Just now and then, as you’re growing up, an album comes along that shakes and re-orders your musical landscape like an earthquake. For me, as for many others, Highway 61 had that effect, as did the Beatles’ White Album and The Paul Simon Songbook. Less obviously, there was The Band and Davey Graham’s Folk, Blues and Beyond. A bit later, Willie Nelson’s strange… Continue reading FRIDAY SONG: Willie Nelson, RED HEADED STRANGER (Carl Stutz – Edith Calisch, 1954)
Read more
For pity’s sake, let’s have a happy Friday Song – something sunny, celebratory, about being young, about getting out and having fun. Here’s an idea: what better than one of those great songs written between 1955 and 1964 by the strange, shining genius that was Chuck Berry? There are a few problems in writing about… Continue reading FRIDAY SONG: Chuck Berry, YOU NEVER CAN TELL (1964)
Read more
Here is a song that has been part of our lives for so long that it has become easy to forget how odd and unusual it is. That problem has been compounded by the countless woeful interpretations down the years – Frank Sinatra and Robbie Williams top a long list of singers who have robbed… Continue reading FRIDAY SONG: Fred Astaire, LET’S FACE THE MUSIC AND DANCE (Irving Berlin, 1936)
Read more
One of my favourite tracks on Playing For Time is ‘The Anno Domini Rag’. When I arrived in southern Italy last autumn to record some of the tracks for the new album, it was one of the songs that produced the most memorable session in the Maurizio Sarnicola’s Goldmine Studio. This week I posted a video for… Continue reading The Anno Domini Rag – the story of a song
Read more
When, a few days ago, the BBC showed a music documentary, there was a sniffy online reaction from a resident of Twittertown. ‘What is it that bothers me about this? Am I a music snob, an art snob, a massive something else snob? Culture snob? Dunno. I just don’t see this as a BBC Four… Continue reading FRIDAY SONG: CHAS & DAVE, AIN’T NO PLEASING YOU (CHAS HODGES, 1982)
Read more
If you want to see the difference between a great lyric and a moderately good one, here’s a place to start – compare and contrast Jacques Prévert’s 1946 song ‘Les Feuilles Mortes’ to the later American version,by Johnny Mercer, released in 1950. One tells a story; the other expresses a general feeling. One feels original… Continue reading FRIDAY SONG: Yves Montand, LES FEUILLES MORTES (Jacques Prévert and Joseph Kosma, 1946)
Read more
A few months ago, I went to Maurizio Sarnicola’s Goldmine studio two hours south of Naples and, with my German friend, the accordionist Hartmut Saam, and new Italian friends Fortunata Monzo (vocals), Giovanni Rago (guitar), Domenice de Marco (drums), Gianni Crescenzi (bass) and Mario Perazzi (engineer), we recorded this song. It was a happy international… Continue reading Adios, auf wiedersehen, Europa, Mein Amour – a song for Europe
Read more
Camping was off. That much was clear as we took our flight from Heathrow to Australia on the last day of 2019. Our first destination, a campsite at Cape Conran on the coast of Victoria, had declared that the risk of fire was too great. By the time we arrived in Melbourne, the risk had… Continue reading Holidaying in a catastrophe: letter from Australia
Read more
Something rather interesting happens when a good contemporary artist decides to cover a song from the distant past. When James Taylor sang ‘Oh! Susanna!’, a Stephen Foster from the mid nineteenth century came out out like a modern(-ish) folk song. Jen Chapin’s version of ‘Over There’ the stirring patriotic song from 1917 turns it into… Continue reading Friday Song: Andrew Bird, HOW YOU GONNA KEEP THEM DOWN ON THE FARM? (Young, Lewis and Donaldson, 1918)
Read more
Should there be a trigger warning for listeners of this week’d Friday Song? Almost certainly. It makes gender assumptions that some might find offensive. Its premise is based on the patronising assumption that, on a date, men will pay for dinner. And was it really acceptable to make a joke about hunger when the Great… Continue reading Friday Song: Eddie Cantor, HUNGRY WOMEN (Jack Yellen and Milton Ager, 1928)
Read more
