohan veena, a 19-21 string archtop Hawaiian guitar of his own invention, played flat with a bar somewhat like dobro though with far more drone and sympathetic strings. 

Their instruments are simpatico cousins half a world apart but once in direct contact they sing to one another, a tintinabulous catalyst to melodies they did not know were buried in the wood and wires. 

1993’s A Meeting by the River hums, roars, and ripples with distinctness, as if one is hearing a new language being written and spoken for the very first time.

The guitarists are accompanied by Cooder’s then-14 year old son Joachim and tabla player Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari, who add to the empathetic/sympathetic back and forth that defines this “conversation” where distances are bridged even while the uniqueness and tradition each participant brings shines through. 

Of the four lengthy tracks that comprise A Meeting by the River, “Ganges Delta Blues” is the friskiest, the spice of each referenced region fragrant as fuck, the swing and sway loose, playful and fun. One imagines the players smiling as they hand the current to each other, excited as any listener to see where it goes.

Anyone interested in the broad possibilities of slide guitar must explore this album - one hears echoes of Bhatt’s style in Derek Trucks’ work, an influence he happily acknowledges. But, anyone seeking a beautiful, broadening musical experience is welcomed and encouraged to venture into this fruitful meeting. 

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A Year Of Songs #56: “Ashes & Glass” by Bob Weir And RatDog

“What if all tomorow brings is ashes and glass

And I can't tell you child, ‘This too shall pass’

If all the world were windswept, cold and gray

And in the end there's nothing left to say”

Wondering in the next breath “If all the silicon and best laid plans became the master and the fall of man,” Bob Weir sketches a bleak future before suggesting we throw our cares to the wind and “swing and sway.”

Partying While Rome Burns songs are part of Weir’s go-to themes right next to Women That Did Him Well/Wrong, and “Ashes And Glass” ranks up there with “Hell In A Bucket.” 

Aided on lyrics by Bay Area songwriting ringer Andre Pessis with music co-written with his RatDog bandmates, “Ashes And Glass” has all the markings of a huge fan favorite…if fans after the mid-2000s or today’s streaming listeners had a chance to hear it. 

2000’s Evening Moods is one of few Weir related albums not readily available online, on CD or collector edition vinyl. It’s a head scratcher given that Evening Moods and the band that made it constitute Weir’s strongest, most interesting work post-Garcia.

Post-GD Weir hasn’t sung, played, or especially, created new work with the same gusto as late 90s through mid-2000s RatDog. “Ashes And Glass” showcases this combo firing on all cylinders. Mark Karan (guitar, vocals), Jeff Chimenti (keys, vocals), Rob Wasserman (bass) and Jay Lane (drums) move with muscle and dexterity, a bluesier, tighter descendent to late period Grateful Dead - a separate entity but sharing some DNA. 

Karan is particularly eloquent here, his guitar sounding nothing like Garcia, instead drawing from Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills, offering a rockier counterpart to Weir’s sparking guitar outbursts and angled rhythms. Karan remains my favorite guitar foil for Weir since Garcia because their musical conversation was free of the Jerry seance nearly every other guitarist falls into with Bob. The absence of horn players Dave Ellis and Kenny Brooks on “Ashes And Glass” further lays bare their chemistry. 

Only Weir can explain why he ended this ensemble and most of its songbook but that changes nothing about the quality of this album and the performances on it. Just one more mysterious artifact in the post-Garcia wake that’s lead to Dead & Company’s ongoing ghost dance.

“Well ashes to ashes, baby, dust to dust

Baby, it's time for one last rave

Keep on dancin' on our own graves

On our own graves

Keep on dancing”

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A Year Of Songs #55: “The Hereafter” by Larry Young

This moody, modal excursion is a far cry from the standard organ jazz combo fare in 1969, a niche made popular by Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff and others adept at tapping into the soul and pop audiences of the day. While other tracks on Larry Young’s Heaven On Earth cater to this casual market, “The Hereafter” showcases what made Young appeal to Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, and Tony Williams. 

At nearly 9-minutes (and drifting into a fade-out that suggests more was left on the studio floor), the track features some of George Benson’s loosest, most angular work during a period he too was settling into a populist blueprint. Benson is matched in his curvy invention by saxophonist Herbert Morgan and avant-garde staple flautist Byard Lancaster, while future Dexter Gordon Quartet drummer Eddie Gladden provides steady yet conversational rhythm. 

Both as a composer for and player of the Hammond B-3 organ, Young stretched boundaries. “The Hereafter” presents an appealing example of Young at his best including his ability to prompt interesting work from his collaborators. 

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A Year Of Songs #54: “Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)” by Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello ranks as one of the great Apocalyptic Bards of our age - he’s been “Waiting For The End of the World” since his 1977 debut, My Aim Is True - but he’s rarely howled with such undisguised cataclysmic despair as this cursed rocker off 1991’s Mighty Like A Rose.

“Forget about Beethoven, Rembrandt and rock and roll

Forget about Mickey Mouse, Marlboro and Coca Cola

Forget about Cadillac, Mercedes and Toyota

Forget about Buddha, Allah, Jesus and Jehovah

Hurry down Doomsday, the bugs are taking over”

Co-written with studio drummer extraordinaire Jim Keltner, the music matches the manic bummer of the lyrics and Costello’s possessed vocal. Besides Keltner’s tin can tribal beat and Costello’s messy electric guitar, the pyre dance is fueled by Marc Ribot (guitar), Jerry Scheff (bass), Wrecking Crew keyboardist Larry Knetchel, and further keyboard fuckery from producer Mitchell Froom. From jump, it roars like a black hymn from a Gnostic cousin to the Book of Revelation.

“The man in the corner of this picture has a sinister purpose

In the teeming Temple of the Railroad Kings

He's planting a trashy paperback book for accidental purchase

Containing all the secrets of life and other useless things

But I can't bring myself to look

Wake up, zombie, write yourself another book

You want to scream and shout, my little flaxen lout

Hurry down Doomsday, the bugs are taking over”

The song careens as if it might rattle apart at any moment, each aspect shaking on a ragged edge, yet some how, some way holding together as the chittering hordes rumble in the distance. 

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A Year Of Songs #53: “Get Down Moses” by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros 

“Once I got to the mountain top, everywhere I could see

Prairie full of lost souls running from the priests of iniquity

Where the hell was Elijah?

Well, what do you do when the prophecy came was true?”

In a voice befitting a track that evokes a prophet revered by Judaism, Islam and Christianity in the first verse, Joe Strummer taps into the mystical force found in reggae’s most potent moments.

There’s a false notion that after The Clash Strummer didn’t create music with the same depth, urgency, or passion. “Get Down Moses” and the rest of Streetcore, his posthumously released swan song, puts the lie to that idea with a song cycle that feels like the proper follow-up Combat Rock never got. 

Strummer breathes righteous fire, inciting Moses to carve another tablet out of LSD while stirring the masses to put their lips together and blow down the cages holding them in like the Walls of Jericho. 

“Goin' to the very top

(Na na, na-na-na-na-na)

Where the truth crystallizes 

Like jewels, in the rock, in the rock”

Using mostly first take vocals, longtime music sculptors, collaborators and wicked multi-instrumentalists in the Mescaleros, Martin Slattery and Scott Shields ease back the world music elements of the first two Mescaleros albums to craft a future rock that resonates with the late Clash sound while maintaining a 21st century zest.

2003’s Streetcore is a clear labor of love that honors Strummer’s core values and bright musical spectrum, poignant punctuation to Joe’s legacy after his sudden death from a heart attack in 2002. 

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A Year Of Songs #52: “Roast Fish & Corn Bread”

Like Jamaica’s answer to Monty Python’s coconut banging “horses,” Lee “Scratch” Perry rides in from Echo Valley muttering, “Clip clop, clip clop, cloppity, cloppity, cloppity, high.”

This is how the ostensible title track from Perry’s phenomenally loopy, bug-fuck experimental 1978 album Roast Fish Collie Weed & Corn Bread opens. 

Awash in deeply manipulated organ, one drop rhythms, and body rattling bass, the song lurches in wobbly unison with Perry’s herb massaged freestyling - a bubbling word stew of island patois, Biblical references, jazz scatting, and of course, corn bread and roast fish. It is pure, uncut lunacy. But, as mad things go, it’s mighty infectious. 

Despite more than 20 albums and anthologies plus countless singles under his name at the time, Roast Fish Collie Weed & Corn Bread was Perry’s first release to feature his own beatifically stoned lead vocals on every track. Within his massive catalog, this may be the highest concentration Lee “Scratch” Perry available. 

The backing musicians Perry utilizes like a small orchestra of vibrant, unique sounds is beyond stellar including drum sorcerer Sly Dunbar, guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith, and Hammond organ maestro Winston Wright. 

What Perry conjured in his infamous Black Ark Studio with these elements, a head full of THC tickled street poetry, and what one imagines a hay wagon of collie weed is as unique and timeless an album as the 70s produced. 

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A Year Of Songs #51: “Make Up With A Gun” by Nakia

“What I lack in common sense

I make up with a gun”

The shuffling specters of The Specials’ “Ghost Town” haunt this dancehall and Spaghetti Western inflected chronicle of low budget romance beneath street lamp glow, lovers snatching moments together as shots ring out and long odds bets fall through. 

“Meet me at the station

Just keep outta sight

Cash your check at the Dollar Store

And let's go chase the night”

Austin-based Nakia was a semi-finalist on the first season of The Voice but unlike most TV singers, he’s been writing songs before and long after his 2010 national exposure. With an inviting, powerful, flexible voice, Nakia wanders styles freely and has found a following in the queer music scene and beyond, both solo and with his band The Never Not Now.

For those looking for an entry point to Nakia’s work, 2013’s Drown In The Crimson Tide EP, which includes “Make Up With A Gun,” is a concise 6-song cross-section of his facility with classic rock, vintage soul and more.

Nakia | Singer/Songwriter/Actor

The official website and store for queer artist, Nakia - singer/songwriter/actor.

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A Year Of Songs #50: “Blues For Mama” by Robin Kenyatta

Free can be funky too. 

On a day in late October 1970, four of the young lions in the emerging Free Jazz and Experimental Music worlds gathered in Ludwigsburg, Germany to record a thoroughly winning, surprisingly accessible album filled with vibrancy and freedom. 

Robin Kenyatta (flute, alto saxophone, percussion), an NYC born American living in Paris after stints Stateside with Bill Dixon, Sonny Stitt, Roswell Rudd and others, gathered two of Europe’s brightest emerging instrumentalists - Germany’s Wolfgang Dauner (Clavinet, piano) and Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen - and fellow American living abroad Fred Braceful (drums) for his third record as bandleader.

Girl From Martinique (1971) (ECM Records) marries rock rhythms to dissonant horns blasts and chunky keyboard chug, bright and eager flute slicing holes in deep pockets, and the quartet playing like seasoned compatriots despite only just meeting. 

“Blues For Mama” is the briefest, most immediately accessible of the album’s four Kenyatta compositions. Dauber’s introductory Clavinet is downright nasty, and thankfully resurfaces again in the final third. Andersen’s double bass has the fat fullness that Ron Carter once leant a Tribe Called Quest, and Braceful keeps it moving while still throwing in weird curves. Kenyatta blows the soul out of his horn here, opening up in the middle section before falling back into the groove. The fade-out makes one wonder how long the unedited jam went given the sparks still flying in the final seconds. This is resounding proof Free Jazz need not be a distancing exercise. It can also dance.

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A Year Of Songs #49: “Lady Love Your Countryside” by Sleeper

Britpop had more variety than Oasis and Blur but much of it never translated to American audiences even when it was a U.K. hit. For example, Sleeper, who had numerous Top 40 singles and a strong presence in England even in a crowded field but nigh zero presence Stateside. 

“Lady Love Your Countryside” is off Smart, the band’s fine 1995 debut. Just a minute in and it’s easy to understand why Sleeper was asked to cover Blondie’s “Atomic” for the Trainspotting soundtrack. Lead singer Louise Wener has a similar mix of breathy femininity and judiciously deployed power that make Debbie Harry so winning. 

Having a woman vocalist immediately set Sleeper apart from Britpop’s general laddishness, and the unadulterated lustiness of “Lady Love Your Countryside” further distances the group from the fairly sexless boy vibes elsewhere in 90s United Kingdom with a cry of, “Let’s get messed up, boy, messed up good.”

The second verse is positively carnivorous. 

“Come and suck down meat with me

Until it makes you feverish

I like to watch you eating stuff

Do you kiss your mother with those lips?”

This is a juicy invitation to paint graffiti in the night while smoking cigarettes and shedding inhibitions. Even if one ends up puking in Belsize Park, it’s all a grand slap ‘n’ tickle. 

“You know life is a mess

I want to see you boxing naked to the death”

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A Year Of Songs #48: “Having My Picture Taken” by The Boomtown Rats

Prior to writing and recording 1979’s The Fine Art of Surfacing, acerbic Irish rockers The Boomtown Rats spent time in the United States - at their label’s insistence - to better understand the American market. Singer Bob Geldof, keyboardist Johnny Fingers, and the rest of the Rats returned across the pond and cut an insightful, prickly album that peels back the layers of U.S society revealing complex darkness lurking beneath the sunshine and open spaces. 

The Fine Art of Surfacing includes “I Don’t Like Mondays,” the one Boomtown Rats tune most Americans familiar with them at all know, but there’s much more to their arguably finest hour than that memorable take on the infamous Cleveland Elementary School shooting in San Diego.

Utilizing humor and vaguely sarcastic pop shapes, the band offers an honest view of late 70s America. It’s an album equally fueled by fascination and disgust that foreshadows today’s fame-fucker cults and obsession with surfaces. If one didn’t know better, the second verse of “Having My Picture Taken” could be about our present Instagram reality. 

“I can choose each day who I want to be

You can choose each day who you want to see

We pan the rounds and scan the crowds of all those distant scenes 

Immortalize a slice of time

Hey don't mind me, I'm having my picture taken”

The desire to present one’s self experiencing their “best life” has been with us a long time, and Geldof captures this mindset in just a few lines.

“Another moment of the life dramatic

You really should have been there

It was so fantastic.” 

Musically, “Having My Picture Taken” is a springy carnival of beachy organ swells, pounded piano, thumping drums, bass shimmy, and a ripping guitar solo to boot. Geldof croons with sarcastic aplomb, a man pretending to be much happier than he is trapped in a full time photo shoot. 

Like much of The Fine Art of Surfacing, the song is a goddamn blast…if you don’t listen too closely. Sometimes eyes that grew up under different skies can see us more clearly, more honestly than our own. 

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A Year Of Songs #47: “Rage In The Plague Age” by Les Savy Fav

The urge to “draw up the drawbridge, draw down the blinds” is increasingly powerful and widespread in the new millennium. NYC’s Les Savy Fav saw these New Roman Times coming in 2007 and penned a perfect doomsday party anthem. 

“Everyone inside is getting high tonight

Waiting for the plague to move on

No one's getting sober till the liquors all gone"

A spitting punk belter laced up with Oxford English Dictionary turn of phrase, “Rage In The Plague Age” opens with a fine double entendre about a king that used to “hold the biggest balls” before falling sick and being booted outta the castle by his court. Once among the common folk, he finds shelter and booze with the monks and nuns raising a little Hell on Earth. 

“The bra in the candelabra, the panties on the paintings,

the Monks have tapped their finest cask,

and the Nuns are into fainting. They sing,

I hold my breath, you hit my chest”

It’s a scene etched with the razor sharpness of the Buzzcocks, Stiff Little Fingers and early Arctic Monkeys. Every aspect kicks ass, the music matching the manic brilliance of vocalist Tim Harrington, and the collective mass sweeping listeners into their rowdy cloisters with elemental force. 

Delivered a dozen years before Covid-19, Let’s Stay Friends is a heathen hymnal worthy of fresh study as we careen into burgeoning Bird Flu, Ebola and Measles outbreaks - the unhappy harbingers of a new plague age. 

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A Year Of Songs #46: “Enemy Within” by Last Exit

“The enemy within” is a phrase used by historical blemishes like Joseph McCarthy, Margaret Thatcher and Adolf Hitler. As the expression gains traction and frequency anew in the 21st Century, it’s worth remembering its history and what those who deployed this incitement to fear our neighbors, immigrants and dissenters did and wanted to do to democratic society.

But, the phrase is also a pointer inwards, a catalyst to examine and engage with the darker forces in our own souls, minds and hearts. One can’t be an enemy to anyone else without first kicking their better angels to the curb. 

Which brings us to Last Exit, purveyors of Free Jazz for punks, a roar as consciously aggressive as Bad Brains and Fugazi capable of getting powerful emotional content across without a word. 

“Enemy Within” appears on the short lived quartet’s self-titled 1986 debut carved from blistering live set at New Morning in Paris in February of that year. In less than four minutes, Sonny Sharrock(guitar), Peter Brötzmann (sax), Bill Laswell (6 string bass), and Ronald Shannon Jackson (drums, voice) present the angry maelstrom that occurs inside and out when enemies are identified and solutions proffered for “dealing with them properly.”

A less thoughtful early Metallica springs to mind during the opening drum/guitar stampede before Brötzmann’s uncivilized saxophone cuts and snares until derailed by Laswell’s foreboding bass in the concluding moments. 

This is not a thought experiment despite the opening semiotic rumination. This is pure emotion, musicians surrendering fully and freely to the moment. Given the improvisational nature of Last Exit, song titles were likely decided after the fact. As smart guys, it’s unlikely they were unaware of the dark overtones “Enemy Within” carried, and in pointing us that direction perhaps drive a contemplation absent from their spectacular outburst, an amplified example of how art takes on a life of its own once released into the wild.

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A Year Of Songs #45: “Teen Tonic” by Pierre Henry & Michel Colombier

Sampling in music has been going on since the 1930s but before it got a one-word description it was known as musique concrete, which takes ordinary sounds, vocal snippets, and other noises and mixes them with traditional instruments. As the 20th century progressed, manipulation of these sounds through effects, tape loops, and eventually synthesizers, further expanded the boundaries and ingredients used. 

Musique concrete has rarely been more charming or accessible than 1967’s Messe pour le temps présent, a hip as hell score for a French ballet. “Teen Tonic” bubbles with unbridled modernity from the first flurry of sounds before a simple, infectious organ riff, what sounds like lightbulbs being smashed, and a warm phalanx of singers intoning “aaah-aaah-aaah” arrives. Music occasionally drops out altogether but only for a half second before that goddamn groovy organ returns to carry us to what might be sonar blips at the end. 

“Teen Tonic” has been sampled extensively including Fatboy Slim’s “Song For Lindy,” Luke Vibert’s “Rank Ring Ring,” and Diplo’s “Clear Day.”  Métamorphose: Messe pour le temps présent, a cool remix album of Henry & Colombier’s work came out in 1997 featuring Coldcut, Saint Germain and Dimitri From Paris, further adding layers to these sampling pioneers. 

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A Year Of Songs #44: “Smoke Rings” by Les Paul & Mary Ford

A small choir of multitracked Mary Fords dreamily intones about disappearing smoke in the night as Les Paul’s guitar sketches lines dripping with echo delay and the romantic fancy of a tipsy Django Reinhardt. This is the sound of the future viewed through the lens of early 1950s.

The song “Smoke Rings” dates back to the late 1930s, and numerous versions precede this rendition. But, part of the couple’s staggering hit making knack stemmed from their ability to mingle nostalgia and familiarity with innovative recording techniques. It doesn’t hurt that Ford possessed a downright sexy voice, and Les Paul was an inventor that understood well how to put his advances into winning practice. 

But, on 1952’s Bye Bye Blues, “Smoke Rings” is simply a perfect goodnight kiss at the conclusion of their third million seller in a row. Nothing then and now quite mirrors the intimately beguiling chemistry Ford and Paul conjured during their decade together. As singularities go, this is a lovely one.