Tag: Story Behind the Song

“Shannon”: Henry Gross, Sha Na Na, and a Beach Boys Dog

Henry Gross, a former member of Sha Na Na, found success in the 1970s with a sad song about a dog that belonged to one of the Beach Boys.

Shannon Dog

Henry Gross, who was born in Brooklyn on April 1 in 1951, was the youngest person to perform on the main stage at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in 1969. At the time, he was eighteen years old, performing as one of the founding members of Sha Na Na. But Gross is best known for his song about a dog.

The members of Sha Na Na formed out of a Columbia University a cappella group that started performing under the Sha Na Na name in 1969.  The group, with Gross, eventually performed prior to Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock.

Some credit Sha Na Na’s short appearance in the Woodstock film with contributing to the nostalgia for the 1950s in subsequent years.  That nostalgia led to the film American Graffiti (1973) and the TV show Happy Days.

In 1970, though, Gross left Sha Na Na to pursue a career as a solo singer-songwriter. He initially found little success.  But he played guitar as a session musician on one of the classic albums of the early 1970s, Jim Croce’s I Got a Name (1973).

Following some modest success with his own recordings, Gross wrote a song about the death of an Irish Setter owned by Beach Boys member Carl Wilson. The song, “Shannon,” became an international hit.

Shannon, is gone I heard,
She’s drifting out to sea;
She always loved to swim away;
Maybe she’ll find an island with a shaded tree,
Just like the one in our backyard.

The Story Behind “Shannon”

There is something gut-wrenching about the beautiful song.  So much of it seems real that one may wonder how could this be a song about somebody else’s dog? Well, it really is only partly about Wilson’s dog. Gross also had a dog named Shannon.

In 1972, when Gross was twenty-one, he became involved with a woman named Kathy Reinmann, first as a friend then as a girlfriend. She had a two-year old Irish Setter named Shannon. As Gross described the dog later, “She was an uncannily human dog whose ability to manipulate her human counterparts cannot be understated.”

Around this time, Gross was touring with the Beach Boys and struck up a friendship with Carl Wilson. While visiting Wilson at his home in Los Angeles, Wilson told Gross that he had previously had an Irish Setter too.  Wilson explained that he lost his dog when it was hit by a car. His Irish Setter, coincidentally, had the same name as Gross’s dog, Shannon.

Soon after the trip, Gross sat in his apartment trying to write a song. But a neighbor was playing loud music that interfered with his creative process.  So, Gross put on an environments record called The Ultimate Seashore. While listening to the sounds of the ocean on the record, he thought of the Beach Boys, Carl Wilson, and Wilson’s dog Shannon.

Gross looked at his dog Shannon, and he thought of “the indescribable sadness that losing such a beloved partner in life must be.”  He later recalled, “The song seemed to write itself taking no more than ten minutes and with almost no cross outs on the paper.”

Inspired by the sounds of the ocean on the record, Gross sang about Shannon “drifting off to sea.” The setting also sounded more romantic than getting hit by a car. The lyrics were ambiguous enough that listeners would not know it was about a dog and could imagine their own story.

Gross initially sent the song to Wilson, hoping he would provide background vocals. But the timing never worked out. So Gross recorded his version, which appeared on his album Release, and “Shannon” was released in 1976.

Gross’s song blanketed the nation that year. A country weary from Watergate and the Vietnam war was looking for something new in its bicentennial year. The release of “Shannon” and Gross’s high aching voice captured some of the sadness of the times.

Gross eventually took Shannon’s owner Kathy Reinmann as his wife, although the two would later divorce. They remained friends for decades until she died of lung cancer.

Gross continues to make music since “Shannon,” as you can hear on his website, some with degrees of success. For example, he co-wrote the top 40 country song “Big Guitar” for Blackhawk.

But he never had a hit quite like his song about a dog. Below, Gross performed “Shannon” in 2014, showing he still can hit the high notes.  And yes, he still has dogs (and cats).

And that is the story behind the song.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    The True Story of Tom Dooley

    Tom Dooley On November 17, 1958, the Kingston Trio scored a number one hit on the Billboard pop chart with their recording of the folk song “Tom Dooley.” The song, asking Mr. Dooley to hang down his head, became one of those songs where everyone knows the chorus.

    But the lyrics come out of a true story.

    The Real Tom Dula

    On May 1, 1868, a Confederate veteran named Tom Dula was hanged for the 1866 stabbing death of Laura Foster. Dula had been Foster’s lover and father of her unborn child.

    Some questioned whether Dula was the actual killer. In addition to his affair with Foster, Dula had romantic engagements with two of Foster’s cousins, Anne Foster Melton and Pauline Foster. On the gallows, Dula professed his innocence while conceding he still deserved to be executed. Thus, some came to believe that Melton had killed Laura Foster.

    The trial, a retrial, and the execution attracted significant attention. National newspapers covered Dula’s trial, and former North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance represented Dula pro bono. Due to all of the attention, a North Carolina poet named Thomas C. Land wrote a poem about the case called “Tom Dooley.”

    The video below provides some of the history behind the song. Check it out.

    The Kingston Trio

    Historians do not know who created the folk song “Tom Dooley.” But over time various artists recorded versions of “Tom Dooley.” And the Kingston Trio produced the most popular version when they recorded the song in 1958, selling more than six million copies.

    In later years, some criticized Kingston Trio performances as a sanitized version of folk music. But many today recognize that the group, despite their clean-cut coordinated outfits, were instrumental in making folk music popular and laid the groundwork for other folk singers to find success.

    The Kingston Trio version of “Tom Dooley” is more vague about the details of the real case than earlier versions of the song. But perhaps their decision made the song more universal, leading to its massive sales. Check out their complete version below.

    The Legend of Tom Dolley

    Finally, there is a 1959 film called The Legend of Tom Dooley, starring Michael Landon. The movie does not attempt to tell the true story about Tom Dula but is based upon the song.  Currently it is not available on YouTube but might be worth tracking down if you are interested.

    Finally, we do know today that innocent people still often end up on death row in our modern system of justice.  But nobody could have predicted that we would still be talking about a nineteenth century North Carolina murder so many years later.

    And we can never know the full story of what happened to Laura Foster, even while we reflect on the folk song about the tragic story.  Yet, that is the story behind the song.


    What is your favorite version of “Tom Dooley”? Photo via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    The Flying Burrito Brothers Song That Includes a Tribute to Bobby Kennedy

    Flying Burrito Brothers I have probably heard “Sin City” by the Flying Burrito Brothers more than a hundred times.  But I never realized that one of the verses is about Robert F. Kennedy until reading an interview with Steve Earle.

    In the interview, Earle recounted how the song’s co-writer Chris Hillman explained the Bobby Kennedy connection.  The following verse is about Kennedy.

    A friend came around,
    Tried to clean up this town;
    His ideas made some people mad;
    But he trusted his crowd,
    So he spoke right out loud;
    And they lost the best friend they had.

    In another interview from many years ago in The Los Angeles Times, Hillman confirmed the above verse was about Kennedy. Hillman also explained how he and Gram Parsons came to write the song.

    Hillman woke up one morning with the opening lines of the song in his head: “This old town’s filled with sin, it’ll swallow you in….”  He immediately woke up his roommate Parsons, who soon came up with the melody for the song.

    Parsons and Hillman, who both had recently experienced relationship breakups, completed the song in about thirty minutes.  And they both ended up singing it on the first Flying Burrito Brothers album, The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969).

    Bobby Kennedy was not the only person referenced in the song.  Hillman, who still had bad feelings about the breakup of his former band The Byrds, included an allusion to that band’s manager Larry Spector.  Hillman considered Spector a thief, and the man lived on the thirty-first floor of a condo.  Hence the line:  “On the thirty-first floor a gold plated door / Won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.”

    Hillman further explained that they wrote “Sin City” as a cautionary tale to “people like Gene Clark from the Byrds, who came here from Kansas with all that talent and all bright-eyed and talented and idealistic, and the whole thing just swallowed him up.”  Unfortunately, that cautionary tale could equally refer to the tragic young death of Parsons.

    “Sin City” remains one of the great collaborations between two great singer-songwriters. While the original recorded by the songwriters remains definitive, there have been a couple of nice covers through the years. Below in a performance from 1989, k.d. lang and Dwight Yoakam do the song justice.

    Finally, here is a wonderful version by Steve Earle, Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings (Buddy Miller is also there on guitar).

    And that is the story behind the song.

    What is your favorite song by the Flying Burrito Brothers? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Classical Gas and 3000 Years of Art

    Mason Williams

    One of the coolest videos on YouTube combines a hit instrumental with fast-flashing works of art.  The story of the tune, “Classical Gas,” and the video, “3000 Years of Art,” go back to the Smothers Brothers in the 1960s.

    The Creation of “Classical Gas”

    Mason Williams, who was born August 24, 1938, was a comedy writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.  The show began its first season during the winter of 1967.  After the show completed its first season, Williams began to work on some other projects.

    Following a two-week tour with Dick and Tom Smothers in Las Vegas, Williams returned home and picked up his guitar.  He had missed playing the instrument and decided to write something he could play for friends.

    So, Williams started on a piece he called “Classical Gasoline.” He got the idea for the title from his thought that the piece would be “fuel” for the classical guitar.  He continued working on the tune during the second season of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968.

    At one point, the Warner Bros. music label asked Tom Smothers for suggestions of new artists to add to its label.  And, one of the artist he suggested was Mason Williams from his show.  So, Williams began working on The Mason Williams Phonograph Record for Warner Bros.

    One of the songs featured on the record was the finished version of “Classical Gasoline.”  But the music copyist made the mistake of writing the name as “Classical Gas.” The new name stuck.  As Williams later explained, “It wasn’t until sometime later that I realized most people were thinking ‘Gas’ as in ‘Hey man, it’s a gas!’

    Below, Williams performs “Classical Gas” in 1968.

    “3000 Years of Art”

    After Williams premiered the tune on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the song climbed the charts.  Then, Williams contacted a filmmaker named Dan McLaughlin.  McLaughlin had made a student video putting together Beethoven’s 5th Symphony with a montage of art works.  Williams asked him to do the same with “Classical Gas.”

    So, McLaughlin created “3000 Years of Art” with the tune, using fast images in a visual effect that is now called kinestasis. The images purport to show a history of art in three minutes.

    The video premiered on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968. Check out the really cool video of “3000 Years of Art” below.

    In 1969, “Classical Gas” went on to win three Grammy Awards. The awards were for Best Instrumental Composition, Best Contemporary-Pop Performance, Instrumental, and Best Instrumental Arrangement.

    And that is the story behind the song.

    What is your favorite instrumental pop tune? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Please Mrs. Avery . . . This Song Is Stuck In My Head

    Sylvia's Mother Story

    Anytime I hear the song “Sylvia’s Mother” by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, it ends up stuck in my head for some time as an earworm.  It is one of those songs I have heard many times since its release in 1975, but I never thought too much about it even though it is an unusual song.  So, where did “Sylvia’s Mother” come from?

    The Song

    In “Sylvia’s Mother,” the singer calls a former lover but ends up speaking to her mother. Sylvia’s mother tells the man that her daughter is leaving town to marry another man. She tells the man not to say anything to Sylvia, but as the song continues the singer realizes that Sylvia is there with her mother, preparing to leave. But apparently Sylvia does not know it is him on the phone.

    The power of the song largely comes from the aching vocal provided by Dr. Hook singer Dennis Locorriere as the singer begs with Sylvia’s mother: “Please Mrs. Avery, I’ve just got to talk to her/ I’ll only keep her a while.”

    The Songwriter and the Hit Recording of “Sylvia’s Mother”

    One of the interesting things about “Sylvia’s Mother” is that it was written by Shel Silverstein, which helps explain why the song does not sound like most other songs.  Silverstein is noted for writing Johnny Cash songs like “A Boy Named Sue” and “25 Minutes to Go.”  Perhaps he is even more well known for his drawings, poetry, and books, such as The Giving Tree.

    “Sylvia’s Mother” was not the only song that Silverstein wrote for Dr. Hook. At the time Silverstein gave the band “Sylvia’s Mother,” Silverstein had already provided several songs to the band. But when the band was looking for a potential single to add to their first album, Silverstein offered them a new song, “Sylvia’s Mother.”

    “Sylvia’s Mother” initially bombed as a single when Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show released the self-titled album in 1971. But they had faith in the song, so instead of releasing another single, they released “Sylvia’s Mother” again as a single in July 1972.

    This time the song was a hit. Silverstein eventually provided another hit to the band in 1973 with “Cover of the Rolling Stone.”

    The True Story Behind “Sylvia’s Mother”

    Another interesting fact about “Sylvia’s Mother” is that Silverstein based it upon a true story from his own life. Silverstein had a relationship with a woman named Sylvia Pandolfi, but like many relationships, this one ended.

    Later, Silverstein, still in love, called her, but Pandolfi told him she was preparing to fly to Mexico to marry another man. The next day, Silverstein called again, talking to Sylvia’s mother, who reaffirmed to the distraught man that his relationship was finished.

    The following short video tells the real story behind “Sylvia’s Mother,” featuring both the real “Sylvia” and her mother. Arjan Vlakveld directed a short documentary on the tale, although it is unclear if the video from Top 2000 a gogo below is the same one.

    Some sources, like Wikipedia, spell the name of the real woman as “Silvia,” but this video and other sources indicate her name was spelled the same way as in the song, “Sylvia.”

    The lead singer of “Sylvia’s Mother” Dennis Locorriere eventually saw a video of the story behind the song.  While he knew Silverstein wrote the song based on a true story, seeing the video left him “speechless.”  He eventually met the real Sylvia.

    Other Versions of “Sylvia’s Mother”

    Other performers also recorded “Sylvia’s Mother.” Around the same time as Dr. Hook’s version was released, Bobby Bare recorded a country version of the song that also was a hit. In many ways, the song’s story and heartbreak theme fits the country genre like a glove.

    Other artists have performed the song live.  For example, Billy Bob Thornton has performed a faster version of “Sylvia’s Mother” live with the Boxmasters.

    Bon Jovi has covered “Sylvia’s Mother” in concert. This 2003 performance appeared on the Bon Jovi video This Left Feels Right Live (2004). In the performance, Bon Jovi works to recapture the aching pain of the Dr. Hook version.

    The Refreshments, a band from Sweden, included a cover of “Sylvia’s Mother” on their 2016 album Straight Up.

    The song also featured prominently in the second season of the TV series Fargo. “Sylvia’s Mother” played on the radio during the death of one of the characters.

    A Sequel Song: “Mrs. Avery”

    Finally, one may wonder whatever happened to the singer and Sylvia’s mother. The British band, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, also wondered what happened to the singer in the song. So, they released a new song called “Mrs. Avery.”

    In their sequel, The Men They Couldn’t Hang tell the story of the singer calling Mrs. Avery years later after he has been married and divorced. The song appeared on the band’s 2009 album, Devil on the Wind.

    Shel Silverstein

    The songwriter of “Sylvia’s Mother,” Shel Silverstein, had a reputation as a ladies’ man throughout his life. But one of his most-remembered contributions to the world is this song about a lonely man’s heartbreak.

    Silverstein eventually married another woman, Susan Hastings. The two had a daughter.  Silverstein and Hastings divorced and then she died in 1975, not long after the success of “Sylvia’s Mother.” Although Silverstein had another child in 1983, he never married again.

    Finally, you may see Silverstein relaxing and playing the harmonica in this video of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show on his houseboat playing  . . . “Sylvia’s Mother.” (Silverstein appears around the 2:50 mark.)

    And that is the story behind the song.

    What is your favorite Shel Silverstein song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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