Knowing Your Own Self Worth

Song 318: This week on the playlist you can hear Wonderful Me by Carol Denney, who also wrote the song. Seven weeks after my last post of a song by a personal friend, this week’s track is by my friend Carol Denney, who, for at least 4 decades, has served as Berkeley, CA’s very own Joni Mitchell, as well as contributing in a strongly-engaged way to the community’s political dialogue. This cut graces her 2009 CD The Riley Boys, and deftly showcases her understated, self-deprecating sense of humor. I have a live recording on cassette of Carol performing this song one night at La Val’s Pizza, back around the turn of the ‘80s, with Shawn Colvin and Nancy Milin adding harmonies, and by the time they finished the performance, the crowd was cheering and laughing loudly at the same time. I do want to express one small criticism of this recording, though — I think it would have added to the humor to follow the line “This way I get more whistling done” with a small bit of whistling, but I can always do that myself when listening to the record, especially if I’m spending a day with myself, since doing so is such a delight. 

In a Real Hot Spot

Song 317: This week on the playlist you can find Saint Augustine in Hell by Sting, who also wrote the song. And yes, it is August, and it has been hot lately. When Ten Summoner’s Tales came along in early ’93, a couple of standout tracks, like Fields of Gold (Song 112), got a lot of airplay, and they sounded good enough to convince me to get the CD, but even so, the album still managed to exceed my expectations. I don’t remember hearing this cut on the radio, but it quickly got my attention. You have to admire the way Mr. Sumner does the spoken part in the middle section, pretending to be the devil speaking to his own soul. I always sensed a double meaning in his statement, “OK, break’s over!” Musicians understand the word break as referring to this middle section speaking part, so he’s signaling his backup players that it’s time to return to the next verse, as a lead singer might do with a live ensemble, though it’s hardly necessary on a studio recording. However, I also think the phrase may be a sly reference to a joke about hell that made the rounds back in the late ‘60s. I won’t go into that joke here, but if anyone hasn’t heard it and would like to, query me on my Facebook musician page (link on the website) and I’ll do a post about it. While I enjoy hearing Sting ribbing about his torture over an undeniable attraction to his best friend’s lover, I personally could never allow myself to feel, let along respond, to such an attraction. At one point during HS, a classmate named Sandy caught my eye, and I started to write a song for her, but soon after, my close friend and fellow rock-and-roll dreamer Brian confided to me that he had a strong attraction to her, at which point I decided that if The Initials ever performed Sandy Look This Way then Brian would sing the lead, and dedicate the song to the one who had truly inspired it, while I would not ever indicate that she had created any ripples in my stream. Sadly, The Initials never performed the Sandy song, or any others — we never got close to fulfilling our RnR dreams — and so Sandy never got to hear Brian sing for her a song that I wrote for her. The good news is that I didn’t have to keep company with failed saints and high court judges gathered in a certain very hot spot.

Give Me A Third Ticket

Song 316: This week the playlist is once again a good place to find The Letter, this time by Joe Cocker, written by Wayne Carson Thompson. About a year after last week’s track had its run on the charts, a 3rd version of the same song showed up on the airwaves and started climbing up to the Top Ten. Over the preceding months, rock radio stations had given a lot of air time to recordings from the Woodstock festival, with Joe Cocker featured prominently in that mix, so this guy I had never heard of before came into focus quite strongly, and then his rocking new single naturally caught my attention, as it did many others. At the point in my career where I sought to forge an original personal musical identity, Joe’s hit provided me with a 45-rpm example of a musician taking a well-known composition and giving it his own personal spin. JC, along with The Arbors and The Box Tops, had shown how one song could be recorded and performed in 3 very different and yet equally-compelling ways. Some may not find all 3 versions as captivating, but I do like them all, and I can’t think of any other rock anthem that appeared in 3 quite distinct models within the space of 3 years and spent so much time on the radio waves and the charts. I hope the songwriter received a sizable wad of cash for his efforts, or at least enough to buy a ticket for an aer-o-plane.

Give Me Another Ticket

Song 315: This week the playlist is again a good place to find The Letter, this time by The Arbors, written by Wayne Carson Thompson. A little over a year after last week’s track had its run at the top of the charts, another version of the same song appeared on the airwaves and started climbing up the top 40. While the current Wickipedia listing characterizes this version as easy listening, it didn’t strike me that way when I was hearing it back in early ’69, particularly with its forceful dynamics and powerful stacked vocals, and I still don’t hear it as easy listening, even though it made that chart as well as the others. I especially liked the way this group took such a well-known cut and rearranged it so that it sounded totally different and yet quite recognizable. During my HS days, I got most of my singles from my best friend’s younger brother, who sold me his 45s for a quarter each when he got tired of hearing them, but for this one, I actually put out the 69 cents plus tax to get it new at Kmart, and had it spinning on the turntable that same evening. A few week earlier, I bought one other single new at Kmart, that being Hey Jude (Song 23), and while I had hoped to get through the line quickly without my parents noticing that I was buying one of those devilish rock and roll records, my father came up to me as I waited in line, asking me if I knew the whereabouts of my younger brother. I felt like I’d just gotten caught, and I expected to hear him say, “What are you buying?” Instead, he took off in search of his youngest son, and I breathed a sigh of relief. When I bought this single a few weeks later, I made it through the check-out without the parents noticing my purchase, and I kept it artfully hidden on the journey back to the house, so that time around, I added another 45 to the collection without my family knowing that I had done so.