Karen Carpenter -- one of the best voices of all time

Music on Saturday @ The Reaction

By Richard K. Barry

I have a lot of fun kibitzing with younger colleagues about the fact that I apparently haven't listened to any new music for the past 30 years.

Now, of course, it's not really true, but my musical sensibilities are older, to say the least.

Just for fun, I've decided to post a video to make my "critics" crazy. Certainly there will be no shortage of razzing, but who cares? Bring it on.

In my defence, my choice was voted #94 on Rolling Stone's list of greatest all-time singers. Hard to believe, but we are talking here about Karen Carpenter of The Carpenters.

Crazy, I know. But the girl could flat out sing.

The Rolling Stone article about this is fascinating. You can find it here.

Among those providing testimonies are Elton John, Madonna, and John Fogarty, although Fogarty admits that as great as her sound was, you might not want to say so in public -- just wouldn't be cool.

Sorry, John. I'm going to publicly admit that I have always been a Carpenters fan. Lucky for me, I have no cool to lose.

The song below is "We've Only Just Begun," from 1970. I guess you'd have to call it their signature hit. Her voice is incredible; the harmonies exquisite.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Asleep at the Wheel, Western Swing, and Route 66

By Richard K. Barry

Music on Saturday @ The Reaction

It would be easy to post music clips quickly recognizable to everyone. Nothing wrong with the stuff everyone knows. But there is so much music out there less well known, obviously. And it's not that my musical interests are necessarily broader than anyone else's, but I've come upon a few things in my life that you won't likely hear on the radio, unless it's public radio as part of a themed program late one weekend evening. I can almost hear some breathless NPR announcer telling us all about the anthropology of southern music.

One group I was introduced to over twenty years ago, while driving through Texas to attend the annual Kerrville Folk Festival near Austin, was Asleep at the Wheel. They'd probably be categorized as a country music group, but they also play some stuff in the tradition of Western Swing or Texas Swing, most usually associated with Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys.

What little I know of Western Swing I like.

The closest Asleep at the Wheel came to a hit was with "The Letter that Johnny Walker Read," which peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard country charts in 1975. Lest you think they are not heavy hitters, though, they have won nine Grammy awards since their inception in 1970.

Here's a nice performance of Route 66 by the group. And it really swings.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Joe Cocker: "Feelin' Alright" (by Dave Mason)

Music on Saturday @ The Reaction

By Richard K. Barry

I play in a rock 'n roll / blues band in and around Toronto. It's an eight piece with a four piece horn section. I'm on tenor sax. We're mostly middle-aged white guys, though Rosemary is on trumpet and young Ewan, a fairly recent jazz college grad, is on bone.

It's all for fun. If we can pay for gas to and from the gigs and buy a beer or three, we're ahead of game. But the gang can play.

At a practice three days before our last gig, just for fun, David on keys starting laying down the intro riff to "Feelin' Alright," which is a tune I know best as done by Joe Cocker. Our vocalist started to dig in, the horns found a part, our drummer made up something to do as did the lead guitarist and bass, and before you knew it we were in all in the middle of a very cool wall of sound.

Never played the song together before, and it probably would have sounded ragged to an outsider, but for that moment, we were all having a hell of a good time.

Three days later we played it at a gig and felt pretty good about it. It's one of those songs that doesn't make you want to move a lot, just a little bit in a very tight and self-contolled sort of way. It's also the kind of tune where it's easy for the band to forget the audience because the groove is so mesmerizing. They could get bored while we kind of play for ourselves. I don't know. But, if that happens occasionally, so what? Like I said, no one is getting rich.

By the time everyone has had a chance to take a solo, and it's time for the outro, everything does in fact feel all right. It's true.

Here's Joe Cocker with a great version. The song, if I am not mistaken, was written by Dave Mason in the late '60s, originally for the group Traffic.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

The ennobling populism of John Mellencamp: "Small Town" and "Our Country"

Music on Saturday @ The Reaction

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As we're doing fairly long NFL picks/analysis posts each Sunday (up at 11 am), we've moved Music on Sunday to Music on Saturday for the duration of the NFL season.

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No reason for this clip today other than that I really like John Mellencamp. Yes, I know, that whole "This is Our Country" thing for Chevy was annoying, mainly because the gratuitous, manipulative ad seemed to be everywhere and because it seemed like Mellencamp was selling out, but actually "Our Country," while schmaltzy, is pretty good. Besides, what's wrong with that sort of "up-with-all-the-people" populism? This is our country -- the country of ordinary folk, not the country of the Wall Street plutocrats, not the country of some ordinary folk, as Republicans would have us believe, a country united, not divided. That's a simple message, perhaps, but it's one that resonates, or should, particularly at a time when the right, as it usually does, wages relentless, class and moral/religious warfare, seeking to divide the country into "us" and "them."

By way of comparison, Springsteen has generally espoused a more complex populism, and his songs are more complex, but Mellencamp has always been admirably direct with his politics. There is a tendency, I think, to write Mellencamp off as too '80s, but I've always found his appeal much broader, with music and social commentary that transcended that generally horrible decade. And his great run through the '80s -- American Fool (1982), Uh-Huh (1983), the wonderful Scarecrow (1985), and The Lonesome Jubilee (1987) -- was pretty impressive. That's some of the best American music of the decade, music that holds up still. And his music since has been strong as well, with stand-out songs like "Human Wheels" (1993), "Dance Naked" (1994), "Peaceful World" (2001), and, yes, "Our Country" (2007) proving that he's still on top of his game after all these years.

Here are the videos for "Small Town" (off Scarecrow) and "Our Town." They're somewhat similar, though made many years apart, and they showcase, I think, what John Mellencamp is all about.

Tom Waits: "Downtown Train"

Music on Saturday @ The Reaction

By Richard K. Barry

A young colleague asked me a couple of days ago if I had ever heard of Tom Waits. Yes, I have. I must admit that I'm always pleased when younger people find music that has been around for a while and are aware enough to recognize how good it is.

A guy like Waits never seems to get enough recognition, while people like Rod Stewart, who had a major hit with Waits's "Downtown Train," are of course better known. As long as the song gets out there and the royalty check is delivered to the correct address I guess I don't care that much.

Here's "Downtown Train" performed by the man who wrote it. There's just something about the poetry and passion in evidence here that makes you take a deep breath.

For those who pay attention to the details, it was released on Waits's 1985 album Rain Dogs. Stewart had a hit with it in 1989 for which he received a Grammy nomination in the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance category.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)