While I was familiar, due to both of our respective ages and me being a child of the seventies, with this week's tune, it wasn't until I was working at the thrift shop in the mid twenty-teens that I became a big fan of it. Not enough of a fan, mind you, to actually get the title right--in the book where I log the tunes to be featured each week I had written "Leon Russell--High Wire" for this week. Oops--though in fairness a tightrope and a high wire are synonymous. Such are the joys of aging....
Leon Russell (birth name Claude Russell Bridges) was born in Lawton, Oklahoma in 1942 and spent the next seventy-four years of his life building a hellacious, yet quiet (at least to me), musical career. His bio is far too long to cover in a paragraph, but to give you an idea, he had 408 albums on which he received a credit, with 251 of those being artistic (piano, guitar, vocals, etc.), 282 writing credits, and forty-five production credits. He worked with artists from Gary Lewis and the Playboys (great and underrated band) to the Rolling Stones, and as varied as Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Willie Nelson. He won two Grammy Awards, and in 2012 was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. For his career, Russell released forty albums (including a few as his Country and Western alter ego Hank Wilson), fourteen compilation albums, and twenty-two singles. He also gets a tip of the cap from me because his record label, Shelter Records, signed Tom Petty to his first record deal when he was with his first band, Mudcrutch. Sadly, Russell passed away in his sleep in 2016 from complications from heart surgery.
Fun Fact #1: Russell's song "A Song for You" has been covered by over 200 artists, and his tune "This Masquerade" has been covered by over seventy-five. Both of which most assuredly helped Russell to have a long and nontraditional career on his terms.
Fun Fact #2: While this is Russell's first appearance as a solo artist on Friday Night Jukebox, he has already been mentioned in two previous posts. He co-wrote the Carpenters' hit "Superstar" (Vol. CLI), and it was his version of Danny O'Keefe's "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" (Vol. CCCXLIII) that led to my interest in that cut. Oh, the things you'll learn on Friday Night Jukebox!
"Tight Rope" was the first single released from Russell's seminal 1972 album, Carney. Both works would go on to be the highest charting of Russell's solo career, with the song peaking at #11 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, and the LP reaching all the way to #2 on the Billboard 200.
It would have been easy for "Tight Rope" to become a novelty hit, with its circus theme and music reminiscent of a calliope, but it's a testament to Russell's talent that the song does not--or even come close. With his lyrics that are a cut above the usual Top Forty fare, his offbeat vocal delivery (that boasts a strange urgency), and the piano that manages to capture not only the atmosphere of a circus but also the balancing act that is so often done in love relationships (the song's storyline), Russell weaves an extraordinary song about the hope and fears of being in love. I would be remiss if I didn't point out the three pauses in the song where Russell uses three drumbeats--almost like an ellipsis--to set us up for what's coming next. Much like last week's tune, "Tight Rope" gets nothing but better with each listen, and that's certainly a sign of a song that goes above and beyond for our listening enjoyment.
Lyric Sheet: "I'm up on the tightrope/One side's hate and one is hope/But the top hat on my head is all you see..."
Enjoy:
Republicans = Nazis
Peace,
emaycee
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