Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCXXXIX--Ry Cooder: I Think It's Going to Work Out Fine

For fuck's sake, who'd have ever guessed--a Friday Night Jukebox post that actually appears on a fucking Friday night!

 I don't feature instrumentals on Friday Night Jukebox too often, but this week's tune is one of the best rock and roll has ever had to offer, and sadly, it isn't nearly as well known as it should be (though the Ike and Tina Turner song it covers is considerably more well known...if you're of a certain age).  It's also proof that at one time Rolling Stone magazine had some sway over my musical tastes--the album the song came from I bought solely based on their review proclaiming it one of the best albums of..gulp...1979....

In an historic first for FNJ, this week's featured artist is the only one (and it isn't likely to be repeated) whose first name is Ryland.  Ry Cooder was born in Los Angeles in 1947, began playing music professionally in his teens, and released his last album just three short years ago in 2018.  Along the way he became known as one of the greatest guitar players of all-time (#8 on Rolling Stone's top 100 in 2003; #32 on Gibson--of guitar making fame--list of 2010).  Cooder has become a composer of soundtracks extraordinaire, with over 17 for his career.  He has 59 listings on LPs as a guest musician, as well as 19 collaborative efforts (including Buena Vista Social Club which brought Cuban music back into the spotlight, won a Grammy, as well as leading to an Academy Award nominated documentary).  For his solo career, Cooder has released seventeen solo studio albums, and seven singles.  He's also won six Grammy Awards.  And to put a cherry on the top of his illustrious body of work, Cooder is an unabashed Democrat who has supported numerous liberal causes, including civil rights, immigration, and income inequality to name but a few.

Fun Fact:  As noted above, this week's song is a cover of an Ike and Tina Turner song from 1961 which was entitled "It's Gonna Work Out Fine."  It reached #4 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for a Grammy Award.  I'd never heard it before doing my half-assed research this week, but would highly recommend it (it can be found here)--it's considerably (and I do mean considerably) more sultry that Cooder's more laid back instrumental, but well worth the listen.

"I Think It's Going to Work Out Fine" was released in 1979 on Cooder's stellar (and wonderfully entitled) LP, Bop Till You Drop.  The song was not released as a single, and the album reached a tragically low chart position of #62.

Imagine a movie where a protagonist goes through a long and protracted struggle to reach an end result, and at the end, while the end result may not have been exactly what our hero was hoping for, it worked out well enough.  The song that could be playing while he's walking into the setting sun would be "I Think It's Going to Work Out Fine."  Every time I hear it, oddly enough, the song sounds to me as if yes, indeed, everything is going to work out fine.  While Cooder plays the bulk of the guitar parts (and plays them exquisitely), he and David Lindley play off one another throughout and if you're a guitar aficionado like me it's pure six string heaven.  I can guarantee you that if when I was ten I'd chosen guitar lessons instead of Little League (still one of the worst decisions of my life), this is a song I'd either be playing or still trying to learn, even now, forty-two years later.  If joy was a song instead of a word, this is what it would sound like.

Lyric Sheet:  Obviously an instrumental, but lyrics inserted for anyone interested in Ike and Tina's version...

Enjoy:

You Have a Choice:  Pass a Voting Rights Bill, or Welcome Fascism to America

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCXLVI--Mark Knopfler: True Love Will Never Fade

Another week, another song discovered by listening to Pandora's folk channel when I worked at the thrift shop....

I wrote about Mark Knopfler's song "Sultans of Swing" with Dire Straits way back when, so there's little need to rehash their history, though I can now add that they have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Knopfler has grown embarrassed through the years by the mega success of Dire Straits and was not present at the band's induction ceremony and has said it is very unlikely the band will ever reunite).  Since his time with Dire Straits came to an end, Knopfler has kept busy with a solo career that now features ten studio albums, a few more soundtrack albums, a couple of collaborative affairs with Emmylou Harris, and some production efforts.  While (much to Knopfler's relief, I'm sure) his solo career has not seen the frenzy that his stint with Dire Straits had, all but two of his albums have hit the top ten in his native U.K. (and the two that didn't were top 20), and he's had three of his solo efforts hit the top 20 of the Billboard 200 here in the States.  And through it all, the man still plays one hell of a guitar...

"True Love Will Never Fade" was released in 2007 on Knopfler's album Kill to Get Crimson.  It was released as a single in Europe without much commercial success, but was not released in the U.S.  The album reached #9 on the U.K. charts and #26 here in America.

Fans of Friday Night Jukebox (both of you) know that I really enjoy listening to acoustic guitar, so they wouldn't be surprised that the first time I heard "True Love Will Never Fade" it took all of two seconds after hearing the opening acoustic guitar licks for me to make a beeline to the office computer at the thrift shop so I could find out who was behind this piece of music.  I've actually put this write-up off for a bit because I wanted to make sure I did this song justice (which I probably won't, but what the hell, someday I'm bound to "fail better" as Samuel Beckett has suggested), because it's truly one of the best songs I've heard this century.  Knopfler weaves the tale of an aging  tattoo artist remembering a tattoo he put on a woman once (while I think the tattoo artist and the woman had a romance, I'm not entirely sure she isn't just a beautiful memory of one of his customers).  The song has a poignant acceptance of the hands we are dealt in life, and reminded me of some of the excellent work Lou Reed, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen did in their later years, where the passion was just as rich as when they were younger, but much more measured.  There's a quiet dignity to the portrait that Knopfler creates, and his understated vocals and the bands thoughtful playing makes for a mini masterpiece that truth be told, I enjoy more with each listen and is another reason I put off this post--so I could listen to it just a few more times.

Lyric Sheet:  "These days I get to where I'm going/Make it there eventually/Follow the trail of breadcrumbs/To where I'm meant to be..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCXIV--Pat Metheny: Last Train Home

One of the pitfalls, for my wife and youngest son, of me writing a weekly post about a particular song is that I listen to said song several times before writing the post and usually have the song running through my head most of that week--and I'm one of those people who if he's got a song in his head, he's gonna be singing it.  Only this week, it's an instrumental...so I've spent the last few days just humming the hell out of it...

Pat Metheny grew up in Lee's Summit, Missouri in a musical family.  He saw the Beatles on TV in 1964 and shortly thereafter bought his first guitar.  He discovered Miles Davis and Wes Montgomery over the next couple of years and began to devote himself full time to playing the guitar, specializing in Jazz.  He first appeared on a record (Jaco Pastorius) in 1974 at the ripe age of 20, and released his first album in 1976.  Since then, he's released 46 (you read that right, 46) more LPs, had three of them go gold, had a number of #1 albums on the Jazz charts, and won 20 Grammys.  Metheny is the only artist in the history of the Grammys to win in ten different categories.  He's also appeared on numerous recordings by other Jazz artists as well as quite a few pop ones (James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Hornsby, to name a few).  Metheny has toured the world over, has many guitarist of the year nods from numerous guitar magazines, and been elected into the Missouri Music Hall of Fame. 

Fun Fact:  Metheny plays a custom made Pikasso 1-which is a forty-two string guitar.  It was made by master Canadian luthier (fancy term for guitar maker) Linda Manzer...and how many of you were expecting the Canadian master to be a man?

In something of an oddity in what used to be a pop-centric music culture, "Last Train Home" was released as a single in 1987 (with a video, which is what led me to the song on another in a long line of late night VH-1 viewings).  Unfortunately it never cracked the Billboard Hot 100.  The album it was released on, Still Life (Talking), was the first of Metheny's career to go gold.

In an effort to keep my coolness quotient well below freezing, I'll have to admit that I've never been much of a Jazz fan--for whatever reason it's just never captured my fancy.  But as in every other genre of music, whether a fan or not, every now and again one finds a diamond in the rough--and "Last Train Home" is just such a gem.  It's a bit hard to write about an instrumental--obviously I can note Metheny's guitar playing, and there's Lyle Mays piano, or the wordless backing vocals.  In the end, though, what really makes the song great is the fact that it sounds like the last train home.  And it's not just the chugging sound Paul Wertico elicits from his drums and cymbals--there's a resignation to it, to a time when not everyone owned a car and would take a train home at the end of the day and stare blankly into the scenery as it passed with one's briefcase an arm's length away.  Or at least as I imagine it might--I've never ridden a train in my life, other than the kiddie one at the zoo.  Anyhoo, it's a lovely piece of music that I'll be hum, hum, humming for the next few days.

Lyric Sheet:  Not happening...unless you count the "yea-ahs" in the thirty seconds or so of wordless backing vocals.

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Johnny B. Gone

Right about the time I was discovering there was just a little more to rock and roll than top 40 radio and beginning to dig a little bit into its history, my father introduced me to one Chuck Berry.  My father had no qualms with Elvis Presley, but, to him, Chuck Berry was the shit--he was an exciting guitar player, he bopped along to his duck walk, and he projected that rock and roll aura that had set up its permanent residence in Coolsville.

Chuck Berry died today at the age of 90, and I'm not sure how many people realize what a rock and roll icon he was.  He was listed as the fifth greatest rock artist of all-time by Rolling Stone, he was among the first artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the rock and roll highway is literally littered with Chuck Berry singles, and it's impossible to overstate the precedent he set for every guitar hero to come, from Eric Clapton to Jack White, and from Jimi Hendrix to Eddie Van Halen.

And not only that, he's the only rock and roll artist to have his music sent out upon a space ship (Voyager) in the hope that alien civilizations, should they exist, be also able to marvel at the wonder that was Chuck Berry.

And for the record, yes, yes he could play a guitar just like a ringing a bell....

Godspeed, Mr. Berry, godspeed.

They don't get much better than this one:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. XLVII--Dire Straits: Sultans of Swing

I was driving a 1973 Gran Torino to class in 1979 when a song I'd never heard before came on the radio and after listening for a bit I thought, "Holy shit--Dylan's got his mojo back!"  After listening a bit more, though,  I realized I was wrong--the guitars were a bit too jazzy and the vocals not quite harsh enough--but I was happy when at its end the DJ announced that the song was "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits.  After my classes had ended for the day I drove straight to the mall and picked up their first album, appropriately titled Dire Straits, at Target for $4.99.

"Sultans of Swing" would go to to reach #4 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100 and would mark the start of one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and 1990s.  Dire Straits would go on to sell millions of albums worldwide, have #1 hits ("Money for Nothing"), win Grammy Awards, perform on sold out tours, and songwriter/lead guitarist Mark Knopfler would eventually compose numerous movie soundtracks and become renowned for his guitar virtuosity.  And for me, they also mark the end of discovering bands on the radio--it wasn't long after I'd discovered "Sultans of Swing" that I went to work managing a record store, and not much after that MTV came along and changed radio forever.  Alas...

I'm not sure that a song about a talented but little heard jazz band would could get airplay in this day and age, but in the late '70s it sure could.  Knopfler's deadpan vocals are Dylanesque as he weaves his way through a night at an empty nightclub where the Sultans of Swing (an actual band that Knopfler watched one night) are playing.  Lyrically the song is nuanced but not arty, and allows Knopfler to make good use of inflections and pregnant pauses that help to paint a picture of a rainy night in London.  And from beginning to end there is a wondrous guitar--two guitar solos!--that reminds us that even though no one's listening to the Sultans of Swing the players don't care as long as they're making their instruments sing together.  It's all about the music....

Fun factoid:  Not only do Mark Knopfler and I share a first name, but we both also pick our guitar strings with our thumb--he with great grace and elan, and me with utter mediocrity.

And as the man at the microphone says. "Thank you, goodnight, now it's time to go home...."

Enjoy:

Peace,
emaycee