The Songs Go On

And speaking of Carly and James, here’s another tune they did. this from the fat book of American folk songs that goes from the aching ballads Steven Foster wrote to the rousing get-up-and-clap tunes done by George M. Cohan just as our young men were offering their meek necks to the meat grinder that was the first World War.  58,000 British troops went down, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme yet that war got remembered in merry tunes that made it sound as if we were sending our boys off to an ox-pull competition at the county fair:  “Over there, over there, Send the word send the word over there That we’ll be over, We’re comin’ over And we won’t be back till it’s over over there!”That’s George M. Cohan for you. Then there’s his super-nostalgic “Give My Regards to Broadway, Remember me to Herald Square, Tell all the gang at 42^nd street that I will soon be there. Whisper of how I’m yearning to Mingle with the Old-time Throng. Give my Regards to Old Broadway and Tell them I’ll be there ere long!”Well, some got back ere long. Some never got back at all. This handsome guy above was my grandmother's first cousin.  He was killed ‘over there’ just two months after his wedding day and two weeks before the Armistice. It took more than a year to bring home his body and now all that’s left of him is his name on a placard in a playground in Dorchester Massachusetts. His folks were right off the boat and yet he graduated from Williams College in 1898.  All that loss in a war!But enough of this sad talk. This song, also sung by James Taylor and Carly Simon, is part of the American songbook too. It was written probably 200 years ago as a lullaby but it’s sure been enlivened in our time by several recording artists. Nino Tempo and April Stevens did it when I was kid and here it is in the 70s, a jump-up-and-dance tune if there ever was one.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeOqD3uMIRs]

Close Your Eyes

I just came upon the clip below. It's from the 70s when everyone had all that HAIR, hair, long beautiful hair, shinin’, gleamin’, streamin’, flaxen, waxen, give me down to there (hair!) shoulder length or longer, here baby, there, momma, everywhere, daddy, daddy, haiaiaiair! That’s the song 'Hair' from the musical by the same name in case you didn’t recognize it. And this picture is me when I had such hair. And the clip shows Sweet Baby James and his bride Carly Simon before they differed, then feuded and ultimately split with one saying she'd basically just as soon never talk to the guy again and how sad is that?  What makes people think you have to LIKE the other guy every minute to stay married when you know yourself how stubbornly impossible YOU can be?Anyway sit back and let it wash over you. Pretend we can all stay young forever with fine skin and clear voices – then settle for knowing that what we can all do no matter our hands speckle up like robins’ eggs and our eyes get lost in webs of wrinkles is comfort each another with words like these.I really like that “You can stay as long as you like” part. They never tell you that in a tanning bed or after a massage when all you want to DO is stay there basking in the warmth. At least stay with this video for long enough - or else go to the one-minute-and-40 second mark if you’re in a rush. Do it just to see the bloom in young Carly's cheek![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_D0i7UC9UY&feature=related]

So close your eyes;you can close your eyes, it's all right.I don't know no love songs,and I can't sing the blues any more.But I can sing this song,and you can sing this songwhen I'm gone.It won't be long before another day.We're gonna have a good time.And no one's gonna take that time away.You can stay as long as you like.