Category: Words and music

Listening: The Everly Brothers

The other day, while down a rabbit hole, I discovered that the Everly Brothers once recorded John Sebastian’s song “Stories We Could Tell” and not only named an album after it but recorded the album at John Sebastian’s house.

This I had to hear, so — despite my resolution not to buy any more records for awhile — I took to eBay. There, I found not only the album in question but a lot of seven Everly Brothers albums from the 1970s and ’80s, none of which I owned previously.

And so I’m currently going through a trove of music by a duo I have always admired but never explored in any depth. There have been some revelations.

Stories We Could Tell, the album, is more of a variety show than strictly an Everly Brothers album, with contributions from Sebastian from Sebastian, Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, Geoff Muldaur, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Ry Cooder and a host of other talented musicians from 1972. It’s an interesting collection.

Before I ever heard the song, I remember reading that “Stories We Could Tell” was a great unrecognized Sebastian composition and then being disappointed when I finally heard it on his Tarzana Kid album in 1974. It’s the closing song on the Everlys’ album, and it feels like the assembled multitude had a lot of love for the song. It’s lovely enough, but I was still waiting for the day when it all comes together and I understood the love.

Then, while searching YouTube for the album version, I stumbled across this slightly peppier performance that Don and Phil did on German television, and wow! This is a nice little tune (see below).

The real early leader as I work through the new stash (I still have two 1980s albums to hear) is a two-record set from Barnaby Records called End of an Era. Its package is similar to Barnaby’s The Everly Brothers Original Greatest Hits, so the label probably wanted to milk the catalog a little deeper, and they found some real gems. There’s a handful of familiar songs that were left off the “Greatest Hits” collection — “Take a Message to Mary,” “When Will I Be Loved,” “Claudette” and “Devoted to You” — but it’s heavy with folk and country tunes, both originals and standards, that show off their wonderful harmonies and interpretative skills. “Barbara Allen” is here, and Gene Autry’s “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine,” and by the time I worked through both records, the Everlys had become more than musicians I’ve always admired.

I’m definitely a fan now. Better late than never.

Everything old is new again

One of the first books I read in 2023 was The Year of Less by Cait Flanders, which chronicles a year in which she put a moratorium on buying new stuff and, in the process, reduced the amount of stuff she owns by 70 percent. It got me to thinking about all my things.

I’ve collected books and music and movies and old TV shows by the thousand and built what I always considered an archive of entertainment and enlightenment that I can explore in my retirement, if no time else. I’d be hard-pressed to think of something I would like to have owned that is not now somewhere in this house, waiting to be enjoyed. Could it be time to let go of it all, or at least catalog it so I know what I have? There’s something appealing about Flanders’ journey, but there’s also an appeal to the stuff.

The process of transferring stuff to my new/old wall of bookcases showed me just how much stuff I have — even though they are huge pieces of furniture, I have bins of books that did not fit on the new shelves. Meanwhile, I realized that in the last three weeks since Christmas, I bought four more books anyway. Enough is enough, you would think.

I declared a Cait Flanders-style moratorium on buying new stuff for myself, which was fortuitous because the next day I discovered that Bruce Springsteen is selling CDs and downloads of hundreds of his live concerts. I sampled samples from 1984, the year I saw him in concert, as well as more recent years, and I would have been sorely tempted to grab one or two if not for my newly minted moratorium.

I even toyed with the idea of selling off some of my “archives.” Would I really regret not having such-and-such a book or record on my 90th birthday? On the other hand, would I pass on to the next world regretting that I never sold off enough stuff to take Red on a trip to such-and-such a place?

“Whoever dies with the most toys” most definitely does not win any kind of race, but there may come a day when I want to pull down that Nathaniel Hawthorne book again, or play those century-old 12-inch platters by Sir Harry Lauder. (Funny that those examples were the first that came to mind.)

In any case, some cataloguing is certainly in order. What treasures have I accumulated without remembering? What words and music are in my possession waiting to touch my soul again or for the first time? That’s a big reason for pausing before I buy anything more: As I’ve been vacuuming up possessions I have reached the point where I’m not entirely sure what I own. I haven’t had, or taken, the time to review all the piles and make sure I can find what I’m looking for when I look for it.

For example, I know I have at least three copies of “Music! Music! Music!” by Teresa Brewer on 78, once because I forgot I had one, and another time because it was in a lot of records that I purchased to obtain several other tunes. Put another nickel in, and I bet I have more than a few other things that I bought not realizing that I already had one.

These musings sent me down to the attic (Fun Fact: My podcast “Uncle Warren’s Attic” was filled with recordings that I pulled from the storage room in our basement) to do a little exploring and maybe begin that catalog. 

I came upstairs with an album of 78 rpm records that I’d picked up at an online estate auction and listened to such gems as Kitty Kallen’s No. 1 1954 hit “Little Things Mean A Lot” and a delicious swing version of “All of Me” by Louis Jordan with fellow vocalist Valli Ford. When I bought my beloved Audio-Technica turntable a few years back, I invested in a separate headshell specially designed to play 78s, and I was again impressed by how crisp and clear a 70-year-old record can sound if the owner took good care of it and it’s played on the right equipment.

Yes, I could downsize significantly and rely on digital versions of the same recordings (see below), and I know the day is coming when that’s not only more practical but necessary. In the meantime, though, there’s a special joy in holding the real thing and watching the stylus float through the grooves as the sounds of a long time ago burst forth like old times.

the return of w.p. bluhm

In my younger days I fancied myself a singer-songwriter. I banged out chords on a nylon-stringed guitar and, later, a 12-string guitar that I bought with $59 (or was it $79?) I scraped together from my first full-time job in the summer of 1975.

Over the years, in part through the miracle of multi-tracking — beginning with recording from one cassette machine to another in my bedroom — I created 20 (!) albums of homemade songs, some of them pretty good and most of them, I imagine, rather forgettable. I gave the albums names like “Crying Over Spilled Thyme” and “Folks Songs” and called the singer-songwriter “w.p. bluhm” because I’m such a fan of e.e. cummings.

When we built this house in 2012, I bought a couple of specially-designed hooks so that I could hang the two guitars on the wall — the better, I thought, to haul them down and plunk on them. Oddly, it had the opposite effect, and the guitars became another piece of artwork on the wall, collecting dust more than anything. 

Every so often I would take one or the other down and strum a few songs, but — other than a burst of creativity that led to my 20th album in 2010 — I haven’t made music for about a decade and a half.

I remember back in 1984, when I wrote a new song for the first time in a couple of years, and it was like reconnecting with a part of me that I thought I had lost. It was a simple little folk song (“Train Song,” for the handful who might remember), but I had written a song, and it was a relief to put words and music together again after so long.

When I moved across the house to the new office this fall, I put the guitars in their old cases and set them against the wall next to the 1941 Philco radio, in hopes that taking them off the wall might move me to pick them up and play, since I didn’t manage to take them down and play very often over those years.

Sunday morning, I picked up the old 12-string and an old notebook. There were words on one page that I’d written in June 2007, a couple of verses to a song, and a line that I added in October 2020, and words for another verse and a bridge that I wrote in June 2021. The hint of a melody has lingered in my mind over all that time, but I never set down chords for it. Sunday morning, I married the words to music.

Imagine how I might have felt back in ’84 when a song came out for the first time in two years. Now imagine how I felt Sunday morning when a song came out for the first time in 12 years.

Actually, I don’t think it’s done. It feels like there are at least three more verses out there waiting to be pulled from the ether. It has a name — “Song for My Daughter” — but it’s not ready to be shared.

But w.p. bluhm is back in the room. And that’s kind of exciting. 

Searching for a new way

I am haunted from time to time by a song I have never completed — or perhaps the first two lines are the whole song — A sus 4 to A, A sus 4 to A  —

“I am a-searching for a new way;

The things I’ve done don’t seem enough …”

I am fairly confident that I came up with that couplet when I was in college and just learning guitar, because it is a simple chord progression that needs only one finger to move, so — the phrase has lingered more than 50 years.

Sometimes in the shower or walking from here to there, I will think of another line or two and wonder if I have finally found the rest of the song, but no.

Or perhaps it’s only a theme, a goal for my life, to always be searching for a new way, because, yes, the things I’ve done don’t ever seem to be enough.

And maybe that’s a good thing, to always want to do more, to find a new way, because there will always be more to do, and our purpose is to find it and do it.

Someday perhaps I will finish the song, and it will be enough, or perhaps I’ll always be searching for that new way, because there always will be one more thing to attempt, because the things I’ve done will always seem not quite enough.

And the surprise is, that thought is somehow comforting.

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Philco 41-290X

This sturdy old beast of a radio — once it sparked and poured forth words and sounds and music and adventure — do these tired old vacuum tubes wait for electricity to surge again and carry voices from a world away back into this life?

If I turn the knob, will a forgotten announcer spring to being and it will be 1941 again, with the world in turmoil far off from this sunny place, people a half-world away injecting their terror into a summer of quiet?

Will the Shadow know what evil lurks? Will the Lone Ranger gallop to the rescue? Will the Gangbusters swoop in and bust the gangs? Will a dance band play into the night to soothe the savage breast?

Even by the time I became a radio announcer, these 50 years ago if you include my college years (and why would I not?), the grand old device had passed its prime as a source of entertainment. The electronics had advanced to broadcast pictures as well as words and music, and so radio drama was a quaint old phenomenon, much as silent movies gave way to talkies a generation earlier.

There is an intimacy to radio communication, one voice reaching out to another, or an ensemble of performers nestling an adventure, or a melody, between your ears only. The image your mind created is lost, or never conjured, when you can see the performers.

The advent of the podcast has brought some vitality back to the art of sound. I imagine it all harkens back to stories told around a campfire, and the electronics have enabled the storytelling on a grand and complex scale.

As long as there are voices, there will be stories. As long as there are stories, there will be humanity.

And for 80 years now, this handsome wooden sentinel has stood ready to share the stories.

Lists pros and cons

I had an interesting exchange Friday after I posted yesterday’s post (“Joni’s foreground music”) to Facebook. 

One of my closest we-should-be-friend-friends-not-just-Facebook-friends friends, Sam Kujava, responded, “I would say she is my favorite female musician but that is considered sexist now, right?” And added, “I cried happy and sad tears watching her perform here,” talking about the “Joni Jam” at Newport Folk Festival on Sunday.

On the subject of “female musicians,” I said, “I’d been thinking whether Bob Dylan was still our greatest songwriter or if Springsteen had passed him, and then I thought of Joni and thought, ‘Wait just a minute …’”

Then Sam said it all: “They’re all up there near the top spot. Maybe we shouldn’t focus on ‘top spot’ and just enjoy them all.”

I am a sucker for lists. In my digging around after the Joni Jam, I dove into Rolling Stone’s “Top 500 Albums of All Time” (Blue was No. 3), and I’m always wanting to rank stuff like that. But Sam’s right: Maybe we should just enjoy them all. Why try to parse whether “Jungleland” or “River” is the more moving song when they both strike the soul to the core? It’s a fun little exercise, but the bottom line is that both songs tell us something unique about what it means to be human.

I locked in my favorite four movies of all time years ago, and the only change in decades has been what’s No. 5 — It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, and E.T. — but do I really choke up marginally more at “ZuZu’s petals — THERE THEY ARE!” than at “There’s no place like home”? Does “You always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself” really move me slightly more than that last “Here’s looking at you, kid”? Does “Louis, I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship” really leave me speechless a tad more than E.T. telling Elliot, “I’ll be right here”?

Maybe I shouldn’t focus on “top spot” and just enjoy them all.

As I type this, I’m listening to “The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey,” from Joni Mitchell’s album Mingus, which I thought I had never enjoyed but now I wonder if I ever bothered to listen to it. She is certainly one of our most adventurous songwriters. She could have been content to produce lovely songs like “Both Sides Now” and “The Circle Game” but instead she went out on a limb and explored “The Jungle Line” and “Shadows and Light,” and I dare say that’s why she is immortal.

We are blessed to have multiple works of art that take our breath away, that touch us in ways that random words and melodies can’t. “Best ever” is a totally subjective statement, and if we’re honest, it changes from moment to moment. 

And here I am, days later, still thinking about that priceless hour at Newport where love of Joni Mitchell focused like a laser in thousands of hearts. Wherever if lands on some list, that experience goes on the “Best Ever” pile.

P.S. What was I thinking? Mingus is amazing!

Joni’s foreground music

Newport Folk © Steven Rivieccio | Dreamstime.com

I stayed up past my bedtime the other night watching videos from the “Joni Jam’ at Newport Folk Festival, where friends surrounded Joni Mitchell and helped her perform some of her most memorable songs. Everyone was crying with happiness to see this 78-year-old woman doing her best to do her best. It was a struggle, but she made the effort and, because it was Joni Fricking Mitchell, everyone was overcome. It was sad because time has taken its toll and it was inspiring because of her determination and the love for the woman and her brilliant music.

There is such a thing as foreground music — music so compelling that it refuses to be in the background, music that forces you to pay attention.

Joni Mitchell recorded such music. It was not just perfect words in combination but the sounds and the tunes all coming together. Her first four, mostly acoustic/folk albums are priceless, but when she ventured further into electronics and new sounds and jazz — at the time she lost me after a while, or I lost her but found her again on further listens.

Of the singer-songwriters of that era, I think she has aged best. Generations sang “A Case of You” and “Both Sides Now” together Sunday on the Newport stage. The words of “Both Sides Now” are so much more poignant sung by a 78-year-old wise woman than by a twentysomething who was just figuring it out.

Joni Mitchell made foreground music for the ages.; tuck it into the background at your peril.