Regular readers (both of you) will remember that when I was a newbie in the music industry my store used to get loads of promotional singles from CBS Records and its subsidiaries, which my first wife and I would listen to for a fun evening in the days when we were dirt poor. This week's tune was on one of those promos, though it was actually a cover version of it by the late, great Leon Russell--which he took to #63 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles Chart, and also caused me to seek out the original version which is this week's featured song.
Danny O'Keefe was born in Spokane, Washington in 1943, and began his career with a band called Calliope in the late 60's before embarking on a solo career. Over the course of the last fifty some odd years, O'Keefe has had enough success to keep making music, and has had a number of his songs recorded by artists such as Jackson Browne, Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, and Jimmy Buffett. For his career he has released fifteen studio albums, with the latest having been released in 2017.
"Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" was released as a single in 1972, on his album simply entitled O'Keefe. The single reached #9 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album peaked at #87 on the Billboard 200.
Fun Fact: "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" has been covered by more than twenty artists...which goes a long way toward explaining how O'Keefe has made a living playing music for over fifty years.
Though O'Keefe had some success with his songwriting, "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" was the only one that was a hit--and it isn't hard to see why. O'Keefe weaves the tale of a man looking into the mirror and seeing his own mortality--while he's watching his friends leave town and settle down, he knows that he should but doesn't know if he can. O'Keefe's heartfelt vocals capture perfectly a man at a crossroads, and he's ably backed by a sparse musical accompaniment featuring a sweetly yearning slide guitar and a melancholy harmonica, both kept in rhythm by some rapturous bongos (second time in three weeks!). O'Keefe (as noted above, a native of Washington state) also wonderfully juxtaposes the protagonist stuck pondering his uncertain future as the rain falls in the Evergreen State, while everyone else is headed for the joyous sunshine of L.A. And it all concludes with about thirty seconds of "looking in the rear view mirror" whistling (always an emaycee fave). Overall, it's a fine piece of country folk--and another in a long line of instances where an artist managed to make three minutes of magic that lasted a lifetime for the rest of us.
Lyric Sheet: "I got my pills to ease the pain/Can't find a thing to ease the rain/I'd love to try and settle down/But everybody's leavin' town..."
Enjoy:
Taxing the Wealthy Is Good Politics for the Democratic Party
Peace,
emaycee
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