December

My New Orleans Public School kindergarten report card. Same as it ever was.

This has been a nutty year, filled with lots of sorrow which I worried I might never get over. But I did. Or at least, I’m out of the tunnel, and I amazed by my own resilience or whatever it is.

Of course, music is the panacea, and I’ve found a lot of music to dig this year. So I’d like to share this mix with my readers. Including but not limited to: Cher covering The Kinks. Young Michael Jackson tackling the complexities of love. Arthur Russell writing yet another love song to his boyfriend. Jonathan Richman lauding the arcane, which is what I do here a lot of the time.  Hope you enjoy.

Track list:

All This Crazy Gift Of Time- Kevin Ayers 3:46

Shake Sugaree -Elizabeth Cotten 5:03

Nobody Wants A Lonely Heart- Arthur Russell 2:26

I Hear Your Heart Singing- The Gun Club 3:57

Norwegian Wood- Peter Walker 4:16

Brother, Father, Sister And Mother- Tim Maia 3:17

I Go To Sleep- Cher 2:48

Old World- The Modern Lovers 4:01

The Creator Has A Master Plan- Louis Armstrong 4:07

Isn’t It A Pity- Nicky Thomas 5:20

The Way Things Ought To Be- Julie Covington 2:51

Golden Circle- Terry Callier 3:38

Dreaming- Polystyrene 3:48

A Groovy Kind Of Love- Diane & Annita 2:01

Nobody Sees Me Like You Do- Yoko Ono 3:33

It’s What You’ve Got- Pete Dello 3:16

You Keep Me-The Index 3:04

Raining In My Room- Swell Maps 1:44

In The Courtyard Of The Stars- Nirvana (UK) 2:36

Morning Glow- Michael Jackson 3:35

Dear God Please Help Me- Marianne Faithfull 4:29

End Title John Barry- The Black Hole OST  (2:28)

Gentlebear Mix- December 2009

Thanks for stopping in.

A Young Girl

 

I first fell in love with Charles Aznavour years ago when I saw him in Shoot The Piano Player.  I didn’t know then that he was one of the greatest French singers of the latter twentieth-century. How could I know? In the film, he is so quiet, playing his piano. At 85, he’s still performing concerts, and had appeared in over 6o films.

Aznavour wrote “Une Enfant,” a song as cautionary tale: a young girl of sixteen falls in with the wrong guy, he leads her astray, and she winds up “lying here by the road… DEAD.” It’s on his 1954 album Sur Ma Vie.

Un Enfante- Charles Aznavour

 

Cher sang the song in 1966, which is ironic, since as a sixteen year-old runaway she took up with the older Sonny Bono.  Fortunately, Sonny was a good guy. 

 

A Young Girl- Cher

 

The English lyrics to the song were written by singer/songwriter/civil rights pioneer Oscar Brown, Jr.  Often, Brown composed lyrics for popular instrumental jazz tunes, including Nat Adderley’s “Work Song,” song popularly by Nina Simone. Check out the words of praise this guy received for his first album. 

 

A Young Girl- Oscar Brown, Jr.

 

I first heard “A Young Girl” on a great Parrot Records compilation, in which every song was a winner. Noel Harrison’s take on “A Young Girl” really struck me. I’ve always loved Noel Harrison’s deadpan delivery. 

 

 

Here’s Noel, Rex Harrison’s son, singing “A Young Girl” on British show Hullaballoo.

The Way This Whole Town Laughs at Me, I Just Can’t Take It No More

 

I just read Ronnie Spector’s autobiography Be My Baby, a fun trashy read, and was surprised to learn that Sonny Bono got his start working in Gold Star Studios for Phil Spector. Ronnie Spector and Cher became good pals, and Cher even sang backup on “Be My Baby,” along with other Spector productions. They were both sweet young girls with possessive husbands who were going to make something out of them. But playing the dual-role of wife and protege did not make for pretty marriages;  I’m sure I don’t need to detail how both marriages went south.  Sonny and Cher did remain amicable through the years, in contrast to the Spector union, in which Ronnie literally escaped barefoot from Spector’s Xanadu. 

 

Sonny met runaway Cher in L.A. in 1962. He was 27 and she was 16. Their first big hit was “I Got You Babe,” but their first single was actually  a version of the Boxtops hit “The Letter,” which they recorded under the moniker Caesar & Cleo. The b-side was “Baby Don’t Go,” which charted later, riding the success of “I Got You Babe.”

I’ve always kind of fallen for songs about the kid from the wrong side of the tracks. “Baby Don’t Go” is about a girl leaving the only person who ever treated her right, her boyfriend, to go the city to escape the crappy town which has stigmatized her. There’s a really nice shimmery guitar part when Cher sings the last lines of each verse.

Baby Don’t Go

Here’s Sonny and Cher on Dave Letterman in 1987, where they “reunited” and sang “I Got You, Babe” one last time. There’s good stuff here about their early years, and you can really see the love they had for one another, despite their odd coupling.