He's got the whole world in his hands, he's got the whole wide world in his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands...and I'm (five days) late again....
My introduction to this week's tune came from an album called Rhythm Country and Blues (no Wikipedia entry) which was an album that paired country artists with R& B artists, singing duets of well-known songs (it was actually a hell of a record from beginning to end). One of those songs was a collaboration by country great Conway Twitty and Sam Moore of Sam and Dave fame that was just this side of wondrous and made me check out the original. Amazingly enough, it was even better than that first version I heard....
Brook Benton was born in Lugoff, South Carolina in 1931 and got his start in music singing in his father's choir. In 1948, at the ripe old age of seventeen, he headed to New York City where he joined three different groups before being persuaded to go solo. Benton would have his first hit in 1959, and over the course of the next twelve years would have many more. For his career, Benton released thirty-two albums (with nine placing on the Billboard 200, and the highest charting reaching #27), and eighty-seven singles (with eight of those hitting the top ten, and a #2 as his best charting song). As I did my half-assed research, I was amazed to find that an artist I knew one song by had recorded himself or wrote for other musicians almost fifty songs that reached the Billboard Hot 100. That's a hell of a career! Sadly, Benton contracted spinal meningitis in 1988 and soon thereafter his weakened body would succumb to pneumonia at the much too young age of fifty-six.
"Rainy Night in Georgia" was the first single from his 1969 album, the rather currently entitled Brook Benton Today (and another with no Wikipedia entry....). The single would reach #4 (with a bullet!) on the Hot 100 while the album would hit a career best #27. The song would also land at #498 on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of the 500 best songs of all-time. And just for the hell of it, the Conway Twitty/Sam Moore version made it to #33 on the Canadian Adult Contemporary chart--so many cool kids in the Great White North!
Fun Fact: Tony Joe White, who wrote "Rainy Night in Georgia" (and whose name I knew musically in passing), also had a long and successful career, releasing forty-two albums over the course of his fifty-one-years as a musician. Which just goes to show that no matter how much I know about music, there's even more that I don't know.
Many years ago, I was working a rainy Friday night in a Michigan spring (cold and miserable) while I was still with Kmart, and it was one of the worst nights of work I'd ever had. I hadn't been in Michigan or the store for very long, and my boss (who I wasn't that fond of) was supposed to be running the store for his one night shift a week, but he was content to sit in his office and stare at the walls and make me take care of all the evening's problems. It happened to be the anniversary of my father's death, and to make matters worse, a woman I was very fond of had just told me she was not interested in pursuing a relationship any further than our one date. I really just wanted to find a hole to crawl into and to not come out until the sun was shining. As was, I had to settle for chain smoking until it was time to go home. It was utterly miserable outside, but in the back corner of the store's stockroom, we had a metal ladder that led to a platform that led to a set of stairs that gave access to our roof. Fortunately, it was hidden by a lot a pipes and wiring (by that time smoking in the store was verboten), and I spent most of the night sitting on one of the metal stairs up there smoking, listening to the rain splatter on the roof, climbing up and down the ladder every time I was paged, and feeling lost and miserable and alone. I don't ever remember a night where I was happier to get home. And that my loyal readers (all three of you), is what "A Rainy Night in Georgia" is about. White's lyrics are nothing short of magical, capturing all the sights and sounds of being in a strange town on a rainy night when you're all alone and lonely. Benton's vocals are a revelation, capturing all the loneliness and desperation of being in a strange town on a rainy night when you're all alone and lonely. A wonderful song--this one touches you right down to your very soul.
Lyric Sheet: "How many times I wondered/It still comes out the same/No matter how you look at it or think of it/It's life and you just got to play the game..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump
Peace,
emaycee
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