As we previously reported, Steve Earle’s new CD The Low Highway will be released April 16. In the meantime, today Earle premiered on CMT a video for one of the songs on the new album, “Invisible.”
Earle continues to use his music to address social issues and this new video is no exception. The video follows a homeless man around the streets of New York. Meanwhile, Earle plays his guitar on a rooftop, daring us to look around us, as he sings about people passing the “invisible” homeless without knowing. Check it out.
What is your favorite Steve Earle album? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The song “I’ll Take You There” by the Staples Singers originated out of a songwriter grieving his murdered brother.
Cleotha “Cleedy” Staples, the eldest daughter of Roebuck “Pops” Staples who sang in the Staple Singers, passed away February 21, 2013. Cleotha, who had Alzheimer’s, was 78.
The Staple Singers — which also included Cleotha’s sisters Mavis, Pervis and Yvonne — started in the 1940s and recorded many memorable songs like “Respect Yourself” and “Uncloudy Day.” But when most people hear the name of the group, the first song that comes to mind is the classic “I’ll Take You There.”
The song first appeared on the album Be Altitude: Respect Yourself (1972). In 1972, “I’ll Take You There” went to number one on both the Billboard R&B Singles chart and the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In this TV performance excerpt, you can see Mavis Staples to your right singing lead while Cleotha is on your far left of the singers. Pops is playing guitar.
The uplifting song comes from a tragic story. Stax vice-president Al Bell began writing “I’ll Take You There” after attending the funeral of his second brother who was murdered.
According to Bell, after returning from the funeral, he sat on the hood of a bus in his father’s back yard and began hearing the bass line and then the words. He then gave the song to the Staple Singers, who were a gospel act at the time.
Regarding the music, Wikipedia points out that the opening to “I’ll Take You There” comes from a Jamaican instrumental reggae tune from Harry J All Stars called “The Liquidator.” The tune is now often used before football matches (that’s “soccer” for us in the states). Check it out.
It is a cool opening riff that helped make “I’ll Take You There” so memorable. But it is also the blending of the voices of the Staple Singers including Cleotha Staples that explains why we still listen to the song more than forty years later. RIP Cleotha Staples. What is your favorite song by the Staples Singers? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Tony Sheridan, a British singer-songwriter forever linked to The Beatles, passed away on February 16, 2013 at the age of 72 in Germany. While Sheridan recorded through his later years, he is best-known for his brief work as lead singer on what was essentially the first album by the Beatles.
Sheridan knew the Beatles when they consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe, and Pete Best. And he worked with them through Sutcliffe’s and Best’s departure and Ringo Starr’s arrival in 1962.
In 1961, a German producer signed Sheridan and the Beatles as the back up band. Under the name Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, the group recorded nine songs in 1961-1962 with Sheridan singing on seven of them. According to Sheridan’s website, the reason they used “Beat Brothers” instead of “Beatles” is because the latter name did not translate into German “except as a slang term for the male sex organ.” Sheridan also claimed that he brought Ringo to the Beatles too.
When the first single “My Bonnie” was released in Liverpool, fans mobbed record shops. The reaction to the single with Sheridan led one record store owner to seek out the Beatles. That record store owner, Brian Epstein, would then go on to manage the Beatles as they rose to super-stardom. Here is “My Bonnie”:
In this 30-minute video, Sheridan looked back on his experience with the Beatles and on music in the early 1960s:
After the Beatles went on to massive fame, Sheridan continued to perform, and in the 1960s spent a lot of time entertaining troops in Viet Nam. For his devotion to the soldiers, the U.S. Army made him an honorary captain. Sheridan also met Elvis Presley when Elvis was stationed in Germany.
The Beatles themselves maintained a friendship and fondness for their one-time front-man, whose last album was 2002’s Vagabond. Paul McCartney had nicknamed Sheridan “The Teacher” because of how he influenced the band by introducing them to R&B artists like Little Richard. Similarly, Ringo Starr once said he learned from Sheridan “all I know about rock and roll.” So, while Sheridan may not be a household name, he is certainly an important part of the history of rock music.
What is your favorite Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On February 18, 1959, Ray Charles laid down the song “What’d I Say” at the Atlantic Records studio on New York City. Besides being a great song, it is also unique for the way the song went from creation to recording to becoming a major hit.
The Creation of “What’d I Say”
One night while touring, Ray Charles was trying to fill the four hours he was contracted to perform at a dance near Pittsburgh (reportedly in Brownsville, Pennsylvania). Charles began on his Wurlitzer electric piano, finding a riff. As the riff began to build, Charles began making up words on the spot in front of the live audience. And then he found himself asking his female backup singers to repeat after him.
As illustrated in the movie Ray (2004) with Jamie Foxx, below is the film version of the evening (note that this video has the talking dialogue in Spanish but the singing is in English).
The audience went wild. Charles continued playing the new song on the road, eventually calling Atlantic to say, “I’m playing a song out here on the road, and I don’t know what it is—it’s just a song I made up, but the people are just going wild every time we play it, and I think we ought to record it.”
Newport Jazz Festival
The following year, Charles performed “What’d I Say” at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island as his closing number. But it left the audience wanting more. He was called back on stage for an encore as his tenth song of the night, “I Believe to My Soul.”
During this performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, unknown to those on stage, outside the festival police were clashing with a crowd of up to 12,000 young people. The angry youths were upset they could not get into see the performances.
“What’d I Say” Becomes a Hit
After “What’d I Say” was recorded in the studio in two parts, Atlantic released it as a single in July 1959. Then, it became the lead-off two-part title track for the What’d I Say album released in October 1959.
Although some criticized the song for blending gospel with sounds of sexual bliss, the recording became Charles’s first big crossover hit. It climbed to number one on the R&B charts and to number six on the pop charts.
“What’d I Say” was Charles’s first gold record, and Charles continued to use it as his closing number, as he did in Newport, throughout his career. While he would have other big hits, it was this little impromptu number that helped launch his career into the stratosphere and give the country a little soul. What is your favorite Ray Charles song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
There are numerous songs about being in love. And there are almost as many songs about being hurt or angry at the end of a relationship, like No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak,” Coldplay’s “The Scientist,” Adele’s “Someone Like You,” Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River,” and Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” There are also songs about leaving a loved one, like Lynyrd Skynyrd’s classic “Free Bird” and Dolly Parton’s and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” But few songs focus on the personal healing process when the post-relationship hurt and anger start to drift away. There are some such songs, and artists like Willy Porter and the Cowboy Junkies have addressed the slow process of recovery after a relationship’s end.
Heartbreak Recovery & Heartbreak
There are a number of reasons why few songs capture this post-relationship self-discovery state. That stage is not as exciting as love or anger, and not everyone goes through it. One may skip or block out that stage or maybe never fully reach that level of forgiveness necessary to be at peace.
But the post-relationship self-discovery stage is a wonderful step in one’s growth. It is just as important as other emotions because this step is about coming to terms with finding oneself as someone no longer defined by the former love/anger/hate.
A few popular songs come close to addressing this relationship stage without fully addressing it. For example, Kelly Clarkson has made her career on relationship ending songs like “Don’t Waste Your Time.” But her pop songs often focus on the anger.
Similarly, some of the lyrics of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” seem to be about this stage (“Well, I’ve been afraid of changing / Because I, I built my life around you”). But Stevie Nicks has explained the song is more about career and life directions. In “Missing You,” John Waite protests that he does not miss his love, but it is clear that the singer is still heartbroken and has a ways to go.
A major difference between the heartbreak recovery songs and heartbreak songs is the focus of the song. The songs written about the immediate end of a relationship focus on the other person, often having “you” in their title (“Since You’ve Been Gone,” etc.). The songs about healing and recovery are more about the singer, i.e., “I” or “me.”
“I’m Alive”
Jackson Browne captures this healing process in “I’m Alive.” The song appeared on his 1993 break-up album of the same name that was released after the end of a relationship.
Browne’s “I’m Alive” only covers the start of the transition from anger and hurt to the recognition of being alive (“I’m gonna have to block it out somehow to survive / ’cause those dreams are dead / And I’m alive.” It is one of my favorite Jackson Browne songs.
“Angry Words”
Two other songs go even deeper into end-of-relationship healing, including one by Willy Porter, a singer-songwriter from Wisconsin. Willy Porter’s “Angry Words,” from Dog-Eared Dream (1994), does an excellent job of capturing that feeling of relief where, after a relationship has ended, one wakes up one morning realizing life goes on.
I have cursed your name a thousand times or more; Your photograph lies deep at the bottom of my drawer; But when I looked at it this morning, I had no angry words to say, no angry words to say.
“Angry Words” has similarities to Gloria Gaynor’s classic “I Will Survive” and Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing.” But whereas Gaynor’s and John’s songs are about empowerment and surviving after a bad relationship, Porter’s song is about getting to that stage. Porter is not trying to prove anything to his lost love or convince himself he is fine. He is sorting through who he is and who he is going to be.
In “Angry Words,” the singer refers to “The coffee maker that you gave me it finally broke down.” The coffee maker reference shows time has passed while also symbolizing that the singer has reached a stage of breaking where he is building himself again: “I learned a little ’bout forgiveness, learned a little ’bout sin/ A little ’bout the soul of a man living within this skin.”
And that is what the stage of forgiveness is all about: learning about yourself and not letting the angry words dictate who you are.
“Sun Comes Up”
A song with a similar theme from the woman’s point of view is “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” by the Cowboy Junkies with lead singer Margo Timmins. “Sun Comes Up” is a highlight from the band’s 1990 The Caution Horses album.
The singer in “Sun Comes Up” is not quite at the stage as the singer in Willy Porter’s “Angry Words.” But she struggles to find peace.
The singer in “Sun Comes Up” meets her friend Jen for lunch. She sees that her friend has been battered by a boyfriend or husband, so she remembers there are worse things than loneliness.
The singer then stops herself from calling her former lover. She reminds herself, “And anyways I’d rather listen to Coltrane / Than go through all that shit again.”
At the end, the singer is still struggling, but she realizes there are some simple benefits to being on your own, even if you miss the person you once loved.
Yeah, sure I’ll admit there are times when I miss you, Especially like now when I need someone to hold me; But there are some things that can never be forgiven; And I just gotta tell you, That I kinda like this extra few feet in my bed.
I love the line about the extra few feet in bed, because it is such a small thing. But the first step toward happiness is appreciating the small things.
After the song ends, I imagine some more time will pass, her coffee maker will break down, and she will end up with no angry words. And then, like the singer in “Angry Words,” she will not be “afraid of a new love that could be starting.”
The Power of Music
You know that the sophisticated and mature people in these songs will be okay, even as the songs provide insight to the listener too. On YouTube under one of the live videos of “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning,” someone confessed, “There were at least 5 years of my life that I would not have survived if it weren’t for this song.”
It is amazing what music can do for us, and I wish more songwriters would explore this stage of love. But we are lucky to have so many songs covering the stages of love. For all the lovers, the broken-hearted, and the healing hearts, may you find your song.
Check out a live version of the Cowboy Junkies’ “Sun Comes Up,” and an additional solo live version of Willy Porter’s “Angry Words” with some great guitar work. Can you think of any other songs fit this category of heartbreak recovery songs and coming to peace about lost love? Leave a comment.
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