Side A of the LP has five cuts. Folksinger’s Heaven, Dog’s Life, Denver Colorado, Rose Anne, and The Unpleasantness at the Nook. I play banjo only on the third and fifth. Side B. This is the political side of the album.
For better or for worse, this Album is my contribution to the Civil Rights movement in the sixties. |
1. | Folksinger’s Heaven |
I don't like metamusic; songs about songs, singers, or musicians. It is an irrational peeve of mine. But the only way to lick 'em is to join 'em.
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2. | Dog’s Life | This really happened.
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3. | Denver, Colorado | In l958 I was a nonessential frill
in the Broadway production of THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN. There was a
very long scene change between the first and second scene of the first act
which was filled in by a bit of nonsense in front of the curtain of Molly
meeting a bear on the way to Denver. The bear costume was way too hot for the
actor, the scene was pretty stupid, and no one was happy with it ever. I
figured it was much better for Molly to meet a banjo player who sang her this
song--after all, it was a musical. Merideth Wilson. who wrote the show,
loved the idea but wouldn't go for it because it wasn't his song. I toyed with
the idea of letting him have all the credit as long as I got the money, but
decided not to.
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4. | Rose Anne | Rose Anne Pasini was the very shy
fourteen year old sister of Marylu Paturel who, with Bernard, her husband. owned the Cafe Espresso in Woodstock,
New York where Bob Dylan hung out his first summer in Woodstock. I had just
gotten turned on by the Beatles and wrote a few songs I thought were Rock and
Roll. I thought she would get a kick out of me writing a song about her.
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5. | Unpleasantness at the Nook | Before the Nook became the Cafe
Espresso in Woodstock, New York, it was owned by Jim Hamilton and Franklin
Drake. The events and words in this song all happened as sung. The
"people outside" who were "starting to stare." was Teddy
Seacrest, Holly Cantines concubine. (Holly and Teddy played in the
WOODCHUCK HOLLOW BRASS AND WOODWIND CHOIR to be heard from below in the miscellaneous
section.) I am happy to say that all the people in this song ended up loving
the song, though it took a few years for that to happen.
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6. | Together Free | Another peeve of mine, just as
irrational as the first, is about "open road" songs by people who hitchhiked
home from camp once in their life. Woody Guthrie did it very well and
has not been matched yet.
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7. | Slow and Easy | This is not the best song I ever wrote. But it encompasses an idea that I have never heard put into song, or story for that matter. It is the idea that the races of mankind are slowly mixing together. It is an inexorable combining of the human genome that will never unravel. It is a one way street. In time, if we last as a life form "we'll all be brown." |
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8. | Cuba Song | A musical amusement I wrote during
the Cuban Missile crisis.
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9. | Leadbelly’s Children | I had a very commercially minded
manager once, Joe Csida, who suggested I write a song about folksingers being
the children (Symbolically speaking) of Leadbelly, who, like their symbolic
daddy, wanted to save the world. If Joe had known better he would have
suggested Seeger or Guthrie. But it was an interesting challenge which I
may or may not have met. You be the judge.
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10. | Live and Let Live | Being alive and aware in the
sixties would be helpful to understand this song.
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11. | Song of the Cuckoo | Joe Csida, my aforementioned manager ran Davidson County Music, a publishing house owned by Eddy Arnold, that famous country and Western singer. So Joe got Eddy to record my SONG OF THE CUCKOO. This was the big time for me. I thought my career was made. It was issued on a 45rpm single on the other side of which was MOLLY, a song about a Viet Nam vet who arrives at his woman's door blind from the battle, a complete C&W tear-jerker. Molly was the big hit. I made more money from sales of that record than I ever made from any single thing in my life. Maybe five thousand dollars all told. But no air play to speak of. I could have lived with this without complaint except for the following. In the song, as you heard if you have already played it, is a direct reference to sexual intercourse. Eddy Arnold, Joe Csida, or some other idiot changed that line to a direct reference to MARRIAGE. This without my knowledge or consent, which I never would have given. It is my firm belief, never to be proven, that SONG OF THE CUCKOO would have been ten times the hit of MOLLY had it contained the original line. It was the sixties, after all. O, well! |
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