Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CDXXXI--Leon Russell: Tight Rope

 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

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCXLIII--Danny O'Keefe: Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues

 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

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CLI--The Carpenters: Superstar

The journey that The Carpenters took as a band, from syrupy sweet, goodie-goodie, middle of the road musicians that none of the cool kids listened to, to a band that was covered (mostly excellently) by a number of alternative acts on If I Were a Carpenter (that many cool kids listened to) was most certainly not the road most traveled.  And I would be remiss if I didn't admit that I pretty much followed the same path with their music--in their heyday I thought their music was pure shit, but as I've aged, I've come to appreciate just how good of a pop band they really were.

Formed in the mid-sixties in Southern California, brother and sister Richard (piano and producing) and Karen (drums and lead vocals) Carpenter had a hell of a run until the early eighties.  Between 1969 and 1981 they would release ten albums (five of which went platinum), toured extensively (performing over a hundred per year between '71 and '75), and for most of those years, it was hard to go more than a month or two without a hit Carpenters single on Top 40 radio.  Over the course of their career, they would sell over 100 million records, win three Grammy Awards, have 3 #1 singles, five #2 singles, and numerous gold and platinum albums.  Sadly, as is often the case, fame took its toll--Richard developed an addiction to Quaaludes in the late seventies, and Karen suffered from anorexia nervosa, complications from which would lead to her death from heart failure at the far too young age of 33 in 1983.  As noted above, their legacy has grown exponentially through the years--Richard for his production skills (I'd always thought he was window dressing for his younger sister, but after doing my half-assed weekly research, I realized he was really the brains behind the group's success), and Karen for her other worldly vocals.  Petitions have been started to get the band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but supposedly they're not rock and roll enough for the Hall--as compared to those balls out rock and rollers and Hall inductees Abba and Madonna...

Fun Fact:  Early in their career the Carpenters took a job on Main Street in Disneyland playing 20's music in one of the shops.  As time wore on, folks would ask them to perform more modern numbers, which the Carpenters gladly obliged.  Unfortunately, this did not please the folks running Disneyland, and the Carpenters were fired for being "too radical."  Betcha Black Sabbath never got fired from an amusement park...

Released in 1971 on their oh-so-cleverly named Carpenters album, "Superstar" would go on to reach #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 (it couldn't surpass Rod Stewart's classic "Maggie May").  It was written by Bonnie Bramlett (of Delaney and Bonnie fame) and Leon Russell (of Leon Russell fame), and has been covered by artists too numerous to mention--though the Carpenters version is considered the definitive version.

"Superstar" tells the lonely tale of a groupie sitting at home listening to her love interest on the radio and wishing he were with her--which, as is often the case in the life of a groupie, ain't gonna happen.  From the song's beginning--a yearning oboe (an oboe! this is why I love music so much--who'd ever think of an oboe in a pop song?), to the yearning horns, to the yearning orchestra, to Karen's Carpenter's yearning vocals--it's a song about, well, uh, yearning.  There's a nice back and forth between the slow pace of the stanzas which builds to the crescendo of the chorus (which, by my unofficial count, holds the record for the most uses of the word "baby" in a chorus:  seven)--but in the end it all works because of Karen Carpenter's wondrous vocals.  She captures the sorrow and resulting loneliness of unrequited love about as well as any pop singer ever has, and it turns what could have been a desultory song into a classic about love, music, and loneliness.

Lyric Sheet:  "Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear/But you're not really here/It's just the radio...

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee