The Sunday Six

Once again it’s Sunday and time for another installment of my weekly imaginary music time travel feature, which visits six different tracks from six different decades and in different flavors. Before getting underway, I’d like to announce a short hiatus of the blog. In a couple of hours, my family is leaving for a mini-vacation to experience the solar eclipse. I’ll resume posting and commenting on Wednesday.

Wayne Shorter/Blues A La Carte

Today, our zig-zag excursion starts in August 1960, which saw the release of Introducing Wayne Shorter, the debut album by the jazz saxophone great as band leader. It was the first of more than 20 additional albums Wayne Shorter recorded in that role. He also played as a sideman with the likes of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet. In 1970, Shorter became a co-founder of jazz fusion band Weather Report. He passed away in March 2023 at age 89. Let’s listen to the neat Shorter composition Blues A La Carte, the opener of his aforementioned debut as band leader.

Gianna Nannini/Latin Lover

On to Italian pop and rock singer-songwriter Gianna Nannini who enjoyed a good deal of popularity in Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland from the late ’70s until the mid-’80s. Including her 1976 eponymous debut, Nannini has released close to 30 albums. In 1979, she scored her first hit with America, a song off her sophomore album California. Nannini entered my radar screen in 1982 with the title track of her fifth album Latin Lover, a catchy pop rocker featuring her characteristic raspy vocals.

Dirty Honey/Won’t Take Me Alive

Let’s jump back to the present with some sweet classic style rock by Los Angeles band Dirty Honey. Founded in 2017, they are reminiscent of groups like Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and The Black Crowes. Dirty Honey consist of co-founders Marc Labelle (vocals), John Notto (guitar) and Justin Smolian (bass), along with Jaydon Bean who last year replaced original drummer Corey Coverstone. Off their second and most recent studio album Can’t Find the Brakes, released in November 2023, here’s Won’t Take Me Alive, credited to Notto, Smolian and Labelle. This r.o.c.k.s.!!!

Big Joe Turner/Shake, Rattle and Roll

Time for a dose of ’50s rock & roll! To get it we shall go back 70 years to April 1954. That’s when American blues shouter Big Joe Turner released his single Shake, Rattle and Roll, which became his second to top Billboard’s Hot R&B Singles chart. The song was written by R&B musician and songwriter Jess Stone under the pseudonym Charles Calhoun. In June of the same year, Bill Haley & His Comets released a cover of the song, scoring their second hit after Rock Around the Clock. Feel free to snip along!

Janis Joplin/Cry Baby

Our next stop takes us to January 1971 and the second solo album by the incredible Janis Joplin. Best known for her cover of Kris Kristofferson’s Me and Bobby McGee, the album Pearl appeared three months after her death in October 1970 at age 27. Here’s Cry Baby, another gem from that album. Co-written by Bert Berns and Jerry Ragovoy, the song was first recorded in 1963 by Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters. Joplin’s kicked up the intensity level a few notches – damn!

Crash Test Dummies/Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

And this brings us to our sixth and final stop. For this let’s head to April 1993 and God Shuffled His Feet, the sophomore album by Canadian alternative rock band Crash Test Dummies. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm became the album’s first single and the group’s biggest hit to date. It was written by lead vocalist Brad Roberts, who with his distinctive bass-baritone voice largely defines the band’s sound. The group exists to this day as a touring act.

This post wouldn’t be complete without a Spotify playlist. Hope there’s something here that tickles your fancy. See you when I’m back on Wednesday!

Sources: Wikipedia; YouTube; Spotify

Song Musings

It’s Wednesday and I hope this week has been kind to you thus far. Time to take a closer look at another song I’ve only mentioned in passing or not covered at all. My pick is Night Moves by Bob Seger.

Night Moves, written by Seger, is the title track of his nineth studio album that came out in October 1976, the first to credit the Silver Bullet Band. The song also became the album’s first single. Both helped transform Seger from a regionally prominent music artist to a national star.

The single became Seger’s highest-charting in the U.S. at the time, climbing to no. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Up north in Canada, it reached no. 5. Elsewhere, it peaked at no. 25 in Australia and no. 45 in the UK. The album got to no. 8 on the Billboard 200 and reached no. 13 in Australia. It became one of Seger’s best-selling, reaching Gold certification in the U.S. (500,000 certified sold units) in just three months and, as of September 2003, 6xPlatinum (6 million units). In Canada, it was certified Triple Platinum (300,000 units) as of October 1979.

Night Moves is a largely autobiographical song inspired by a young woman Seger met when he was 19 and fell in love with. But she had a boyfriend who was away in the military, and when he returned she married him, leaving Seger heart-broken. While as such it wasn’t a happy ending in the romantic department, I guess it’s a consolidation it provided lyrical content for Seger’s breakthrough single. Here’s a great version from the Nine Tonight live album released in September 1981.

Songfacts notes Night Moves became the last song recorded for the album. It came together at Nimbus Nine Studios in Toronto, were Seger’s manager had booked three days with Canadian producer Jack Richardson. He brought in local guitarist Joe Miquelon and organist Doug Riley for the recording who joined Seger and Silver Bullet Band members Chris Campbell (bass) and Charlie Allen Martin (drums). Backing vocals were provided by Laurel Ward, Rhonda Silver and Sharon Dee Williams, a trio from Montreal.

Even though it’s a great song, Night Moves has not had many covers, which Songfacts attributes to the personal nature of the lyrics. They note Garth Brooks and The Killers have performed it live. Checking out SecondHandSongs revealed 17 covers, including the following cool version by Dolly Parton and Chris Stapleton, included on her most recent album Rockstar released in November 2023, a collaborative collection of mostly rock-oriented covers Parton recorded following her 2022 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Following are select additional insights from Songfacts:

The phrase “night moves” has a number of meanings, which made it an intriguing song title. It could mean “putting the moves on” a girl in the back seat of a car, but Seger says it also relates to the impromptu parties he and his buddies threw in the fields of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they would turn on the headlights and dance their “night moves.” They called these gatherings “grassers.”

Seger was inspired by the movie American Graffiti, which was released in 1973 but set in 1962. He said, “I came out of the theater thinking, Hey, I’ve a story to tell too. Nobody has ever told about how it was to grow up in my neck of the woods.”

The famous bridge in this song, where Seger strips it down and sings “I woke last night to the sound of thunder,” is something he and producer Jack Richardson came up with on the fly in the studio.

Seger wrote this song over a period of about six months. Along with “Turn The Page,” this was one of just two songs Seger ever wrote on the road.

This reflective track was a change of pace for Seger, whose songs tended to be rockers with lot of live energy. It wasn’t his first slower song though: “Turn The Page” was released in 1972 but got little attention. After “Night Moves” and the next single, “Mainstreet,” took off, many radio stations added “Turn The Page” to their playlists.

Like many of Seger’s songs, there is a touch of nostalgia in the lyrics. When he sings, “And it was summertime, sweet summertime, summertime,” he’s not only referring to the time of the year, but to that season of his life as well. In the last verse of the song, when he is reminiscing, he says, “With autumn closing in” and is referring to the autumn of his life, getting older.

The tempo changes were inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland.” Seger wrote the song in pieces; he had the first two verses written but was having trouble finishing the song. After hearing “Jungleland,” he realized he could connect the song with two distinct bridges.

“Night Moves” didn’t get a video when it was first released (it was five years before MTV), but when Seger’s Greatest Hits album was released in 1994, a video was made to promote it. The video borrows heavily from American Graffiti, showing young people at a ’60s drive-in, intercut with shots of Seger singing the song in the projection room.

According to Seger, he and the girl really made it in the backseat of a ’62 Chevy, but it didn’t fit lyrically, so he changed the line to “my ’60 Chevy.”

Seger revealed in a radio interview that in the line, “Started humming a song from 1962,” the song he had in mind was “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes (which was actually released in 1963).

Seger credits the Kris Kristofferson-written song “Me And Bobby McGee” for inspiring the narrative songwriting style he employed on this track.

Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube

Song Musings

Happy Wednesday and welcome to another installment of my mid-week feature where I take a closer look at a song I’ve only mentioned in passing or not covered at all to date. The other day, it occurred to me I should dedicate a post to Janis Joplin who was a bit of acquired taste I now consider one of the greatest blues vocalists of all time. My pick is Kozmic Blues.

While I think it’s fair to say Joplin is primarily known for her renditions of gems like Me And Bobby McGee, Try (Just a Little Bit Harder) and Summertime, she also had a few original songs during her short three-year recording career. One of them is Kozmic Blues, off her debut solo album I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, released in September 1969, less than a month after Joplin’s appearance at the Woodstock festival.

Kozmic Blues, co-written with the album’s producer Gabriel Meckler, is about hope and trying to see the good in situations, but always seeming to come up short – something that is a common blues theme, notes Songfacts. Said Joplin: “‘Kozmic Blues’ just means that no matter what you do, man, you get shot down anyway.”

Kozmic Blues became the first of three singles from Joplin’s first solo album – unfortunately the only one that came out during her life, which was cut short in October 1970 at age 27 due to a drug overdose While the song enjoyed moderate chart success and peaking at no. 41 just missed the top 40 in the U.S., it is considered a highlight of Joplin’s set at Woodstock. Here’s an audio clip of that performance. This truly gives me chills!

Following are some additional tidbits from Songfacts:

Joplin explained that she needed to be in a state of trauma and duress in order to write a song, and that’s exactly the state she found herself in when she came up with “Kozmic Blues,” which described her condition at the time. “I can’t write a song unless I’m really traumatic, emotional, and I’ve gone through a few changes, I’m very down,” she said in Rolling Stone. “No one’s ever gonna love you any better and no one’s gonna love you right.”

This is one of the tracks that showcased Joplin’s powerful vocals and her ability to lose herself in a song. She would sometimes enter an almost trance-like state when performing it, as she summoned up the pain that led her to write the song.

This song provided the title for the album, which was Joplin’s first as a solo artist. Her previous releases were with her band Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Joplin would have been about 25 years old when she wrote this song, but that’s not what she’s referring to in the line, “Well, I’m 25 years older now, so I know we can’t be right.”

That line is about how different people perceive love and time. Joplin explained that she was the kind of person who thought that love was supposed to last 25 years, so when it didn’t she would be devastated. To her lover, it wasn’t so awful because he never expected it to last that long.

Why isn’t the title “Cosmic Blues”? Joplin spelled it with a K to take the edge off. “It’s too down and lonely a trip to be taken seriously,” she said. “It’s like a joke on itself.”

Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube