Song 550: This week on the playlist you can hear Back Stabbers by The O'Jays, written by Leon Huff, Gene McFadden and John Whitehead, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This sparkler quickly lit up the airwaves when it arrived in the dog days of the summer of 1972, during an era when my female companion and I resided in an apartment in Music City, USA (AKA Nashville, TN) which we shared with my childhood best friend, who found that place while serving in the U.S. military nearby. At that point, just as I neared my 21st birthday, I already had seen plenty of guys who smile in your face all the time they want to take your place. I understood the personal romantic angle, and the appeal of that perspective, but though I might have met a couple of those Back Stabbers, the phrase always resonated more for me as a description of the grifter jerks who want to get their hands on your wallet, not your lover's waistline. As I put it in my anthem Same Old Change, which appears on my recent CD release Elder Statesman, They say they respect the working man as they stab him in the back. Clicking on the track title will take you to the Amazon page where you can get the MP3 of it, clicking on the CD title will take you to the Amazon page where you can get a copy of that, and clicking on Same Old Change here will take you to the lyric page on my website where you can read the words of that ramble.
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