Tom T. Hall is one of the great underrated country songwriters--and a true Renaissance man. His career has spanned five decades, and in that time he has released 27 albums, numerous novels, and a number of short stories (his nickname is "The Storyteller"). He's also been known to sing and play the guitar a little, too.
In 1964 Hall moved to Nashville with $46 and a guitar (good luck trying that in this day and age), and within months already had hit singles. His big break came in 1968 when Jeannie C. Riley recorded his song "Harper Valley PTA"--the song would go on to to sell six million copies and Riley became the first woman to ever top both the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Country Singles Chart. And Tom T. Hall parlayed it into a fifty year career.
While "That's How I Got to Memphis" won't show up on many greatest country songs of all time lists, for my money it's certainly worthy of the top ten. I first heard the song as a cover version by Rosanne Cash (killer rendition, too, featuring her Daddy at the end), and actually discovered Hall's version many years later (Bobby Bare had a #3 hit--with a bullet!--on the country charts with it in 1970). Of all the versions I've heard (there are many covers--the Avett Brothers do a nice one, too), I like Hall's best, for one, because it's the full length song, and for two, because sometimes songwriters have a better feel for their own material than other singers do.
Released on his first album, The Ballad of Forty Dollars, "That's How I Got to Memphis" is a song about love lost and the sometimes crazy ways the heart reacts--like trek to Memphis in search of the woman who broke it . Unlike far too many such singles, "Memphis" never gets too maudlin or sappy--the lyrics are as straightforward as the narrator. It's delivered as a monologue to a friend (or fellow bar patron), all the while with the unstated hope that the friend truly understands the ways of the heart. The music is simple, a nice melancholy background to the vocals of a very sorrowful man. All in all, it's a fine addition to the pantheon of songs devoted to the broken heart--of which there will most likely be an endless supply.
Lyric sheet: "I haven't eaten a bite/Or slept for three days and nights/That's how I got to Memphis..."
Sidenote: My oldest son gave me a whale of a Father's Day Gift, creating a Spotify playlist of all the Friday Night Jukebox featured songs--anyone who may be interested can find it here.
Am I the only one who noticed that in addition to having the moral high ground, the John Lewis led sit-in over gun control yesterday in the House of Representatives absolutely schooled republicans in what it means to be part of a political party?
While Democrats were literally fighting to save American lives, republicans led by Paul Ryan were puckering their lips to place them on Wall Street's ass. It was like watching the Avengers do battle with the Three Stooges.
And after yesterday's doings in the House, it should be perfectly obvious to most Americans that the Democratic Party is the most fit to govern.
If the best the republican party can offer this November is pairing a greedy, misogynistic racist with a hilljack dunce from Alabama, we just might have a shot at taking back the House.
...turns out it was real and it was the republicans never ending War on Workers.
Did you know that since 2003 thirty states with republican controlled legislatures have passed laws that significantly weakened your ability to collect Workers' Compensation for injuries sustained from work? And that all of it just takes the financial responsibility away from corporations and puts it on the back of American taxpayers? Never mind that the corporations are at fault--we have to foot the bill for their ineptitude.
Did you also know that in 2014 almost 4700 Americans died in work related accidents? And that the republican party will stop at absolutely nothing to ensure that workers' families get nothing from corporate incompetence? Republicans have cut funding for OSHA to the bone and the wives and children of dead workers are paying the price. You know who isn't paying a price for killing its workers? Corporations.
These are just two more in a long line of reasons that Democrats should be fighting for candidates from school boards to the Presidency this fall--it's not enough for republicans that we're underpaid and overworked, they also want corporations to be able to maim and kill us with impunity.
Sunday marks the official beginning of summer, so naturally my thoughts turn to...great songs about summer...which brings us to a little ditty entitled, appropriately enough, "Summer" by War for this week's Jukebox feature.
If you're of a certain age (a polite way of saying "old"), you can remember when record labels would add a new track to Greatest Hits packages as a way of suckering people into buying the Greatest Hits album--if you were a big enough fan you'd already have all the hits but you absolutely had to have that new single. "Summer" was just such a single--though unlike many such songs, it was actually worth the price.
War, much like last week's band The Guess Who, had a great run from the early 70's through the mid 70's--it would have been hard to get through any of those years without thee or four War singles making the charts and getting plenty of airplay. Originally, known as Eric Burdon (of Animals and "The House of the Rising Sun" fame) and War (until Burdon's departure in 1970), the band formed in 1969 and was a multi-ethnic (somewhat novel for the time) band that featured a plethora of musical styles--jazz, funk, rock, reggae, R & B, and Latin. Their album The World Is a Ghettowas the best selling LP of 1973. War is still together and touring, though only one of the original members is still playing (sadly, two of the original members have passed). Also like The Guess Who, their Greatest Hits package is a delight to listen to even these so many years later--chock full of great songs with lots of great grooves.
Released in 1976, "Summer" was the last hit single War would have, reaching #7 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100. Amazingly enough, the song is a tribute to that most wonderful time of the year--no, not fucking Christmas: summer. Though the lyrics are somewhat dated (they're not somewhat dated, they're tremendously dated) with references to listening to 8-Tracks (again, of a certain age) and CB radios (ditto), the song is still an infectious ode to all the things we love to do when the weather is warm and the sky is blue. Best of all, it's sung and performed in a hazy lazy groove reminiscent of summer itself, with some wonderful four part harmonies on the chorus. All in all, if you're a fan of summer (count me in) or summer songs (ditto), War's tribute to long days and short nights is a winner.
Truer words: "Yes it's summer/My time of year...."
Regular readers will know that I'm not a big fan of forced abritration--clauses that require both workers and consumers to go to arbitration to settle disputes with employers and companies we do business with, rather than file class action lawsuits. It's a rigged game and corporations do much better than the little guys under arbitration .
Well, this week the Seventh Circuit ruled that employees can sue their employers in class action lawsuits, even if said employers forced their employees to to sign away such a right.
Somebody done fucked up--the little guys won....
While the ruling is certain to be subject to appeals, with the Supreme Court currently at a 4-4 split (if tied the ruling automatically defers to the lower court outcome) and more than likely a Democrat will be nominating that all important fifth vote, it might be just another nail in the coffin of forced arbitration.
And with the CFPB working diligently to end all consumer forced arbitration, we could soon be saying buh-bye to a heinous business practice.
According to a new study, the average American worker makes $37,000 a year, while the average CEO makes $12.4 million.
Anyone out there who thinks the person running the company you work for is worth 335 times a year what you are?
I know I've worked for some pretty shitty companies, but I'd be hard pressed to name an executive I've worked for who was worth even twice what I made, let alone 335 times.
I have to admit I was kind of on the fence about Elizabeth Warren as Hillary Clinton's VP pick--but after a week of Tim Kaine (Tim fucking Kaine? what the fuck?) rumors, watching Warren attack Trump, and reading this piece by brooklynbadboy, I'm all in. She's truly the best candidate we have--and odds are good her voice for average Americans will be amplified even more as the second most powerful person in the world.
And can you imagine the fire in the bellies of the Democratic base watching her and Clinton raise triumphant arms on the stage in Philadelphia next month?
At a religious meeting this week, Georgia Senator Frank Perdue asked the attendees to pray to President Obama's death, citing Psalm 109 which asks to "let his days be few" and makes reference to leaving a man's wife a widow and his children without a father.
Aside from Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama may be the most decent man to hold the office of the Presidency in my lifetime. He genuinely loves his family, he genuinely loves his fellow Americans, and he's turned the other cheek so many times after gutless and pathetic republican comment after gutless and pathetic republican comment that he's earned a box seat in heaven after his days (hopefully many, many years from now) on this earth are done.
Frank Perdue, on the other hand, is a gutless and pathetic man who is not fit to hold office in our Senate, not fit to vote on legislation, and frankly, isn't worthy of shoveling shit with a spoon.
Perdue later tried to pass it off as an attempt at humor.
Every now and again in rock and roll's history, a "Peace! Love! Dope!" song comes along that isn't a schmaltzy soul-sapping piece of drivel like say, "We Are the World." And "Share the Land" by The Guess Who is just such a song.
Fun fact: In 1965, Chad Allan and the Expressions had a number one hit in Canada (#22 U.S.) with a cover version of "Shakin' All Over." In a desperate attempt to attach some sort of mystique to the single, the label released the decidedly British Beat song as being by "Guess Who?" to attract folks who might think it secretly done by one of the British Invasion artists. Alas, the name stuck and the band became forever known as The Guess Who.
Formed in 1959 in Winnipeg, Manitoba (that hotbed of rock and roll) The Guess Who would go through numerous incarnations before finding success in the late 60's. They had a nice run through the mid 70's, with several hit singles (most notably their only number one hit in the U.S., "American Woman," later one of the five worst cover versions in rock and roll history by Lenny Kravitz). After 1975, they pretty much disappeared, though various members continued touring under The Guess Who moniker. Lead singer Burton Cummings would go on to have some solo success, and lead guitarist Randy Bachman would go onto much similar single success with Bachman Turner Overdrive. While I would never confuse The Guess Who with the great bands of rock and roll (though they are in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame!), I still put on their Best Of LP and enjoy the living shit out of it--ain't nothing wrong with a great singles band. And The Guess Who had a bunch of great ones.
And none more so than "Share the Land" a paean to the communal spirit of the 60's (which somehow brought us to where we are today in the land of extreme income inequality--no one ever said it was going to be easy). Released in 1970 on their aptly named Share the Landalbum, the song would reach #10 (with a bullet!) on The Billboard Hot 100. The song is more or less a series of questions asking if you've done your part to make the world a better place, before breaking into the catchy as all hell chorus which reminds you that one day we're all going to live in harmony. Throughout there's wonderful gospelesque backing vocals echoing Burton Cummings heartfelt singing. The creme de la creme, though, is the song's closing, which is Cummings wailing a scat like rap of lots of shiny happy thoughts, with all of us holding hands down by the river. Corny drivel? You bet--but it's cool corny drivel from some boys from the Great White North. Good enough for me....
Lyric sheet: "Every day coming sunshine, everyday, everybody laughin'...."
It's not surprising that so many have piled on Paul Ryan for forgoing his "principles" in deciding to endorse Donald Trump--Trump is a terrible candidate and it's in Democrats' best interests to tie every single republican they can to the man who will not be king. But what is surprising is the assumption that it was ever going to be any different.
Paul Ryan is all about Paul Ryan, and if he is to have any chance to be the republican nominee in 2024 (I figure he's smart enough not to challenge a sitting President, barring an unforeseen disaster), he has to have the republican base behind him and there's no way they would ever forget that he failed to endorse their chosen candidate. Ever.
In short, it was an unprincipled move by an unprincipled politician--unless that principle is spelled P-A-U-L-R-Y-A-N.
A few years back I wrote about how Hostess had used its bankruptcy proceeding to a) seriously enrich its executives, and b) destroy the union that made its products. So it was with a certain amount of glee that I noticed while grocery shopping this week that Hostess is recalling numerous products (710,000 packages to be exact) because they may have been contaminated with peanuts.
One can only wonder if this would have happened had Hostess had a work force that was paid a decent wage and actually gave a shit about its products--which may well result in countless lawsuits from those allergic to said peanuts.
Just another in a long line of examples that show how little Corporate America actually cares for Americans unless its to siphon off our tax dollars for Corporate Welfare.
With apologies to any who may have suffered physically because of Hostess' greed, Schadenfreude is sometimes a beautiful thing.
There have been many excellent tributes to Muhammad Ali since his death this past Friday, but I don't really think any of them can truly conjure how special he was. He was poetry in the boxing ring and courage personified outside of it. His braggadocio and humor toward his chosen career were traits previously unseen, and his determination and honesty in the career he had thrust upon him as an activist were an inspiration to the world.
Muhammad Ali was the first hero I ever had, and I can still picture the poster of him that hung on my bedroom wall when I was still a very young man. I will never forget crying my eyes out after his loss to Ken Norton in 1972, in which he boxed for six rounds with a broken jaw, and his chances for ever being heavyweight champ again appeared to be over--just as I'll never forget his stunning victory over George Foreman in 1974 and being probably the only kid in my conservative Indiana high school that had a smile on his face the next morning.
It wasn't until I was older that I understood what it had really meant for him to refuse to kill other human beings in a war (though I had fully witnessed the hatred that his actions brought upon him), and for a burgeoning young Liberal it was a courage of conviction that I strive to emulate to this day.
I don't ever remember crying at the death of any famous person before, but I cried when I heard that Muhammad Ali had died last Friday.
Answer: Each of them changed the way I would look at their individual art forms forever, taught me that art could transform you, and specifically that it could be epic and grandiloquent, violent and unexplainable, and hopeful yet ultimately triumphant (among many, many others).
When I first started Friday Night Jukebox, I thought about making it a mix of both albums and singles each week--but after researching the first one (for those with fuzzy memories, Crosby, Still's and Nash's "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"), I quickly realized an album would take a novel a week and I really don't have the time to write a novel a week. But I've still always wanted to do Born to Runnot only because, for better or worse, it's my favorite album of all time, but also because Bruce Springsteen as a music artist remains culturally relevant and has never stopped fighting the good fight these last forty-five some odd years since he first started with the Dylanesque Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.And since tomorrow's my fifty-seventh birthday, I get a free "Gee, Wasn't Music Really Great Back in the Day?" card and I'm going to use it on Born to Run.
In the interest of not turning this into a novel, we'll dispense with Springsteen's history (New Jersey, won every award and honor imaginable, lots of record sales, heroic concert tours, the true heir to Woody Guthrie, a uniquely and unabashedly American artist), and give a (hopefully) brief recap of the album's eight songs and the oh, so glorious thirty-nine minutes of joy they still give me to this day:
"Thunder Road"--I'm not sure there's a more quintessential Springsteen song than this one. It's got girls, cars, the shredded American dream, and yet despite it all, there's still a whole hell of a lot of hope on the horizon. Favorite line: "It's a town full of losers/And I'm pulling out of here to win..."
"Tenth Avenue Freeze-out"--Believe it or not, I wasn't exactly enamored with the album the first few times I heard it. He may have been on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week when both were still relevant (and which is what made me buy the album in the first place), but I thought the album was kind of dull. Except for this song--which stuck in my head and made me keep coming back for more and eventually very much made me a Springsteen and Born to Run fan for life. Favorite line: "And I'm all alone, I'm all alone/And kid you better get the picture/And I'm on my own, I'm on my own/And I can't go home..."
"Night"--While I would never say this was a bad song, it's the one on the album that's never really grabbed me. It fits well with the album's theme, but not a song you wait for when seeing him in concert.
"Backstreets"--Surprisingly, bar none, my favorite Springsteen song. "Born in the U.S.A." might be the best song he's ever written, but this is a close second. A tale of love lost (and if there's anything rock and roll does well it's tales of love lost), Springsteen absolutely fucking nails this one instrumentally (think power chords), vocally (complete abandon), and emotionally (you can feel the hurt) from beginning to end. Another in line of songs I can't sing along to without getting a lump in my throat. Favorite line: "Laying here in the dark/You're like an angel on my chest..."
"Born to Run"--Pete Townshend once said this song was the sound of "fucking triumph", and I'm certain I couldn't describe it any better. Felt by many to be Springsteen's best song (deservedly), it's exploding intro is instantly recognizable and never lets up from beginning to end. P-O-W-E-R--that would be "Born to Run." Favorite line: "The highways jammed with broken heroes/On a last chance power drive..."
"She's the One"--Another subject rock and roll does very well is the mystery of love, and how oftentimes someone we love gets in our heads and stays there forever--and that would be this song. Often sung and played in machine gun bursts, it's "Born to Run" without the American overtones. Probably the song I most underrate on the album. Favorite line: "But there's this angel in her eyes/That tells such desperate lies/And all you want to do is believe her..."
"Meeting Across the River"--A subtle masterpiece that is often forgotten among the power pop that makes up the rest of the album. Springsteen paints a sparse (lots of subtle piano and sax) picture of a failed New York'New Jersey hood going for that one score that'll impress the big boys and more importantly, his girl, but somehow you know, despite his fervent hopes, that it'll never happen. As good as any short story I've ever read and would make a hell of a movie. Favorite line: "Cause this guy don't dance/And the word's been passed this is our last chance..."
"Jungleland"--Sprinsteen's magnum opus, an eight minute opera about the characters and tragedies of New York City. It's a tour de force with rollicking highs and whispered lows. I've been listening to it for 42 years and I still find new moments in the song that amaze and delight me. A grand ending to a classic album. Favorite lyrics: "Outside the street's on fire/In a real death waltz/Between what's flash and what's fantasy/And the poets down here/Don't write nothing at all/They just stand back and let it all be..."
Beautiful.
Can I just mention that the cover, in black and white, with Springsteen holding his guitar,leaning on Clarence Clemons back and smiling, while Clemons wails on his sax may just be the coolest album cover in the history of rock and roll.
Apparently republicans are shitting themselves so much over their prospects in this year's Florida Senate race, that Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump are begging Marco Rubio to get back in the race and seek re-election for his current seat.
Rubio may very well be the best candidate republicans have in Florida, but it's hard to see where he's the best candidate for Floridians. I mean, Jesus, the guy literally hated being a Senator (missed more days than any other Senator), ran a brutally bad Presidential campaign (highlight: discussing penis sizes in a debate), and was proven time and again to be a reactionary lightweight (example: Rubio is one of about three Americans who think normalizing relations with Cuba is bad for the country).
It'd be one thing if the majority of Floridians were as fucking nuts as the majority of Texans, but they aren't.
Digby had a short piece yesterday in which she asked if Donald Trump, as a candidate, was the best we as a nation could do.
"We" didn't nominate Donald Trump to be the next President of the United States--republicans did. And yes, he may very well be, considering what the republican party has become, the best they can do.
For all the uproar over his candidacy among moderate republicans, Trump is a lot closer to their worldview than Hillary Clinton.
And though I doubt they'll see it, this November may very well show them just how out of touch with most Americans they really are.
The average American gets paid just enough so he doesn't quit his job, and works just hard enough so he doesn't get fired.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." Source unknown
Uncle emaycee Wants You For the Coming Class War! Enlist today....
Capitalism: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you can exploit his labor, become filthy rich, and keep the poor bastard living paycheck to paycheck for the rest of his life.
