Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye - Sonny Rollins

Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye - Sonny Rollins

3:23

The Sound Of Sonny, 1957

Written by Cole Porter

Sonny Rollins died yesterday at the ripe old age of 95.  What better send-off for the great tenor saxophonist than this terrific Cole Porter song?  Legendary drummer Roy Haynes, nicknamed "Snap Crackle," provides a terrific high metallic counterpoint to Rollins' fluid and conversational sax lines.  I like it when jazz artists don't play too many ideas and let the melody speak up.  Rollins gives Porter's beautiful melody some respectful space.

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy - Lloyd Price

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy - Lloyd Price

1:51

single, 1952

Written by Lloyd Price

I didn't think all that much of Price's "Where You At?", but this song, which features Fats Domino on piano, is an R&B classic that popularized the New Orleans sound and helped shape rock and roll.  It was hugely influential.  Elvis covered it a few years later; Larry Williams' "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" is said to be a reworking of it.  Price's vocals are impassioned, and Domino's rolling piano lines give it a solid groove.  Legendary drummer Earl Palmer provides the backbone, and there's a smooth sax solo at the midpoint. 

Lo And Behold! [take 1] - Bob Dylan & the Band

Lo And Behold! [take 1] - Bob Dylan & the Band

2:53

The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete, 2014 (recorded 1967)

Written by Bob Dylan

This take is fairly similar to the second, the one that ended up on the 1975 Basement Tapes, except for a few very minor alterations in the lyric, some (presumably stoned) laughing by Dylan, and fancier organ trills by Garth Hudson.  What makes these takes fascinating is not radical reinvention but the glimpse they offer into Dylan's process.  It's raw music, songs discovering themselves, a blend of old-timey Americana, parody, and folk archeology.   Even the laughter (as on the false start on "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream") becomes part of the music’s charm.

Locomotion - Carole King

Locomotion - Carole King

2:30

Pearls: Songs Of Goffin & King, 1980

Written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King

This is the same song titled "The Loco-Motion," released first by Little Eva.  King's not the brash vocalist that Little Eva is (although, to my astonishment, I read that a couple of people allege that King is the actual singer of Eva's 1962 track, and I guess they do sound a little similar).  This is a more muted version, built on piano lines, with a cool '70s-style sax solo in the middle.  As everyone knows, the lyrics describe a dance ("Now that you can do it, let's make a chain, now / A chugga-chugga motion like a railroad train, now"), but contrary to popular opinion, the dance was inspired by the song, not the other way around.

Lord, Send Me An Angel - Blind Willie McTell

Lord, Send Me An Angel - Blind Willie McTell

2:55

single, 1933

Written by Blind Willie McTell

I really don't think there's anyone quite like Blind Willie McTell; there's no overstating his songwriting and influence.  In addition to being a great 12-string player with a unique voice, he wrote songs that mixed the profane, the lecherous, and the surreal in a brew sampled often in the later works of Bob Dylan.  This song begins with the narrator asking God for an angel; the best God can send him is a "teasin' brown."  Some verses boasting of his attractiveness to women follow, and then, in a whiplash-causing change of topic, some advice about not eating black hens' eggs, and: "My baby studyin' evil, and I'm studyin' evil too / I'm gonna hang round here to see what my babe gon' do."  He has three women after him!  "One is Atlanta yellow, another one Macon brown / But the Statesboro darkskin will turn your damper down."  So... now you're forewarned.

Luck Be a Lady - Willie Nelson

Luck Be a Lady - Willie Nelson

3:05

That's Life, 2021

Written by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon

I think it's fair to say that Frank Sinatra owns this song.  Willie doesn't exactly make it his own, but he has the skill of effortlessly inhabiting any song of any genre and making it fit.  As always, his vocal is impeccable, but I'm not sure I care for the arrangement.  It's brash and melodramatic, which is fine by itself, but juxtaposed with Willie's laid-pack singing style, it feels odd.  It's all Rat Pack-style big brass stabs and '60s-era orchestral stings, and the result is less intimate and authentic than I would have wished.

When I Write the Book - Rockpile

When I Write the Book - Rockpile

3:16

Seconds Of Pleasure, 1980

Written by Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner, Nick Lowe, and Terry Williams

You can hear the Elvis Costello influence in this catchy Britpop song about a broken heart, or maybe you can hear Nick Lowe's influence in Declan's music?  I think they influenced and supported each other; why didn't they ever form a songwriting tea?  They would have given Lennon/McCartney and Difford/Tilbrook a run for their money.  Over a muscular drum backbone and towering organ lines, Lowe sings his literate lines of love: "And when I write the book about my love / It will be about a man who's torn in half / About his hopes and ambitions wasted through the years / The pain will be written on every page in tears."

Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis? - The Gaslight Anthem

Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis? - The Gaslight Anthem

3:02

Señor And the Queen, 2008

Written by Brian Fallon, Alex Rosamilia, Alex Levine, and Benny Horowitz

Fallon's Springsteen fixation is on full display on this song, which is no bad thing.  If you're going to follow in the footsteps of others, you might as well pick one of rock's great storytellers. Like Springsteen, Fallon writes in vivid, cinematic fragments of highways, prayers, summer nights, desperate hopes, all charged with the yearning of a young man trapped between romance and economic frustration: "I need a Cadillac ride, I need a soft summer night / Say a prayer for my soul, Señorita." Fallon has always worn his influences on his sleeve, and other master songwriters he admires pop up too: "Between the minor chord fall and the fourth and the fifth / It's a broken Hallelujah and a pain in my fist" gives the song a Cohen-like scriptural gravitas.  Fallon provides his own backing vocals here, double-tracking "ba ba ba" on his main song, giving his urgent, gritty bellow even more power.

We're Breaking Up - Against Me!

We're Breaking Up - Against Me!

3:57

White Crosses, 2010

Written by Laura Jane Grace

This is a raw, powerful song of the end of a relationship.  There's no finger-pointing, no dredging up the past, no wishful thinking or even regret.  Just a bleak assessment of a relationship dead in the water.  "It's the same way that it's always been /  The dynamic to the relationship never changes / You can't get what you want from me, and I can't get what I need from you."  The narrator laments the paucity of language: "This is the only way I know how to say we're not in love anymore." Despite the grim picture painted at the end of Grace's throat-shredding, impassioned delivery, the real emotional punch ends it: "I'm not giving up on us."

Wendy - The Beach Boys

Wendy - The Beach Boys

2:22
All Summer Long, 1964

Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love

Despite being a casual fan of the Beach Boys all my life, more or less, I've never heard this one, which hit #44 on the Billboard Charts.  It's one of those songs in which the guy mopes because his girl left him.  "I never thought a guy could cry / 'Til you made it with another guy."  In the fine tradition of dumped dudes of any era, the narrator casts aspersions on Wendy's new beau: he's a liar, his future looks dim.  But as I've said before, there's never any accountability in these songs.  It's a decent early Boys track, though I find the high organ notes a little jarring.