Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCXXXIV--Steve Winwood: While You See a Chance

I'd been working for Camelot Music about five months when this week's tune came out--all I remember of it at the time was that I didn't like it much.  Fast forward a few years and it came on the radio as I was driving to work one morning, and I remember thinking to myself."Why in the hell didn't I like this song?  This is a great song!"  And my epiphany would become the first of many through the years.

While most of us were playing with our toys and watching TV when we were in grade school, Steve Winwood was backing blues musicians such as B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Muddy Waters on their U.K. tours playing organ and guitar.  He joined his first band, the Spencer Davis Group, when he was fourteen, and the band had a number one hit in the U.K. by the time Winwood was 17.  He left shortly thereafter for the seminal sixties band Traffic, and then after several albums left them to help form Blind Faith (with among others, Eric Clapton).  In the late seventies Winwood finally got around to pursuing a solo career (at the ripe old age of 29), and it was there he had his greatest commercial success.  For his solo career, Winwood has released nine studio albums, with three top tens in the U.K. and three top fives in the U.S. (including one number one).  He has also released 25 singles, with six top ten hits in the U.S., including two #1's (for whatever odd reason, Winwood did not have nearly the single chart success in the U.K.).  Winwood has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Traffic, but surprisingly has not been inducted as a solo artist.  Though Winwood has not released a new album since 2008, he continues to tour regularly 

"While You See a Chance" was the first single released from Winwood's second solo album, Arc of a Diver  in 1981.  The song reached #7 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, and the LP hit #3 on the Billboard 200.

Fun Fact:  Winwood is a multi-instrumentalist, and played all of the instruments on Arc of a Diver, as well as the release that followed, Back in the High Life.  

"While You See a Chance" is a carpe diem song, with Winwood exhorting us to take our best shot at both love and life.  Winwood's organ (synthesizer?) playing drives the song throughout, giving Winwood's exhortation an invigorating backdrop.  But in the end, it's Winwood's vocals (blue-eyed soul, an emaycee fave) that takes the song to another level.  Winwood has said his singing style was patterned after Ray Charles, and while he's not quite as gifted vocally as Charles, it's easy to see the similarities, especially the guttural, from the heart soul that resonates from the tips of your toes to the ends of your fingers.  Just another dazzling piece of pop music.

Lyric Sheet:  "Stand up in a clear blue morning/Until you see what can be..."

Enjoy:

It Was an Insurrection--the Blood of Those Killed on January 6th Is on Republican Hands

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. LXXI--Mr. Acker Bilk: Stranger on the Shore

As we're nearing the anniversary of my father's birth, it's once again time to pay homage to one of his favorite tunes--which hit #1 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.  That it was immediately followed at #1 by my Dad's favorite artist of all time, Ray Charles, with his hit "I Can't Stop Loving You," is probably about as much karma as can be fit into pop music.

Bonus Points 1:  As if the name Acker Bilk wasn't distinctive enough, Bilk added a Mr. to his name for the single's release.  I mean even Sinatra never released a song by Mr. Frank Sinatra.  Bonus Points 2:  Bilk was the first Brit to top the Hot 100--and the second was a band you may have heard of:  The Beatles.  Bonus Points 3:  The crew of Apollo 10 added the song to a cassette they played while traveling in space.  It's not "Johnny B. Goode" (which was sent into space aboard the Voyager spacecraft for alien civilizations to enjoy), but it's not sliced bologna either.

Mr. Acker Bilk had a long career in the music business as a clarinettist (lest we forget, Big Band great Benny Goodman was a clarinettist, too), most of it with his trademark goatee, bowler hat, and striped vest in place (you can see it in the video below).  While he never again reached the success he had in 1962 (best selling single in both the U.S. and the U. K.), he managed to keep at it until his death in 2014 (though he admitted near the end of his life that he pretty much hated "Stranger on the Shore" after 50 years of playing it).  He was known for his vibrato style of playing the clarinet (caused somewhat by the loss of part of a finger in a childhood accident), and on the semi-coolness quotient, he gains a few extra points for playing on three Van Morrison albums.

"Stranger on the Shore" is an instrumental which features Bilk on the clarinet and some old fart, easy listening strings in the background.  Now when most people think of a clarinettist, they think of a young woman in a high school band who looks a lot like Joan Cusack's character in Sixteen Candles and for whom life would be perfect if only N'Sync would reunite, but Bilk actually takes it to another level. His playing is downright emotive and understandably so as he actually wrote the song for his young daughter.  It was originally titled "Jenny" after her (Bilk was persuaded to change the title so it could be used as the theme song for a same titled British television show).

Alas there isn't much that can be said about an instrumental--suffice it to say that "Stranger on the Shore" is the most hopeful melancholy tune ever written (Bilk wrote it himself).  I've often thought that life is a constant battle between expectations and acceptance, and every time I hear this song it reminds me of that battle--and how you eventually learn that acceptance is a fine place to be.  And "Stranger on the Shore" is two minutes and fifty-five seconds of being in just such a happy place.

Surprise, surprise--no lyrics this week!

Enjoy:

Peace,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. XIX--Ray Charles: What'd I Say, Pts. I & II

One of the last memories I have of my father is him sitting in the kitchen of his and my Mom's home in Ohio, smiling and swaying to Eric Clapton singing "San Francisco Bay Blues" from Clapton's Unplugged album.  By that time, chemotherapy had taken most of his hair, left his cheeks puffy, and made him feel like vomiting every time he moved.  Still, the joy he felt as he listened was palpable, and I could tell from the glow on his face that music was an old and trusted friend that he was going to miss dearly when his time was done.

Had my father lived, he would have been eighty-one years old today.  More importantly, because he lived a love of music was imbued in all of his family and will remain with us until our time here on earth is done as well.  My family, my sister's family, my brother's family--music is as much a part of our lives as our toes and fingers.  There's nothing like a "You've gotta hear this song!" e-mail from my kids, or my brother, my brother-in-law, and myself playing our half-assed version of Name That Tune, with my nephew playing the emcee.

When my father passed away I was the very lucky recipient of his record collection.  My father loved God, his family, America,and Ray Charles, in that order.  While the ranking for Ray Charles may be a bit of hyperbole, by my count I own better than fifty Ray Charles albums--ninety-nine percent of which were purchased by my father.  I had the pleasure of seeing Brother Ray in Decatur, Illinois in 1983, and I can tell you it is still one of my fondest concert recollections.

Here's all you need to know (though I'll have more to say for certain) about "What'd I Say":  If an alien came down to earth and asked, "What is this 'Rhythm and Blues' of which you speak?" all you would have to do is play "What'd I Say" and by song's end the alien would understand (and presumably beg you for more).  Released in 1959, the song is considered Charles' signature tune, was his first gold record, and is listed at #10 (with a bullet!) on the Rolling Stone list of the five hundred greatest songs ever.

Part I is one of the longest and funkiest instrumental intros you'll ever hear as Charles' fingers dance all over the piano, and Part II is some of the most soulful vocals you'll ever hear, with a touch of fun thrown in with the back and forth "Ohs" traded between Charles and his backup singers, the Raelettes.  Frankly, if you're not shakin' all over when you hear this song, you're either tone deaf, in a coma, or dead.  "What'd I Say" is a true piece of musical genius by a true American musical icon.

Fun Factoid #1:  My father was a hell of a dancer.  At my first wife and I's wedding, after my parents had cut a wicked rug, one of the guests came up to me and said, "I never knew your parents before today, but after watching them dance, I'll never forget them."  Some years later my mother would tell me that when my father was young, they would clear the dance floor for him (a la John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever) to watch him dance--though she was quick to point out that he had a partner, too, because their generation wasn't quite as self-centered....

Fun Factoid #2:  "What'd I Say" was released the same year I was born.  Coincidence?  I think not....

Here's where I usually find some pithy way to tie in a link to the lyrics, but this time I'll just tell you the lyrics are here, and say Thanks, Dad--your love for music is ensconced in our DNA and it has given us immeasurable joy.  And it's something we'll all miss dearly when we're gone, too.

Enjoy:

Peace,
emaycee