Good-Bye-eeee – Courtland & Jeffries – there were over 37 million casualties in the Great War, they came, they saw, they died an they had no choice. english soldiers didn’t have many choices, die going forwarward by Germans or die going backwards by English Generals. A brutal and insane war which didn’t even settle the questions and would lead twenty years later to WW2. But at least they had great songs. The English dancehall (vaudeville) threw up one great sarcastic sneer after another and this one , written by dancehall masters R. P. Weston and Bert Lee in 1915, it stands as one of the great buck ups. English to its very bone, the humor is drier than drier, it bends to the inevitable with a “pathetic” chorus: “I’ll be tickled to death to go”. Ouch? Compare it to George M. Cohan’s 1917 “Over There” and the difference is the US optimism versus the UK’s fatalism. That anybody would sing this going to war is insane.
Sweet James Lullaby – James Taylor – As lullabies go, this is a major bummer. James wrote it for his nephew James (and I sing it to my Great nephew James) but it is a song about nothingness, it is nihilistic, it has no belief in anything but the sky outside and how you calm yourself down to sleep. Taylor embraces the sound of his voice as he fades into the nether, there is nothing else but the prairie, a camp fire, a guitar, a finite drift into nowhere.
Over You – Miranda Lambert – Miranda wrote it with her husband Blake Shelton for Blake’s brother Richie “I lost my brother in a car wreck when I was 14 years old. Later in life, when I decided I wanted to be a country singer, my dad always told me, ‘Son, you should write a song about your brother.’ “. Richie was 25 years old. Blake gave the song to Miranda because he couldn’t sing it without breaking up, but he sings it live and it does something so tender and so important, it deals with loss through music. Every nerve is raw and every raw nerve is open , it is a wound that isn’t close to healing.
Music Music Music – Teresa Brewer – Brewer began her career as a novelty song purveyor in 1949 and ended in the 1970s married to a top jazz producer. This was the B Side to her first single and it is an ancestor of all those put another quarter in the jukebox baby rock and roll tracks. It boils down life to the only two things worth caring about: “all I want is loving you and music music music”. Amen.
