Said Bob Dylan, recently.
Questions for discussion:
1. What's the use of looking for something? You'll have better luck walking intuitively while not actually looking. That is, don't look where you're going. That's exactly what doesn't work.
2. Frank Sinatra is hardly an "obscure artist," but there are many recordings of Frank Sinatra singing an obscure song. What's your favorite obscure Frank Sinatra song?
3. Even Jimmy Webb is not obscure, but how many songs has he written, and what percentage of them are non-obscure? But don't talk about them. Talk about a Jimmy Webb obscurity.
4. Whatever happened to Christmas? Remember how love was all around? Whatever happened to you?
5. What have you found, Bob Dylan style, by walking into it intuitively?
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56 comments:
Favorite relatively obscure Sinatra song is "Violets for Your Furs".
5. What have you found, Bob Dylan style, by walking into it intuitively?
You.
I "find" many things while looking for something else. It's magic.
Whoever made the video apparently thinks that Christmas went away when Frank left his wife and kids for Ava Gardner.
Is it weird that all the background singers in music of that era sound the same. I would be up for a Wrecking Crew documentary about them, whoever they were -- or even better, a Spın̈al Tap mockumentary.
Sam Ash Music, Paramus, NJ, great guitar playing by ________.
Tank: What's going on?
Employee: Les Paul.
Tank: That's not a Les Paul.
Employee: It is Mr. Les Paul.
And so it was, he was checking out some new pedal effects. He lived nearby in Mahwah.
Not everything can be serendipitous. Sometimes you find what you are looking for by not looking for it, but if you really need it now, then accidentally bumping into it a few years down the road is cold comfort. Sometimes God or The Universe doesn't really want you to find it and you have to do the digging yourself.
Something I walked into today:
Don’t bag on Zelensky for showing up to the White House in a sweatshirt. Apparently a member of the Biden administration stole his luggage.
— Jimmy Failla (@jimmyfailla) December 21, 2022
5. What have you found, Bob Dylan style, by walking into it intuitively?
Three wives.
While categorizing music files I found so many singers sounding like Bob Dylan I made a new category for a “sing like Dylan” playlist.
We have an eclectic Christmas music playlist. A few days ago we realized we had no Judy Garland, the originator of one of the greatest songs, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas". Turns out Judy never made a Christmas album. Someone on YouTube, though, compiled an excellent play of her obscure recordings, including songs I didn't even know existed. (It's Eddie Styles; I just checked.)
5. What have you found, Bob Dylan style, by walking into it intuitively?
I think that describes the creative process. If you try to intentionally do something creative you somehow push it away.
What's your favorite obscure Frank Sinatra song?
One of them is probably: Cycles
I think you're taking it wrong. When you're looking for something, you know what you want or at least the kind of thing you what. When you let your guard down, you often find something you never thought of or knew you needed.
Science, the arts, lots of things, setting your sights on something can be like blinders that cause you to miss what you might have had if you only stopped focusing on what you thought you wanted.
Q: What's your favorite obscure Frank Sinatra song?
A: Whatever Happened to Christmas
Talk about a Jimmy Webb obscurity.
He wrote a song called 'Whatever Happened to Christmas'
Sorry - I don't know of any other obscure Sinatra/Webb songs; they're too... obscure.
"All I Know" is an obscure Jimmy Webb song I like. It was on a solo album he did ca 1973.
He was trying to make a place for himself in the great singer-songwriter trend but didn't quite have the vocal chops or charisma or something.
Funny that didn't hinder Dylan.
My favorite Frank Sinatra song isn't a song, but a medley. The performance is one those banter/songs that Sinatra, Dean Martin, and other singers would do where they'd throw in funny quips or comments.
The band starts with New York, New York, and as the audience applauds, the melody shifts a little, as Frank Sinatra sings some other favorite. Mack the Knife is in there, possibly King of the Road, then Sinatra admits to stringing them along, and does the song they expected.
It's hard to know what's obscure, because if you know it maybe others do, too. Is "Angel Eyes" obscure? I like it better than the definitely-not-obscure "One for My Baby," which covers the same ground.
Ah...Dagwood. A great song, "Violets for your Furs". A nice, but obscure version is from a singer/pianist named Judy Roberts. Formerly from Chicago. Not sure where she may be from these days.
My entire life has been walked into intuitively. Somehow it turned out pretty good.
3. I ran into a Jimmy Webb song by accident on. Christian album - The Moon's a Harsh Mistress - which I hadn't heard before. Then I found Glen Campbell's live version which is marvelous, though some of the incipient dementia may have caused him to switch the lyrics around at the end. Still my favorite rendition.
Glen Campbell - Live in Sioux Falls - The Moon's a Harsh Mistress
Re: Obscure Sinatra
I also like Wandering from that same album Cycles.
Meade:
Very sweet. And true!
What have you found, Bob Dylan style, by walking into it intuitively?
I needed a rubber sheet to use for a lap in polishing a telescope mirror. Rubber -> water -> plumbing supplies. Voila.
Most of the music I listen to anymore is stuff that I wandered into on YouTube. I start looking for one thing and then go off on semi-related tangents. At this point I'm not sure what is obscure and what is well-known. It sometimes surprises me when I'm playing songs and someone else doesn't recognize one I listen to frequently. Or they will play something popular and I'll be clueless, never having heard it before.
A YouTube search for whatever I was interested in at the time (no idea now what that was) led me to this. It's a Russian bluegrassy-folk music band. I'm pretty sure that one is obscure in the US.
“Three wives.”
🎶We three wives
Of Roy Lofquist
Tra-La-La…
Well, you get the gist…🎶
What a beautiful song!
Thanks Ann and Bob!
Jimmy Webb graduated from my same high school, although at least a decade ahead of me, and just before Jim Messina (Kenny Loggins’ partner not Obama’s advisor). Colton Union High School, for the record. Go Yellowjackets!
How funny - wrong link. I guess I should learn how to code. (I actually used to be an old Tandem TAL coder back in the heydays of Tandem, for those of you who know the history of computers.)
Here is the proper link to Wandering
"Mama Will Bark," Frank's duet with Dagmar.
Great first comment from Meade.
One of my first e-fights was with a poster on a Civil War(!) newsgroup who didn't believe that I, a white Boomer (and for some reason my Southerness was a factor), had no idea who Jimmy Webb was. I have a better idea now. (The writer of MacArthur Park has a deep hole to crawl out of, in my opinion.)
That was almost thirty years ago, and my first intro to how bizarre people can be online.
Not really a fan of Ol' Blue Eyes, or Christmas music in general.
Merry, everybody!
Meno's Paradox!
https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/menopar.htm
“ "All I Know" is an obscure Jimmy Webb song I like.”
It feels famous to me… as an Art Garfunkel song. But that was half a century ago.
Whatever happened to Christmas? Remember how love was all around? Whatever happened to you?
Nothing much happened to my Christmas. There’s a tree in the corner of our family room and garlands on the banister of the stairs. These days both are artificial, but that’s not much of a change, and these days my sons will drive an hour and a half and two hours, respectively, with their families, but that’s just the natural evolution of things.
I have always contributed generously to charities that put most of their money into good works instead of salaries and advertising. This is a good time of year to be generous, with cold weather on the way (and this year already arrived in many places). I got lucky in my life; others didn’t.
What happened to me? I stopped being liberal many years ago when I decided that I had to live in a real world and I explicitly rejected the hive mind of liberalism.
I've always liked and admired Jimmy Webb but he put out a solo album in 1993 called Suspending Disbelief.......(I think it may have been produced by Linda Ronstadt, who I also really like).......and it is TERRIBLE.
I have an autographed copy!
A hound, a bay horse and a turtle-dove.
"It Was A Very Good Year" was somewhat obscure, when sung by the Kingston Trio. Of course, once sung by Sinatra, it was no longer obscure.
One of my favorite YouTube videos is of Sinatra recording the song in studio.
https://youtu.be/xK2HCHHZ4Rc
Favorite obscure Sinatra song: “Stay with me.” It was the theme from the movie “The Cardinal.” 1960s Otto Preminger movie about a priest’s life.
I find the falling into the you tube holed leads to a lot of music I'd never find any other way. There is a great country/R&B singer based in New Zealand called Tami Nielsen that has become one of my all time favorites. Also found another kiwi named Hopetoun Brown that I love (as an added plus, one of his videos featured the bass clarinet in a rock/soul setting). And in reading a book about the Andes I found out that there is a style of music from Peru called psychedelic cumbia that's pretty darn interesting. I could go on and on.
Jimmy Webb is a fucking genius.
He wrote 'Galveston' and 'Wichita Lineman.'
The latter being one of the most romantic songs you will ever hear...
"What's the use of looking for something? You'll have better luck walking intuitively while not actually looking"
As unintuitively as it sounds, this is when "paying attention" pays off.
This is one of those Blue Christmas things. Most prominent is Garland's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."
But its definitely a common Christmas experience. The nostalgia for one's own childhood, or as parents and grandparents for the memories of when the now-grown kids were small. Or the memories of Christmas services in an era where everyone seemed to believe. Or the first Christmas after losing a loved one, or a divorce, or just being away from home.
Christmas in this sense has always been at war with itself.
"If These Old Walls Could Talk". Sean Colvin version.
Maybe not obscure. But good.
Bob's intuition is a lot better than mine.
But I enjoy figuring out things intuitively in my workshop. Our house is old and quirky so I spend a lot of time trying to make things better so they won't break again.
My favorite obscure Sinatra song is "I Get Along Without You Very Well" from the 1955 Wee Small Hours album. It was based on a poem written by Jane Brown in a defunct magazine. A college friend of Hoagy Carmichael copied the poem and gave it to him. Several years later, Hoagy Carmichael found it in his jacket in the closet. He completed the words and made it into a complete song. However he needed to find the writer of the poem. With the help of his friend, Walter Winchell, who wrote an appeal for information, someone who had worked at the magazine found the issue. They later tracked down Jane Brown Thompson who was now living in a senior home. They got her to sign the appropriate papers in January 1939.
The song was to be introduced by Dick Haymes on the radio on January 19, 1939. Unfortunately, Jane Brown Thompson died on January 18. She never got to hear her song. She obviously never heard of Frank Sinatra, who included this obscure song in his great concept album.
A Sinatra favorite? There are many. So many.
I prefer his ballads from the Capitol years.
As Nelson Riddle said of those 50s sessions, "Sinatra had voice to burn."
Those particular recordings came under the heading of "concept albums."
They told a story. Sinatra could tell a story musically like no one else.
One song he did so poignantly is called THE NIGHT WE CALLED IT A DAY.
Listen carefully and tell me it doesn't make everything, especially love, a lost love, seem like a hopeless affair.
As far as Jimmy Webb goes, he did a wonderful album with Glenn Campbell.
The song I like on that collaboration, it may not be obscure, is called,
THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS.
Joe Smith @10:53am…
+10
He immediately comes to mind when I think of songwriters from back in the day. “Wichita Lineman” grabs my heart and soul every time I hear it anymore.
"If I go looking for something I usually don’t find it.”
“A heart is something.”
“If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”
Therefore, if you look for your hearts desire, you usually won’t find it in your back yard.
I'm also seeing this poem (supposedly by Rumi):
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing, there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
What you seek, is seeking you
What you seek, is seeking you — people like that idea. It gets quoted a lot.
Of course, people say that about God.
The ultimate quote on this topic is: Seek, and ye shall find
But Bob says, Don't seek/You never find anything that way
The supposed Rumi poem cited by the Prof at 210PM is sued as the closing on some of my wife's yoga tapes. I don't think they attribute it to anyone, though.
Paul Simon sings--
Maybe you will find a love
That you discover accidentally
Who falls against you gently
As a pickpocket
Brushes your thigh
Further to fly.
["Further To Fly" from Rhythm of the Saints]
Sinatra: Send in the Clowns - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UJtMG7Eexk
Christmas Carol: Originally by Harry Belafonte. This version by Angelina Jordan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38igakHk9_I
A Jimmy Webb cover which is not necessarily obscure, but the closest I can get, is the cover off Wichita Lineman by Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66, which is a beautiful version.
There is an interview with Lani Hall, the leas singer. It is from fairly recently, and she is an older lady with gray hair. And the interviewer asked her whether they were good. And she looked puzzled for a second, and then says: our band? Oh, we were great! And then laughs. It’s true. They were. No point in having any false humility about it!
To connect Sinatra and obscure...I really like Sinatra's My Way, and I enjoyed the tv show Mad Men. One of my favorite episodes is from the final season (season 7), and there is a scene where Peggy and Don have a nice conversation at the office, after hours, and My May comes on in the background. Don asks Peggy to dance. They dance, she places her head against his chest, and he kisses her head. Not romantic, but friendship/respect between boss and protege.
"What you seek, is seeking you"
"if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you"
According to Wikipedia, Jimmy Webb was born in 1946 in Elk City, Oklahoma, which lies on the eastern edge of rural Beckham County. That may have been around the same time that Sheb Wooley was giving Roger Miller guitar lessons near Erick on the western side of the same county.
Fandor said...
As far as Jimmy Webb goes, he did a wonderful album with Glenn Campbell.
The song I like on that collaboration, it may not be obscure, is called,
THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS.
12/24/22, 12:17 PM
I love that song. I found it first when I was looking for Pat Metheny videos. I didn't know who wrote it or that it had lyrics until much later.
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