Harvest Season Foliage

 Song 744: This week the playlist features Autumn Leaves by Roger Williams, written by Joseph Kosma, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Anyone living in the northeast area of the U.S., or somewhere else with a similar climate, can understand the implications of this tune's title, and has probably seen plenty of examples of the term in the last few weeks, as I have. The YouTube video here comes from an appearance by Roger Williams on the Ed Sullivan Show on January 1, 1956. At some point in that era, my folks got our family's first TV, and very soon, we got to see the Ed Sullivan Show regularly, so it's possible that we might have witnessed that appearance. However, I'm not sure if we even had the tube when Mr. Williams appeared on the show on the first day of 1956. The descending piano riffs he features in the piece do sound quite familiar, so it is possible that I did get to see and hear that segment, though I also might have experienced a rerun of the sequence on a later date. My family at the time had an upright piano sitting next to the TV back then, and even before we got the tube, I had spent some time pounding my fingers on that keyboard, so it's possible that I might have figured out those descending riffs myself and given my own family a musical sense of autumn leaves.

Raising Hair

 Song 743: This week the playlist comes around to Spooky by Classics IV, written by James B. Cobb Jr., Buddy Buie, Mike Shapiro and Harry Middlebrooks Jr., and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. With a ghostly holiday set to arrive this week, it seems like the appropriate time to feature an eerie narrative that got us all shaking along back in February of 1968. While I don't think I ever added the 45 to my hidden collection, I did get to sing along with the haunting rhythm when I had the transistor radio in hand and the touching phantom came rocking across the airwaves. A few months earlier, I had indeed had my first date with an attractive young woman who was actually a year older than me, and I had enjoyed our time together in the cool of the evenin' on that night, but I would never have asked her if she would have liked to go with me and see a movie because the church we both attended (and where we met each other) did not approve of movies, and actually classified viewing a movie in a theater as being A SIN! Some of the older generation of that church also raised the idea that observing the 10/31 holiday might violate fundamentalist principles, but fortunately for me and my brothers, our folks DID let us play the Halloween trick or treat game.

Combustion Pipe Firebolt

 Song 742: This week the playlist comes around to Smokestack Lightning by Howlin' Wolf, who also wrote the song (credited under his name Chester Burnett), and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. The first version of this song I heard came along in 1972 when Chicago radios introduced me to the Mike Harrison renditon, which I applauded on this list as Song 158. Soon after that recording roped me in, I found out about the Yardbirds one (Song 691) and also became aware of this original one. During the 1970s, some Chicago radio stations featured rocking classics from the 1950s, so I may very well have heard it from them, though I don't recall the details now. I definitely did get to know this recording in that era, and when I got to hear it, it felt like it was shinin' just like gold. Of course, even in the previous decade, growing up in a house near a railroad line, I knew that whether or not the engineer might stop the train, even to let a poor boy ride, I would never see a smokestack, since those fuming pipes did not appear on the diesel electric locomotives that had taken over the train tracks by then.

Darkness Approaching

 Song 741: This week the playlist recognizes Here Comes the Night by Them, written by Bert Berns, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. While this informing uplift came along in the early spring of 1965, it seems more appropriate to applaud its observations during the early fall period when days have begun to get noticeably shorter. A year before these attentive notes arrived, the Fab Four had rocked my world, and after becoming a fan of that moving quartet, I soon got to know and appreciate a bunch of their fellow British Invaders, including Them. I could understand how seeing another guy holding a former lover the way I used to do could make me wonder what is wrong with me but experiencing such sadness still would never make me want to die.

Swaying Under Lunar Illumination

Song 740: This week the playlist applauds Dancing in the Moonlight by King Harvest, written by Sherman Kelly, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Around this time in the fall of 1972, as my wife and I searched for an apartment on the south end of Evanston, IL, we started hearing about how making certain moves after dark could and would alleviate particular types of anxiety. I did not at the time look forward to the coming Windy City area frigid season, but it did feel good to imagine that on a somewhat-cool night, dancin' in the moonlight could make someone feel warm and right. The fundamentalist family where I grew up had not approved of dancing, and had never allowed my 2 brothers and/or me to ever do it in any way, but soon after I had left that home a few years before this hit arrived, I got to appreciate how sharing moves with a special attractive partner could feel like a supernatural delight. 

Fantasy Follower

 Song 739: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Daydream Believer by The Monkees, written by John Stewart, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This musing vision came along around this time in 1967, soon after I began my junior HS year and our school's football team had their homecoming event (which it again had a couple of days ago). While my parents and grandparents did not approve of the devil's music, I did get to experience the Monkees more than a lot of other rockers I liked because of their TV show, which I sometimes got to watch when the folks were not around. That being the case, I quickly learned a number of their tunes and could soon sing along with them. Back then, my good times would often start and end without dollar one to spend because my family had very little money available for entertainment, but they did manage to figure out inexpensive ways to generate pleasure, such as by hiking in the Adirondack Park. I also appreciated my folks providing me with an electric shaver in my last year or two of HS, so I never had to use a shavin' razor that was cold and that stings.

Jagged Jewel

 Song 738: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's ruffled gem Diamond in the Rough comes from one of my Berkeley, CA, comrades Shawn Colvin.The song was written by Shawn Colvin and John Leventhal, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. She and her musical partner Jim Bruno had both moved from Illinois to the East Bay area around the time that I did that in the summer of 1978, and in the spring of 1979, I met them at this small folkie spot in San Francisco. I had already gotten roped into the Berkeley singer/songwriter circle, and I invited them to do the same thing, which they did do after their second open mic performance at the pizza place where we all hung out. Shawn soon became one of the stars of that circle, but then in the summer of 1986, she moved to NYC. When I did a trip there the following summer, I got to see her perform at The Bottom Line in Manhattan, and I really enjoyed her set. A year later, I moved to NYC, and soon after I did, I had a copy of Shawn's LIVE TAPE cassette, which opens with this melodic rhinestone, and it didn't take long to start singing along with it. Even in the present, every now and then I can see that I'm getting somewhere, and though last night I lost too much sleep, hopefully tonight I'm gonna find it.