A Song of Songs from a Songwriter's Songwriter

Category: 50 Songs to Hear

SONG: Out to Sea
ARTIST: J.D. Souther
SONGWRITER: John David Souther
ALBUM: John David Souther
YEAR/LABEL: 1972, Asylum

Thank you. I really enjoy singing it.
(J. D. Souther, March 9, 2009, regarding the greatness of "Out to Sea")

John David Souther has had an interesting career, to say the very least. He began nearly 40 years ago on a small label called Amos with a fellow Detroit native by the name of Glenn Frey in a duo called Longbranch Pennywhistle. That act folded when Frey joined a drummer in another band on Amos Records, an outfit called Shiloh, to back Linda Ronstadt. The drummer's name was Don Henley. Souther ended up dating Ronstadt and being good friends with Henley and Frey in their new venture, the Eagles.

As with numerous singer/songwriters in L.A. in the early 70s, Souther found no trouble getting a record deal with Asylum Records. As other Asylum acts such as the Eagles, Ronstadt, and Jackson Browne went from cult acts to multi-platinum superstars Souther lagged in the background in terms of sales. His songs were well-known: he co-wrote a number of Eagles hits and wrote several songs that Ronstadt recorded (including "Simple Man, Simple Dream," the quasi-title track of her 1977 album Simple Dreams). Asylum dropped him in the late 70s and Souther found a new home on Columbia, where he scored his only top 40 successes: a duet with James Taylor, "Her Town Too," and his own 1979 hit, "You're Only Lonely" (which, to this day, people continually confuse with Roy Orbison's song "Only the Lonely").

One more album followed, 1983's spectacluar Home By Dawn, before Souther turned to acting for the better part of 20 years. He was a semi-regular on thirtysomething and appeared in numerous made-for-TV movies (including the one about the miraculous survival of the Pennsylvania miners after a cave-in). Then he came back to music in 2008, releasing a very unique album titled If the World Was Yours. The CD featured his typical sardonic lyrics, this time backed by a jazz ensemble instead of the country or rock flavor his music had always enjoyed.

When one analyzes Souther's material, the starting place is with his self-titled Asylum debut in 1972. The Eagles called attention to this masterpiece when they chose as the initial single from their first album in 28 years the song "How Long," a cover of one of the songs off John David Souther.

The outstanding feature of Souther's first album is the song that follows "How Long," the superb "Out to Sea." Just over five minutes in length, it is one of Souther's longer songs, and every second is delicious. Souther takes the listener on an autobiographical trip that begins where he "used to sing in Texas" and moves on "to California by the shining sea." His motive is fame ("I thought I'd write the song of songs") but he is quickly brought back to earth by "my baby's goodbye voice ringing out to me, 'Dear David, I hope you live that long.'" That is one of the great lines of Souther's career -- or anyone's.

All of the struggles of trying to become a success requires "a refuge where the holy winds are strong," and Souther claims that's the ocean. "We will bathe in the white foamy water and be pure as God's driven snow," he sings. He gets grounded in reality in the last verse where he realizes, "I might never sing a song that's good enough a thing to chase the doubts and fears away." All of these philosophical gems are augmented with harmonies from Souther's Longbranch/Pennywhistle duet partner Glenn Frey.

Souther might never give the world "the song of songs," but with "Out to Sea" he certainly came close.

OTHER J.D. SOUTHER MUSIC TO INVESTIGATE:

The entire Home By Dawn album -- a duet with Linda Ronstadt ("Say You Will"), sarcasm ("Bad News Travels Fast"), and marvelous rock (the title track and "Night"). If Souther was going to stay away from music for a quarter century, he certainly picked a high note on which to leave.

The entire John David Souther album -- some people save their best for first. Souther's debut album displayed all the promise that he lived up to.

"Roll Um Easy" (from Rock and Roll Doctor: A Tribute to Lowell George) -- a terrific version of a great Little Feat song.

PREVIOUS SONGS:
(Country)
Nobody Eats At Linebaugh's Anymore
My Book of Memories
Lost to a Stranger
A Little Bitty Heart
Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs
Life is Too Short
I Want a Home in Dixie
I Lost Today
Fingerprints
Down to the River to Pray
Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyeballs
A Death in the Family
Dark as a Dungeon
Bottomless Well

(Rock)
One More Song
New Delhi Freight Train
Millworker
Long Way Home
Island
Heart of Rome
Harriet Tubman's Gonna Carry Me Home
Entella Hotel
Desperados Under the Eaves
Crossing Muddy Waters
Cliffs of Dooneen
Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)
Baby Mine

And That's the Way It Is

Category: Obituary

It's been nearly 28 years since Walter Cronkite left the air, which means we are in our second generation of Americans who are not aware of what it was like to have him in the living room nightly.

It is sad, yet appropriate, that Walter Cronkite died when he did: right as America remembers the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's launching that took man to the moon, and as America witnessed the obvious death of true news reporting and journalism courtesy of the circus over Michael Jackson's death.

When Elvis died in 1977, Cronkite reported it. He did not, as Geraldo Rivera did with Jackson, speculate on whether Elvis had been murdered or committed suicide. He simply reported the news. Three years later, his opening of the December 9, 1980 newscast began with the fact that the Iranian hostage situation, the economy, and other news items were "all overshadowed by a guitar player from Liverpool." Again, he didn't grandstand or spend the entire newscast speculating about John Lennon's death the way so many did over former NFL quarterback Steve McNair's murder earlier this month.

We won't ever see the likes of Walter Cronkite again: a professional whose responsibility was to report the news, not to make a spectacle of it or to make himself a celebrity at the expense of the story. And for that we should ALL shed a tear.

Walter Cronkite was 92.

Going Home Again

Category: 50 Songs to Hear

SONG: One More Song
ARTIST: Randy Meisner
SONGWRITER: Jack Tempchin
ALBUM: One More Song
YEAR/LABEL: 1980, Epic

I look at the Eagles as just good compadres that I've worked with in the past. I have no ill will towards any of them.
(Randy Meisner)

In 1977, in Knoxville, Tennessee, the sometimes tumultuous relationship between members of the Eagles came to a head when Glenn Frey and Randy Meisner went after each other with their fists. Meisner left the band shortly after that. The Eagles replaced Meisner with the same man who had replaced him in Poco, Timothy Schmit, and went on their merry way, releasing one single ("Please Come Home for Christmas" in 1978) and one album (The Long Run in 1979) before breaking up.

Meisner went on his own beginning with a 1978 self-titled album that was mostly covers and mostly not that good. He rebounded in 1980 with a hit, "Deep Inside My Heart" with Kim Carnes, and the album One More Song. The title track remains the highlight of that album, and of Meisner's solo career.

"One More Song" was written by San Diego-based songwriter Jack Tempchin, who was responsible for Eagles songs "Peaceful Easy Feeling" and "Already Gone." (He also wrote "Slow Dancing [Swaying to the Music].") Tempchin modified his original lyrics to make the song appear more autobiographical for Meisner. The lyrics tell of a man "leaving town for good that night," implying Meisner's departure from the Eagles. The final line before the last chorus belongs in a "great lines" hall of fame: "I was singing this song as the road reached along and the empty night swallowed my car." The world could use more exceptional lines like that in popular songs.

While the song's storyline provides the feeling of the ending of Meisner's career with the Eagles, the recording was a reunion: Don Henley and Glenn Frey sang background vocals on the tune, marking the first time they had performed together since the end of the Hotel California tour when Meisner unceremoniously departed the band. The song's concluding line, "One more song for the road I'm traveling on, one more song for the times to come," show that the wounds had healed.

Randy Meisner, sadly, never got his full due as a solo artist. This exceptional song shows exactly why he deserves those accolades.

OTHER RANDY MEISNER MUSIC TO INVESTIGATE:

The entire One More Song album -- Meisner put everything together on a great recording (including an early recording of another Tempchin song, "White Shoes," that Emmylou Harris would later record as the title track of one of her albums).
"Bad Man" (from Randy Meisner [1978]) -- a song written by Frey and J.D. Souther serves as the highlight of his first solo album.
"Try and Love Again" (with the Eagles, from Hotel California) -- a song recorded a year before his split with the band that sounds as though he almost knew it was coming.

PREVIOUS SONGS:
(Country)
My Book of Memories
Lost to a Stranger
A Little Bitty Heart
Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs
Life is Too Short
I Want a Home in Dixie
I Lost Today
Fingerprints
Down to the River to Pray
Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyeballs
A Death in the Family
Dark as a Dungeon
Bottomless Well

(Rock)
New Delhi Freight Train
Millworker
Long Way Home
Island
Heart of Rome
Harriet Tubman's Gonna Carry Me Home
Entella Hotel
Desperados Under the Eaves
Crossing Muddy Waters
Cliffs of Dooneen
Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)
Baby Mine

Young Folks' Boogie

Category: 50 Songs to Hear

SONG: New Delhi Freight Train

ARTIST: Little Feat

SONGWRITER: Terry Allen

ALBUM: Time Loves a Hero

YEAR/LABEL: 1977, Warner Brothers

I played flute. Legitimate flute and thought I was a jazzer. I hated rock and roll then.
(Lowell George)

Little Feat was one of the best-kept secrets of the 1970s. Their albums sold well -- most of their albums earned "gold" status for 500,000 records sold -- but they never had a hit. And that is a crying shame. When the "superstars" FM format took hold in the early 1980s a lot of bands that had enjoyed success on FM radio despite not having "hits" had to go, and Little Feat was among the casualties. During the 1970s, however, Little Feat had a number of songs on FM play lists.

A number of songs from what would become their final studio album released during leader Lowell George's life, Time Loves a Hero, received airplay in 1977. Critics didn't care too much for Time Loves a Hero, labeling it "too commercial" or a dramatic departure from their previous work. Whatever the critic may have thought, the album yielded a great song: "New Delhi Freight Train."

The song, written by alt-country singer/songwriter Terry Allen, featured Lowell George's gruff, soulful vocals and rather subtle guitar work. The song is the tale of a man whose "real name is just Jesse James" who pillaged, killed, stole, and "killed a man named Smiley Jordan." George sang about this criminal describing himself as "just a country boy." Much like other songs about the legendary outlaw (the country song "Jesse James" and Warren Zevon's "Frank and Jesse James") the villain is presented not as a "good guy" but as misunderstood (Zevon used that very term in his song). All the while the solid beat drives the song along like the train depicted in the title.

Little Feat's lead singer, lead guitarist, and major songwriter Lowell George died June 29, 1979 of a drug-induced heart attack while touring for his solo album Thanks I'll Eat It Here. George's death left Little Feat in limbo for seven years until the members re-formed the band with Fred Tackett on guitar and former Pure Prairie League singer Craig Fuller on lead vocals. While the revamped incarnations of Little Feat have enjoyed some success, it is the Lowell George era that is most fondly remembered. That's understandable because many memorable songs came from those years -- including "New Delhi Freight Train."

OTHER LITTLE FEAT MUSIC TO INVESTIGATE:

The entire Dixie Chicken album -- the title song is a masterpiece, "Fat Man in the Bathtub" is one of the funniest songs from Little Feat, and "Roll 'Um Easy" is one of their great ballads.
"Tripe Face Boogie" (from Sailing Shoes) -- oh, yeah. Fun ("New York, Yew Nork, you gotta choose one") abounds in this rocking number.
"Willin'" (from Little Feat) -- if there is a definitive Little Feat song, this is it. If you only know Linda Ronstadt's version or some other cover of this song, run, don't walk, to a record store and get the original.
"Straight From the Heart" (from Down on the Farm) -- a great song from the posthumous Little Feat release shows that there was nothing lacking in George's singing or sterling slide work.

PREVIOUS SONGS:
(Country)
Lost to a Stranger
A Little Bitty Heart
Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs
Life is Too Short
I Want a Home in Dixie
I Lost Today
Fingerprints
Down to the River to Pray
Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyeballs
A Death in the Family
Dark as a Dungeon
Bottomless Well

(Rock)
Millworker
Long Way Home
Island
Heart of Rome
Harriet Tubman's Gonna Carry Me Home
Entella Hotel
Desperados Under the Eaves
Crossing Muddy Waters
Cliffs of Dooneen
Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)
Baby Mine

Working Woman's Lament

Category: 50 Songs to Hear

SONG: Millworker
ARTIST: James Taylor
SONGWRITER: James Taylor
ALBUM: Flag
YEAR/LABEL: 1979; Columbia

I'm not sure I can put myself in their place. I'm sure there's a millworker somewhere who's closely approximated that song.
(James Taylor)

Songs about occupations are nothing new. Likewise, songs performed from a woman's perspective by a man are not uncommon. In 1979, James Taylor put the two together to create one of his greatest tunes, "Millworker."

The song is far from just a lament of an underpaid, overworked woman. The unnamed protagonist in this song is not only dealing with her work, which is described as "nothing but an awful boring job," but also the plight of a single mother. It is difficult to tell who the woman in Taylor's narrative hates more -- her late husband who "dies from too much whiskey and leaves me these three faces to feed" and apparently his job (he is described as a "no-good millworking man") or the job that wastes her life because she "lets this manufacturer use my body for a tool."

Solace is found in the coffee break and memories of the woman's happier childhood where she lived on a farm with a smiling father and a grandfather who told tales of his days sailing on the Great Lakes. But it's soon back to work: "it's me and my machine for the rest of the morning, for the rest of the afternoon, for the rest of my life."

Songs like "Millworker" show exactly why James Taylor was one of the most respected singer/songwriters of the 1970s.

OTHER JAMES TAYLOR MUSIC TO INVESTIGATE:

"Terra Nova" (from JT) -- an absolutely gorgeous song from one of Taylor's biggest albums. Taylor's then-wife Carly Simon joins in the call-and-response at the conclusion.

"I Will Not Lie for You" (from Flag) -- a man who has taken about all he can after covering up for a philandering friend because she now has her sights set on him.

"Her Town Too" (with J.D. Souther, from Dad Loves His Work) -- a melancholy song about Taylor's divorce from Carly Simon ("she gets the house and the garden, he gets the boys in the band"). J.D. Souther's voice compliments the heartache Taylor poured out in this hit.

"Knockin' 'Round the Zoo" (from James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine) -- this song sounds as though it was recorded in a bar after the participants tried to consume all the product in the bar. A reminder that people -- even a "sensitive singer/songwriter" like Taylor -- shouldn't take things too seriously.

PREVIOUS SONGS:
(Country)
A Little Bitty Heart
Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs
Life is Too Short
I Want a Home in Dixie
I Lost Today
Fingerprints
Down to the River to Pray
Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyeballs
A Death in the Family
Dark as a Dungeon
Bottomless Well

(Rock)
Long Way Home
Island
Heart of Rome
Harriet Tubman's Gonna Carry Me Home
Entella Hotel
Desperados Under the Eaves
Crossing Muddy Waters
Cliffs of Dooneen
Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)
Baby Mine

Prayers for Amy Mickelson and a Brain Transplant for ESPN

Category: News/Rant

Golfer Phil Mickelson's wife, Amy, has been diagnosed with breast cancer. The press release gives no information on how early or advanced it may be, just saying that she will most likely undergo "major surgery" in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, ESPN reporters, in their usual stupidity, posed a question about how Amy's illness would affect Tiger Woods.

C'mon, guys, a woman has cancer! Can't you leave Tiger Woods out of it for a moment and focus on PHIL AND AMY?!

My prayers for recovery for Amy and for support for Phil and their three children during this very difficult time.

And I also hope and pray the reporters at ESPN can find some tact, if not a brain.

It's Broke and Can't Be Fixed

Category: 50 Songs to Hear

SONG: Long Way Home
ARTIST: Don Henley
SONGWRITERS: Don Henley / Danny Kortchmar
ALBUM: I Can't Stand Still
YEAR/LABEL: 1982; Asylum

In my songwriting I'm self-critical to a point where it stifles me, sometimes paralyzes me.
(Don Henley)

One of the worst-kept secrets in the history of rock and roll music was the break-up of the Eagles in 1981. Their label, Asylum, denied it, and even Joe Walsh, who did a solo tour in 1981, continued to refer to himself as a member of the Eagles. Only when the solo albums began flying (pardon the pun) out of the various members did the truth come out.

While all five members released solo projects in the immediate aftermath of the disbanding of the Eagles (Walsh's There Goes the Neighborhood, Don Felder's Airborne, Timothy Schmit's Playing It Cool, and Glenn Frey's No Fun Aloud), by far the most outstanding solo album came from Don Henley. Henley, the golden voice of the Eagles, teamed up with guitarist/songwriter Danny Kortchmar (best known for his work with James Taylor and Jackson Browne) and created one of the best albums of 1982: I Can't Stand Still. The album sold nowhere near as well as the Eagles' final album (Eagles Live), managing only "gold" record status despite a top five hit in "Dirty Laundry." That is a shame because I Can't Stand Still remains a highlight of Henley's professional life. Highlights abound, but the song that grabs and refuses to let go is "Long Way Home."

Don Henley has one of the best voices in rock and roll: not only is it technically good, he knows exactly how to use it. In this song he delivers the song with all the pain and emotion necessary to convey a broken relationship in the line "this house don't work and this dream don't work no more, and lover neither do you and I." The last note of the song is simply beautiful over the background singers (including his fellow Eagle Timothy Schmit).

Henley's songwriting skills are in top form as well, as evident by the great philosophy in the first verse, "there's three sides to every story, baby, there's yours and there's mine and the cold hard truth." The visuals in the song are superb: one can see Henley standing in the telephone booth, the phone in his hand and his coat pulled tight against the cold he describes in the opening line.

Henley's solo career took off with his second album Building the Perfect Beast. That album went platinum and earned Henley a Grammy for his hit "The Boys of Summer." While that song is the best hit single of the 1980s and Henley is better known as an Eagle, "Long Way Home" is an outstanding song showcasing his talent as a singer and a songwriter.

OTHER DON HENLEY MUSIC TO INVESTIGATE:

The entire I Can't Stand Still album -- the big hit "Dirty Laundry" pales in comparison to songs like "Lilah" and "Them and Us," the latter a seriocomical look at the arms race (complete with Warren Zevon, who was of Russian descent, providing backing vocals) that ranks with Randy Newman's "Political Science" as the best songs on the subject. "Johnny Can't Read" is another highlight.
"A Month of Sundays" (originally the B-side of "The Boys of Summer;" now on the Building the Perfect Beast CD) -- a marvelous song about the plight of farmers.

PREVIOUS SONGS:
(Country)
Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs
Life is Too Short
I Want a Home in Dixie
I Lost Today
Fingerprints
Down to the River to Pray
Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyeballs
A Death in the Family
Dark as a Dungeon
Bottomless Well

(Rock)
Island
Heart of Rome
Harriet Tubman's Gonna Carry Me Home
Entella Hotel
Desperados Under the Eaves
Crossing Muddy Waters
Cliffs of Dooneen
Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)
Baby Mine