The M M & M 1000 – part 34

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. Another Load of Ms.

GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS – Midnight Train to Georgia / Window Raising Granny (Buddah 383 1973)
“I’d rather live in his world than without him in mine“. This is a song about a culture clash. She’s a sophisticated northern city bred girl. He’s from the rural south. Finding it impossible to adjust to the different pace of life, he yearns to return to his roots, and she has to decide whether she’s more attached to hers or to him. I remember seeing a skit on the Richard Pryor TV show some years back where he was convinced that they could save money having the Pips perform without Gladys. It was very funny seeing them do the backing vocals and dance routines without her lead, but it also highlighted how brilliantly tight they were both in terms of their singing and choreography.

HELEN HUMES – Million Dollar Secret / I’m Gonna Let Him Ride (Modern 779 1950)
Helen Humes was typical of the sassy female R&B singers of the forties and fifties who oozed sexuality, but in a funny, take-no-bullshit way. “Million Dollar Secret” was recorded live, and you can hear the audience cheering her on as she imparts her tale of shameless gold-digging. “Now I’ve got a man who’s seventy-eight / And I’m just thirty-three / Everybody thinks I’m crazy / But his will’s made out to me!”.

DELTA FIVE – Mind Your Own Business / Now That You’re Gone (Rough Trade 31 1979)
Part Gang of Four, part Raincoats, the Delta Five were typical of the wave of post-punk gobby feminist groups that seemed to cluster around Rough Trade. Both the singing and the production were flat and glamourless, but they had a rough-edged funk to them that talked to the feet. And if the choruses had a bit of the protest march sloganeering about them, they stuck in the head. It’s kind of depressing that thirty years on, women in pop are back to being manufactured teen puppets. Even self-proclaimed feminists like the Gossip are more image and packaging than content.

CAB CALLOWAY & HIS ORCHESTRA – Minnie the Moocher / Doin’ the Rhumba (Brunswick 6074 1931)
I’m sure virtually everybody knows this classic from the dawn of the Swing era, largely due to the “hi-de-hi” nonsense chorus. It almost sounds like it’s played for laughs, but away from that chorus it tells a sad tale of a girl who dreams of a fantasy life of untold riches, but who’s stuck with a no-good cokehead who “showed her how to kick the gong around“, or in other words, got her into opium smoking.

DICK DALE – Misirlou / Eight Till Midnight (Del-Tone 5019 1962)
This is a song with a long history that has crossed continents, styles and cultures since it was first penned in Greece as a rebetiko tune back in 1927 by a Greek exile from Turkey called Michalis Patrinos. It became a standard in both Greek and Arab cultures in the years before World War Two. In 1941, a Greek-American called Nick Roubanis did a commercial jazz version, and noticing that the tune had never been published in the US, credited himself as composer. It was soon given English lyrics which bore no relation whatsoever to the originals. Dick Dale, being of Lebanese-American stock, knew the tune in the form that had evolved in the Arab world. He picked out the basic melody on guitar, increased it to warp-speed, and a legendary surf tune was born. Thanks to Tarantino, it’s by far the best-known version in the west today, and a staple in any surf-garage band’s repertoire.

EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL – Missing / mixes (Blanco Y Negro NEG84T 1995)
Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn were contemporaries of mine at Hull University. But I was never much of a fan of their music, although I really liked the Marine Girls and a few other early tracks like “Plain Sailing” and their cover of “Night and Day”. Massive Attack brought Tracey on board for the Protection album, and she absolutely shone in that setting. The duo obviously thought so too, as they made a complete change in their sound for “Missing” in 1994. The Todd Terry remix that came out the following year is the one that everyone knows. It plays to the strengths of her voice, by giving the tune a late night, chilled tempo dripping with melancholy, and yet with enough oomph for the dancefloor.

DEL THA FUNKEE HOMOSAPIEN – Mistadobalina / Burnt (Elektra 142 1991)
It’s just one of those records that you hear once and can’t forget. As everyone probably knows, Del is Ice Cube’s cousin, and cuz produces here. It’s good time vibe really couldn’t be further away from NWA, and it still sounds fresh.

FRANÇOISE HARDY – Mon Amie la Rose / Je n’Attends plus Personne (Vogue 1252 1964)
Funny, I’ve just checked the history of this song and discovered that this was the original version. I’d always thought that it was already a standard when Françoise Hardy recorded it. It sounds timeless, with a sad and vulnerable but sultry feel that somehow only seems genuine when sung in French. Hardy’s voice is an aural aphrodisiac, as far as I’m concerned. Natacha Atlas’s version is brilliant too.

BO DIDDLEY – Mona / Hey Bo Diddley (Checker 860 1957)
For me, this is the song that encapsulates everything that was great about Bo Diddley. The riff and the groove never sounded better than on “Mona”.

CLYDE McPHATTER & THE DRIFTERS – Money Honey / The Way I Feel (Atlantic 1006 1953)
“Money Honey” is just one of a long tradition of songs that place the green folding stuff above love, life and happiness. Especially when you’ve got none. The 1953 original model Drifters shared no members with the 1958 Ben E King version, let alone the groups that continue to this day. But they’ve become an institution, and will probably still be around long after I’m worm food.

VALENTINE BROTHERS – Money’s Too Tight To Mention / instrumental (Bridge 1982 1982)
Forget Simply Red’s version if you can. John and William Valentine were one-hit wonders who didn’t even have a proper hit, if that makes sense. But this song (written by the pair) was an absolute belter. It sounded out of time in 1982 when soul music had split into post-disco electro stuff, and glossy bedroom crooners. This was a record that harked back to classic pre-disco seventies soul, but with elements of smooth jazz to it too. The only thing that pins it down to the early eighties is the mention of Reaganomics. They did an album called First Take which I’ve never seen, let alone heard.

PIXIES – Monkey Gone to Heaven / Manta Ray (4AD 904 1989)
I haven’t the foggiest idea what it’s about. It’s probably still a staple of indie discos – not that I go to indie discos. I think the bands of that era – Pixies, Throwing Muses, Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr etc were the last generation of rock bands that took the simple guitar / bass / drums format and made something both original and exciting. All of the interesting bands since have fused rock with other stuff. OK, a massive generalisation, but I can’t think of anyone in the last 20 years who has taken the basic form further forward.

DAVE BARTHOLOMEW – The Monkey / Shufflin’ Time (Imperial 5438 1957)
New Orleans legend Dave Bartholomew provided an interesting twist to the theory of evolution with this witty little song. Two monkeys debate Darwin’s theory, but come to the conclusion that it’s flawed because they can’t believe that their ancestors evolved into something as crass and stupid as human beings.

COLOURBOX – The Moon is Blue / You Keep Me Hanging On (4AD 507 1985)
It must be one of the strangest disappearing acts ever. Colourbox blazed a trail that took elements of pop history and mixed them with contemporary electropop and ahead of their time sampling. The Young brothers then went on to have a massive worldwide hit as part of M/A/R/R/S and then promptly vanished. “The Moon is Blue” is a 1980s take on doowop, with Lorita Grahame’s powerful voice swinging through a ballad that sounds like it comes from a parallel universe’s version of a fifties Harlem street corner.

BOSTON – More Than a Feeling / Smokin’ (Epic 50266 1976)
Guilty pleasure time. Airbrushed harmonies and produced to within an inch of its life, there’s something extraordinarily uplifting about this track. It’s got guitar solos that it’s impossible to resist getting out the air guitar for. And of course, it’s got that bassline – the one that Kurt Cobain nicked wholesale for a certain tune that proved quite popular fifteen years later.

TIM BUCKLEY – Morning Glory / Once I Was (Elektra 45623 1967)
I know you’re supposed to prefer the more freeform, jazz-influenced albums that came later, but Goodbye and Hello is the Tim Buckley album I always return to. Its combination of psychedelic folk, baroque pop and grandiose suites seldom put a foot wrong. “Morning Glory” is an unassuming little ballad of exquisite beauty and one of the record’s many highlights.

SLOWDIVE – Morningrise / She Calls / Losing Today (Creation 98 1991)
Has there ever been a band so derided by the mainstream rock press and yet so influential? I was an early convert. Their albums (bar the swansong Pygmalion) always seemed a bit uneven, but the EPs showed them at their best. “Morningrise” has a couple of moments when the guitars go to places that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s impossible to describe how some music has a genuinely physical effect like that. One has to admire Neil Halstead for following his muse and plugging away at his countryish singer-songwriter stuff to a disinterested world when a reformed Slowdive could probably rake it in. They’d miss Rachel Goswell, though. I think she suffers from some ear condition that would make it impossible for her to return to playing stuff at Slowdive’s volume.

GUIDED BY VOICES – Motor Away / Color of My Blade (Matador 148 1995)
Guided By Voices at their most polished, most basic and least wayward. Simply an exciting and uplifting piece of punk-pop.

HANK WILLIAMS – Move It On Over / I Heard You Cryin’ In Your Sleep (MGM 1003 1947)
Hank’s in his missus’ bad books and has to share the kennel with the dog for the night. A witty piece of whimsy that is a rock ‘n’ roll tune in all but name.

CURTIS MAYFIELD – Move On Up / Give It Up (Buddah 2011080 1971)
For some odd reason, his American record company didn’t see this as a single. In Britain they knew better. If you want positive, life-affirming, spiritual soul music that makes you want to bounce around in unfettered joy, there can’t be many tunes better than this. Possibly the most irresistable horn riff in pop, too.

More soon.

The M M & M 1000 – part 32

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. Last load of Ls.

Halfway through now. 500 down, 500 to go. As I mentioned in the first part, this little undertaking stemmed from a response I compiled to a similar list by Dave Marsh getting on for ten years ago. I rediscovered it, tweaked it, and began to unleash it on the world. As far as my mini sketches about each record go, I do a little background checking, but I deliberately don’t reacquaint myself with the tunes before I scribble my nonsense. I figure that if I can’t remember a piece of music that clearly, then it can’t be that great in the first place. Of course, the opposite is definitely not true, as anyone who gets really annoying tunes stuck in their head will know! But after pressing the publish button, I often rush straight to the collection to dig out some of the tunes that I’ve written about. I hope that some of you do too.

PRIMAL SCREAM – Loaded / I’m Losing More Than I Ever Had (Creation 70 1990)
In which Andy Weatherall took an average jangly indie band by the scruff of the neck, shook out the tweeness and stripped them down to their underpants.. “Loaded” still has a lazy, narcotic charm. Unfortunately the band thought that this made them the next Stones, and have proceeded to churn out mountains of guff since, with the occasional unpolished gem sometimes turning up.

LORI & THE CHAMELEONS – The Lonely Spy / Peru (Korova 5 1980)
One of the great could-have-been bands. It was a project by Dave Balfe and Bill Drummond that only ever produced four songs spread over two singles. Each was a little belter. All were mini stories (exotic romances or Le Carré like thrillers, set in places like Japan or India) crammed into three minute pop tunes, all with a noir-ish atmosphere. Think Goldfrapp’s first album for a rough comparison. The Moscow set “The Lonely Spy” has more than a bit of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold about its ultimately tragic plot.

LEFTY FRIZZELL – Long Black Veil / Knock Again True Love (Columbia 41384 1959)
This is one of a few songs that I first heard on Nick Cave’s Kicking Against the Pricks album. I think his cover is equally good, but wasn’t a single. Lefty’s was. It’s a country weepie with all the essential ingredients – murder, adultery and honour. The protagonist sings from beyond the grave about how he was tried and executed for a murder he didn’t commit – his alibi being that he was sleeping with his best friend’s wife at the time. But he feels that to use it would be to betray her, so he silently accepts his fate.

HANK WILLIAMS – The Lost Highway / You’re Gonna Change (MGM 10506 1949)
Why do people who don’t generally like country music revere Hank Williams? I think it’s down to the poetic simplicity of his songs. There’s no gloss, no veneer, no melodramatics. He could be funny (“Move It On Over”), but he could also express existential despair succinctly and simply. “Lost Highway” is beyond grief and bereft of self-pity. It is a man detached from life, so weighed down by regrets, that he just drifts along, a lost soul with no thoughts for the future. It comes across as a warning to others not to be led astray, although his sins are never spelled out. It sounds that it was written as thinly disguised autobiography – especially in the light of the fate that awaited him.

SISTER SLEDGE – Lost in Music / Thinking of You (Cotillion 45001 1979)
I was in my mid teens, a huge fan of Joy Division, Magazine, the Pop Group etc. But I also had a (then) pretty unfashionable love of soul music. “Lost in Music” was pretty unique in the disco canon in that it was the lyrics that spoke to me more than the tune or the rhythm. I totally understood Kathy Sledge and how it was to be obsessed with music, to be able to relate to it more than with any other art form – or person. You get more grounded as you grow older, and fortunately more socially proficient! But my love of music is still a massive part of who I am, and I still regard this as a kind of personal theme tune.

KINGSMEN – Louie Louie / Haunted Castle (Wand 143 1963)
One of the things that’s so great about pop music in particular, is that sometimes a record that is so wrong on every level can end up as a masterpiece. The Kingsmen were an early garage band, dominated by their organ. This rough and ready live recording of an old Richard Berry song features a mumbling singer who seems to have forgotten most of the words, sounds drunk and is utterly unintelligible. The band can barely play either. But its appeal lies in that raw, primitive ineptitude. The riff is dumb and repetitive, but irresistible.

SUPREMES – Love Child / Will This Be The Day (Motown 1135 1968)
DIANA ROSS – Love Hangover / Kiss Me Now (Motown 1392 1976)
Early Supremes songs had simple themes, even if they were poetic and lyrically clever – girl meets boy, girl loses boy or girl gets boy back. “Love Child” moved into the realms of corny melodrama. Beneath that, there is a pretty conservative moral message. What shames the protagonist isn’t her past of extreme poverty, but the fact that she was born out of wedlock, and the song is essentially a plea to her lover to do the decent thing before they do anything that could make her baby suffer the same immoral fate. It’s all a bit Moral Majority. Eight years on, Diana the diva is fully formed. “Love Hangover” starts off seductive and slow but then breaks into a breathless, funky disco. It’s just about the sexiest disco tune this side of Donna Summer.

PET SHOP BOYS – Love Comes Quickly / That’s My Impression (Parlophone 6116 1986)
There was an almost Roman decadence about the eighties. While the outposts of the Empire (ie the north) were suffering grinding poverty, unemployment, and the destruction of their entire industrial and social fabric, the imperial capital was a sea of excess – yuppies, cocktail bars, sports cars and wads of cash being flashed around. It’s ironic that bands the Pet Shop Boys who came to soundtrack this orgy of consumption, were from the north and politically the antithesis of everything that was going on. They were fully aware of their odd position, and both celebrated and satirised the ‘me decade’. Ultimately, they just had a knack for producing lush, slightly melancholy but classic pop songs. Like this one.

ROBERT JOHNSON – Love in Vain Blues / Preachin’ Blues (Vocalion 4630 1937)
In the officially authorised version of the history of rock ‘n’ roll, Robert Johnson is cast unquestionably as the ‘greatest blues artist of all time’. I hate these sort of sweeping statements that make subjective opinions on art stand on par with unarguable facts such as water is wet. Johnson’s total output of 29 songs aren’t all classics by any stretch of the imagination. Some, like “Terraplane Blues” and “Phonograph Blues” are exactly the same tune with different words. You could argue that the reason that he was raised above all others was a) because he was dead, and his life was mysterious, short and came to a dramatic end and b) John Hammond issued loads of his tunes in 1961 on album, making them available to hungry blues fans. I’m not saying he wasn’t great, just that sweeping statements need to be tempered by a bit of perspective. “Love in Vain” (to come back to the subject) is one of his most beautiful songs. It’s weary, mournful and sad – I guess the essence of the blues.

RUTH ETTING – Love Me or Leave Me / I’m Bringing a Red Red Rose (Columbia 1680 1928)
There was an HBO mini series a few years back called Carnivale that I stumbled upon quite by accident on DVD. Set in the height of the great Depression, it followed the progress of a travelling carny, but was focused on the eternal battle between good and evil, represented by a young carnival worker with healing powers and a demonic preacher. Definitely worth watching if you get the chance. To the point. One record that was a recurring motif was this song by Ruth Etting. It was often heard playing on a scratchy 78. Ghostly, and sad, the words “I’d rather be lonely than happy with somebody else” seemed particularly haunting. I downloaded the tune when I’d tracked down who it was by (it’s out of copyright, so I wasn’t being naughty). It’s captivating. Ruth Etting was a stage musical actress and sang the song in the play Makin’ Whoopee. When released in 1928, it was a huge hit. Many people will know the song through Nina Simone’s version. I’ll have to confess I’ve never heard that one. Can’t imagine it’s better than the original.

CLOVERS – Love Potion #9 / Stay Awhile (United Artists 180 1959)
After three hitless years, Atlantic dropped the Clovers, only for the group to bounce back one final time with this little comic gem. With his sex life little more than a memory, our hero goes to see a gypsy who gives him the titular love potion. The effects are a little stronger than he expected, and he lands in trouble when he grabs a cop and kisses him. It’s silly but sprightly. Something the Clovers had done well in their earlier Atlantic days before they were given ever more gloopy and embarrassing ballads to sing. I was to be a brief coda to their career, unfortunately.

TEDDY PENDERGRASS – Love TKO / I Just Called to Say (Philadelphia International 93116 1980)
Once the voice of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Teddy Pendergrass went solo and became the Godfather of eighties soul crooners like Alexander O’Neal and Luther Vandross. I never really liked that stuff – too glossy for me. But “Love TKO” is both sumptuous and soulful. Oh, and miserable too. It’s a typical song about being dumped, but Pendergrass conveys the pain, and the production has an almost noir-ish late night feel. It has more in common with Sinatra’s classic Capitol collections of unadulterated gloom than it does with synthetic eighties soul.

O’JAYS – Love Train / Who Am I? (Philadelphia International 3524 1973)
Trains play a big role in soul music, and also in Gospel. I guess it stems from the great migrations of African Americans from the plantations of the south to northern cities like St Louis, Chicago and Detroit in the first half of the twentieth century. “People Get Ready” by the Impressions uses the train as a metaphor for the favourite old Gospel topic of the Israelites exodus, something that stikes a very obvious chord of recognition. “Love Train” is a secular take on the same concept, and a fabulous uplifting track to boot.

JOY DIVISION – Love Will Tear Us Apart / These Days (Factory 23 1980)
Some songs just are. To try and explain them, is to somehow drain them of their power. I don’t think it’s Joy Division’s greatest song. It also crops up frequently in all sorts of parts of the media. I rarely play it, but then I don’t need to – I know it note for note.

EMMETT MILLER – Lovesick Blues / Big Bad Bill (Okeh 40465 1925)
Nick Tosches’ book Where the Dead Voices Gather is a superb piece of music archaeology, biography and polemic rolled into one. The central figure is a vaudevillian and blackface comedian called Emmett Miller who recorded a couple of dozen 78s over a fifteen year period. They range from seriously unfunny skits on black characters that are quite shocking in their racism, to prehistoric country croons. Tosches makes strong, often controversial, arguments about the role of minstrelsy in the half century or so following the American Civil War, but also strong arguments for Miller’s role in the evolution of country music. On that latter score, “Lovesick Blues” is exhibit A, a bruised yodel that clearly predates Jimmie Rodgers. It’s a gateway to a past that we can never truly comprehend.

More soon

The M M & M 1000 – part 25

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. Yet more I’s.

YVONNE ELLIMAN – If I Can’t Have You / Good Sign (RSO 884 1978)
The Bee Gees jumped on the disco bandwagon with Saturday Night Fever, and in their wake, virtually every desperate pop star did a disco record. It’s little wonder, then, that the genre provoked such hostility when there was so much pap being released. Despite loathing pretty much everything to do with the film and its soundtrack, I’ve always had a soft spot for this song. Perhaps it’s because it’s got a heart. It isn’t cheesy and shiny and plastic. Elliman sings it like she means it – with soul.

GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS – If I Were Your Woman / The Tracks of My Tears (Soul 35078 1970)
MILLIE JACKSON – If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right / The Rap (Spring 155 1975)
In popular love song, the woman’s point of view tended to be either doe-eyed worshipper or wronged victim. Often both. Deeper, more complex emotions were rarely aired. That simplified view of the world began to change rapidly as the sixties became the seventies. “If I Were Your Woman” sees Gladys Knight yearning for a man who’s unobtainable. Millie Jackson has got him anyway, despite the fact that he’s married. Neither is apologetic about their situation, although both recognise that it’s far from ideal.

CURTIS MAYFIELD – If There’s a Hell Below (We’re All Gonna Go) / The Makings of You (Curtom 1955 1970)
Amidst an uneasy hubbub, Curtis spits the opening lines of a song that is a frustrated reaction to racial polarisation, political inaction and corruption, social breakdown and the general descent of society into violence – a long way from the ideals of the Civil Rights movement. There is a deep anger about the general complacency of everyone. The repeated refrain of “Don’t Worry” is sarcastic, not reassuring. Coming from a natural optimist, the despair that oozes from every word is shocking. It remains one of Curtis Mayfield’s darkest, but greatest songs, with an arrangement of uneasy funk that builds a fragile surface of joy over a dark turmoil underneath.

HAROLD MELVIN & THE BLUE NOTES – If You Don’t Know Me By Now / Let Me Into Your World (Philadelphia International 3520 1972)
One of the finest soul ballads of the seventies, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” is lush and sad, but at the same time somehow uplifting. Teddy Pendergrass gives one of his finest vocal performances as a frustrated man who can see that the suspicion and jealousy of his partner is threatening their relationship. He’s beginning to wonder if it can ever change, and whether it would be for the best to end it. It’s another example of how soul music had moved from simple boy meets girl, boy loses girl (or vice versa) stuff towards a reflection of the emotional complexities of real relationships.

SPINNERS – I’ll Be Around / How Could I Let You Get Away? (Atlantic 2904 1972)
JACKSON FIVE – I’ll Be There / One More Chance (Motown 1171 1970)
I wrote about the Spinners’ masterpiece here. Both songs cover similar ground – the noble dumpee selflessly reassuring his ex that he’ll always be there for emotional support. Whether she finds that touching or creepily akin to stalking is not recorded. What both also share is an air of steadfast melancholy that is really touching. I don’t think the Jacksons’ ever bettered “I’ll Be There”, even though the sentiments are a little odd coming from a boy yet to reach his teens.

NEW YORK CITY – I’m Doing Fine Now / Ain’t It So (Chelsea 113 1973)
It’s just the way things fell, but here is yet another seventies soul classic. Pretty much one hit wonders, New York City gave a Big Apple take on the Philadelphia sound. Indeed, it sounds more Philly than a lot of Philly records. Despite the suspicions of bandwagon jumping, “I’m Doing Fine Now” is a great song that does the ‘I’m alright even though you’ve gone’ thing refreshingly straight, without the undercurrent of pretence that someone like Smokey Robinson would thread through the subject. They really do sound like they’re doing absolutely fine.

TAMI LYNN – I’m Gonna Run Away From You / The Boy Next Door (Atco 6342 1966)
A Northern Soul favourite, this was reissued in the UK in the seventies and became a hit half a dozen or so years after it was recorded. It’s not difficult to see why it beguiled them at the Casino and the Twisted Wheel. The rhythm is urgent, and there is repeated hook by the backing singers that ensnares the listener immediately.

BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON – I’m Gonna Run to the City of Refuge / Jesus Is Coming Soon (Columbia 14391 1928)
Nick Cave used the song as the basis for his “City Of Refuge” on Tender Prey. It’s not hard to see why he was so drawn to Blind Willie Johnson. Johnson was, on the surface, a bluesman. He sang blues-like tunes accompanied by guitar. But his subject matter was exclusively religious, and he came across like a true apocalyptic fire-and-brimstone type. His earthy growl served only to give him added gravitas. His God was the Old Testament one of judgement and vengeance, not some fluffy happy-clappy type.

FOUR TOPS – I’m In a Different World / Remember When (Motown 1132 1968)
Not generally considered an A list Tops’ song, “I’m in a Different World” ticks all the same boxes for me that their better known songs do. Levi Stubbs sounds emotionally distraught as usual, even if the subject matter is ostensibly upbeat!

PASSIONS – I’m In Love With a German Film Star / Don’t Talk To Me I’m Shy (Polydor 222 1981)
Largely forgotten now, the Passions were a band who never fulfilled their promise. The dreamy, reverb-heavy “German Film Star” is one of the cornerstones of so-called dream-pop (a genre name that I’ve always loathed), with a debt owed by acts as diverse as the Cocteau Twins and Galaxie 500. “Don’t Talk to Me I’m Shy” is faster, more Lush-like.

SKIP JAMES – I’m So Glad / Special Rider Blues (Paramount 13098 1931)
The song’s best known these days through the cover by Cream. Skip James’ original has an atmosphere all of its own that serves the song much better than the over-excited pseudo-metal of Clapton’s group. Country blues fans will attest that he was one of the finest and most original practitioners of the form, but he was stymied by appearing on the scene just as the music industry (and everything else) was disappearing down the black hole of the Depression.

HANK WILLIAMS – I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry / My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It (MGM 10560 1949)
Hear the lonesome whiperwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry

Has ever a more perfect paean to loneliness been written? I don’t think so.

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