Tag: Emmy Lou Harris

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Five Perfect Songs

There are five perfect songs. Here they are:

  • Sam Stone (John Prine)
  • All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
  • Anchorage (Michelle Shocked)
  • I Fought the Law (Bobby Fuller Four)
  • You Don’t Own Me (Leslie Gore)

That’s it.

About Sam Stone:
But life had lost its fun
And there was nothing to be done
But trade his house that he bought on the GI bill
For a flag-draped casket on a local heroe’s hill

“Suspicion” (Elvis Presley) comes close, but no cigar.

Other Honorable Mentions:

“Reelin’ in the Years” (Steely Dan) A truly awesome recording but I can’t overlook the pettiness of “the things that pass for knowledge I can’t understand…”

“Homeward Bound” (Simon and Garfunkel) a fine, fine song, but “all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity” is a little precious.

“Four Strong Winds” (Ian & Sylvia) is a bit slight, so you have to repeat the chorus and that gives it a bit of a sense of aimlessness and repetition and violates the rule of economy.

The Beatles’ best song is “Girl”:

Was she told when she was young that pain would lead to pleasure?
Did she understand it when they said,
That a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure
Will she still believe it when he’s dead?

But “Eleanor Rigby” is also very nearly perfect.

“Go Your Own Way” (Fleetwood Mac) is too slight.

“Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits is very, very good.

“Echo Beach” (Martha & the Muffins) Actually, this song is darn near perfect as well. Darn near.

“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (The Band) Great, great song, but a bit murky, and the Band’s own recording of it is not as perfect as the song. As is “This Wheel’s on Fire” and “Tears of Rage”. I do actually like the cover version of “Dixie” by Joan Baez, featuring crack Nashville session musicians. It’s from an album that appeared to be an effort by Baez to reach out to the alienated silent majority of Americans who seemed to despise her.

Levon Helm (who wrote “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”) despised her version, but one suspects that that is because Levon Helm despised Joan Baez.

“Satisfaction” (Rolling Stones) Okay. So this one is perfect too. Six perfect songs. But it has to share with “Light My Fire” (Doors).

“Like a Rolling Stone” (Bob Dylan) Violates rule of economy, but also a great, great song. “Tangled up in Blue” might actually be a better song.

“Thunder Road” (Bruce Springsteen) Can’t sustain that great take-off, “you can hide ‘neath your covers and study your pain” though he tries, brilliantly. In the end, it’s just a trifle indulgent, a trifle too self-consciously monumental. A trifle. On some days I prefer “Jungleland”.

“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” (Bob Dylan) is as good or better than any other song on the list. All right, seven.

“One of These Days” (Emmy Lou Harris) Lovely, enchanting piece, reminds me of “As I Went Out One Morning” (Bob Dylan): both are elegantly economical, tight, balanced.

“Someday Soon” (Judy Collins) Okay– another one. Eight.

All right: 9– “The Hammond Song”, by the Roches. Actually, this song is obviously flawed, but there are moments when it does sound just perfect to me. So 8. Wait — 9. I forgot about one of the most perfect, crystalline, renditions ever: “Wayfarin’ Stranger” by Emmy-Lou Harris with that absolutely wonderful lead by Tony Rice and mandolin by Albert Lee.

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$250 a Seat: Neil Young at the Air Canada Centre, December 2008

What’s with Neil Young charging $250 for the best seats at his concert at the ACC in December? And for this, you get to see his wife sing back-up.

Now it is quite possible that his wife, Pegi, can actually sing. It is also quite possible that she has no particularly remarkable skill in this area, but she is married to the boss. It is possible that it doesn’t really matter to anyone except me.

I recall watching the Neil Young video “Heart of Gold”, shot by Jonathan Demme in 2006. Young had his wife Pegi singing backup alongside Emmy Lou Harris, one of the finest backup singers ever, and a terrific solo artist. Was it just me, or did Emmy Lou seem a bit put out? I think that if I had been Emmy Lou Harris, I would have politely reminded Neil that I had paid more than a few dues in my career and, oh, is that my phone? Oh darn, I guess I can’t make the tour after all.

But then again, Young– who I think is an absolutely terrific song-writer, by the way– has been known to tour and record (in his barn!) with probably the worst back-up band of any front-line rock star of the era: Crazy Horse. I’m sorry– they were just awful.  They really were.  Listen to their recordings: they sound like a below-average bar band.

Sometimes I listen to Bob Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” and wonder what Neil Young would have sounded like with crack accompaniment. Well, all right– we have “Deja Vu” and “Harvest” and “Comes a Time”. There you go: fabulous.

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Independent Women of Song: “Someday Soon” and “One of These Days”.

Surprise– to me. These songs were recorded only seven years apart and both are by strong, independent female artists, and both are unusually polished and crisp recordings with outstanding session musicians. They even have similar intros, one with steel guitar, one with electric. And they are both about women on the cusp of breaking out. But Judy Collins is waiting for her man to make her life happen; Emmy Lou Harris is about to make it happen for herself. Both feel constricted by their families, and can’t wait to leave and stretch out their minds, if not their bodies. First, from “One of These Days”.

I won’t have to chop no wood
I can be bad or I can be good
I can be any way that I feel
One of these days

And from “Someday Soon”.

My father says that he will leave me crying
But I would follow him right down
The toughest road I know
Someday soon, going with him, some day soon….

Judy Collins was a soulful interpreter of great songs by the outstanding singer- songwriters of the 60’s, Dylan, Cohen, Tom Rush, Ian Tyson. She was a romantic, and I personally found her a bit suffocating at times– too many whale songs and saturated memories of dreamy trips to Paris or smudgy interior emotional landscapes. Emmy Lou Harris leaned a bit to country and folk, and added some memorable background vocals to Gram Parsons, Neil Young, and Dylan. Her songs are always tasteful and restrained– she resisted the temptations that made very good singers like Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn go very bad.

Might be a woman that’s dressed in black
Be a hobo by the railroad track
I’ll be gone like the wayward wind one of these days

Unlike Collins, the narrator of Harris’ “One of These Days” isn’t counting on being rescued by some man. She’s going to break out on her own, and be her own person. Collins’ narrator is waiting for her cowboy to come so she can follow him wherever he goes. Okay– the song was written by a man, Ian Tyson, after all, whose woman, Sylvia Fricker, eventually chose not to follow anymore. In fact, Sylvia Tyson basically decided she could be “any way that I feel” and went to work for the CBC in Toronto while Ian cooled his cowboy heels at his ranch in Alberta, writing soulful ballads about how wonderful it was to ride your horse, look at the mountains, and live alone.

So should I add Sylvia Fricker’s “River Road”, another fine song about escape, into the mix?

Here I go, once again
With my suitcase in my hand
And I’m running away down River Road…

Once again, like Harris, she isn’t waiting around for the cowboy.

There’s an odd verse in “River Road”:

Well I married a pretty good man
And he tries to understand
But he knows I’ve got leaving on my mind these days…

When I heard that line, I immediately thought, “the man is real”. She’s talking about someone real, whom she knows will hear the song– he’s “a pretty good man”, and she pulls her punches: she doesn’t want to hurt him too much. But she has leaving “on her mind” these days… This isn’t The Dixie Chicks’ “Earl” getting a vicarious thrill out of name-calling. This is a mature woman who is tired of having to account for where she is, what she’s doing, where’s she going, where is she going to be, what’s she going to do, when are you here, when are you coming, what’s for dinner:

When I get that urge to run
I’m just like a kid again
A 12-year-old jail-breaker running away…

And we can add one more: Lucinda Williams’ “Side of the Road”. The narrator tells her man to pull over, she needs to get out of the car and stand in the tall wet grass and be alone–.

I wanna know you’re there, but I wanna stand alone
If only for a minute or two
I wanna know what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind…

Okay — two more: isn’t the marvelous “Anchorage” by Michelle Shocked really about the same thing, contrasting two women who made different choices? Her friend:

Hey, ‘Chell, I think I’m a housewife…

…New York City, imagine that!
What’s it like to be a skateboarding punk-rocker?

…Leroy says hello

Leroy says, send a picture…

[added 2009-12] And always, always, always, the Leroys of the world say “send a picture”. We want to see this; we want to see what it’s like to escape, because we don’t generally have the courage or determination to do it ourselves.

[added 2012-07] Oh, what the heck: let’s not leave out one of the best songs of independence: Joan Armatrading’s  “Me Myself I”:

I set here by myself
And you know I love it
I don’t need someone
To come pay a visit
I wanna be by myself
I came in this world alone
Me myself I.

Best Looking Earnest Female Folk Singer Primarily Known as an  Interpreter of Other People’s Great Songs:

1. Emmy Lou Harris
2. Sylvia Fricker/Tyson
3. Jennifer Warnes

Least Best Looking Folk Singer Song-writer:

Tracey Chapman

Sorry.  But it’s okay– she really wouldn’t care what a man might think of her looks anyway.

The Man’s Perspective:

Runaway, by Del Shannon.

If he doesn’t know why why why she left, he should listen carefully to the songs discussed here.