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.