Don’t Caress My Appendage

 Song 634: This week on the playlist you can hear Don't You Feel My Leg (Don't You Make Me High) by Maria Muldaur, written by Blue Lu Barker, Danny Barker and J. Mayo Williams, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this wild ride caught my ears in the late summer of 1973, I truly relished the direction where the lyrics took my imagination. Inspired by the attractive images of Maria that adorned her 33, as a young man in my early 20s, I could easily picture myself trying to do what she was melodically attempting to forbid, particularly since I had, starting in my teenage years, leaned towards the legs vs. breasts side of the sensual divide - the nylon-enhanced limbs of my female HS classmates had always grabbed my eyes much more than their chest growths. Interestingly enough, I just found out that this gem first hit the blues charts in 1938, but learning that didn't surprise me - the blues singers of that era could, and often did, mouth erotic phrases that white audiences had no permission to hear at the time. Of course, I can now openly admit that back in my elevated-testosterone phase, if I did get to feel her leg, then, as she correctly asserts, I would want to feel her thigh, and then I'd wanna move up high. If I did say I'd take her out and buy her gin and wine, I would have had something different on my mind, and while I could have told her we'd have a lovely time, perhaps she might not have felt the same way about it.

Thoughts of Departure

Song 633: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's striking ballad Mind to Leave comes from one of my Berkeley cohorts Carol Denney, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Back in the fall of 1978, not long after I discovered the La Val's Pizza singer/songwriter circle that I soon joined, I got to hear Carol do a set, and I still remember some of the songs I heard that night, though she did not perform this one then. I quickly became a fan of Carol's music, as well as a few other members of the group, including Jim Bruno and Bob Nichols, and over the next few years, I would get to hear each of them pioneer a new composition at the pizza place. I think I got to hear Ms. Denney introduce this ramble one night there shortly after a visit to her family in L.A. She had grown up in southern CA, and we, her northern CA creative colleagues, could easily comprehend her having a Mind to Leave her home town. However, the lyric also takes a more disturbing direction. I had previously heard Carol unveil another remarkable ride that seemed to suggest experiencing depression, and though I didn't know much about the condition at the time, I did sense that it could give someone a Mind to Leave this life. For that reason, I had avoided adding this gem to the list until now, because I really don't want Carol to leave this life until necessary. She may have lost a lot of friends in some way, but when she asserts I'm not as entertaining, I strongly disagree with that line. On a side note, by the early years of the new millennium, I came to understand the basics of brain chemical imbalances that trigger disorders like depression, and I wrote a book called Expecting the Broken Brain to Do Mental Pushups - I hope to have my more-enlightened 2nd edition finished and released in a few months. 

Beneath the Wooden Promenade

 Song 632: This week the playlist comes around to Under the Boardwalk by The Drifters, written by Kenny Young and Arthur Resnick, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This marks the first appearance of The Drifters among this grouping. When their mover started jumping across the airwaves a few months after the Fab Four rocked my world, it didn't really get my attention very much. It did seem to grab other folks, though, with this rendition and other variants by The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys climbing the charts. At first I didn't understand the lyrical ramble and I thought it might contain some clever word-play reference to a certain Monopoly property. Later, as a young adult, I came to realize that the game card I had imagined when hearing this piece might very well have gotten inspired by the physical beach adornment pictured in the track's title and chorus line. As the 1970s unfolded and the Chicago area radio stations began a 1950s revival, they also featured this gem quite often, to the point that my female companion at the time remarked one day that she didn't care to hear it again because she had just heard it not long before, and I strongly agreed with her. However, a decade later, as I savored residing in the pleasant warmer climate of Berkeley, CA, I noticed that whenever this hit got played, I relished it much more than I previously had. Four weeks ago, we rode On a Carousel (Song 628), and when you hear the happy sound of a carousel, sometimes you can almost taste the hot dogs and french fries they sell. Whether in or out of the sun, we still have a couple more warm weeks in store, and we'll be havin' some fun.

Moving the Contour

 Song 631: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Draggin' the Line by Tommy James and the Shondells, written by Tommy James and Bob King, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I had spent much of the summer of 1971 acting as a summer missionary for the Southern Baptist Church in an outreach center in Atlanta, GA, and then around mid-August I headed back to my parents' place in upstate NY for a short visit before returning to my college apartment in Evanston, IL. I really relished the fresh TJ hit topping the charts then, and I have a memory of hearing it as I walked along a rural road a couple of miles from my childhood home. I don't recall if I had a transistor radio with me that played the tune, if I walked with a friend who had one, or if the sound came from one of the few nearby houses, but ever since that experience I have associated that country road area with this melodic excursion. Of course, that connection makes sense when you imagine Lovin' the free and feelin' spirit of hugging a tree, when you get near it. On a different note, during that era 5 decades ago, a lot of average folks were Makin' a livin' the old, hard way, Takin' and givin' by day by day, whereas these days, far too many of the working class are not gettin' the good sign, no matter how they try.