ten songs, nineteen years

I love great songs, but I don't usually make lists of "best this" etc. However, I am coming up on my 31st anniversary in the show business, and my 19th as a recording artist (Fallen Hand Of Love came out 11/92). So I figure this is as good a time as any to reflect on what has lived with me the most in the world of songs during these 19 years.

10. Wayne Hancock -- "Thunderstorms And Neon Signs"


I saw him do this in a play called Chippie, which featured Joe Ely, Terry Allen, and Joe Ely, back I guess in 94 or so, and it ripped me open. I went back a few times, and it was the show-stopper in a play made up of notable songs. Wayne was at that point a comparative unknown, but he was the moment in that show, and this song was the star.

9. Chris Gaffney -- "The Man Of Somebody's Dreams"


Gaffney's Loser's Paradise album is a sad reminder of what an immense talent we lost a few years back. Probably Dave Alvin's best work as a producer, too. This song was in some ways Gaffney's ultimate moment, not least of all because it was his most perfect "tough guy/soft heart" moment, and because he was the most powerful quiet singer you could imagine, Peter Rowan notwithstanding.

8. Richard Thompson -- "Cooksferry Queen"


Lotsa guys write songs about being a musician, but this is the one. And the line "The people speak my name in whispers/What higher praise could there be?" is an unbeatable line.

7. Dave Alvin -- "From A Kitchen Table"


It's hard to imagine anything better than Dave when he has his fastball. Despite the public favorites being his big anthems, he has always really been his best and most human when he writes small, from "Border Radio" to "Leaving" and on out, his most real moments are when he's up close and personal. This is in my mind his best song, certainly his most compassionate and well-told. Chokes me up, even now.

6. Van Dyke Parks -- "Orange Crate Art"


This is pulled from the Brian doc I Just Wasn't Made For These Times, where a great many rock persons were talking about all this beautiful music Brian had in him. When the film got to this song, it seemed to say "like what Van Dyke writes". "Orange Crate Art" is an art song in the sense of what classical composers recognize, a pop song of a very high order, and a truly loving and lovely piece of Californiana on par with any. While Van Dyke's gifts can oftenbe elusive as they are formidable (and boy are they), "OCA" distills the very best of a very beautiful musical mind.

5. Steve Earle -- "Texas Eagle"


I might think Steve Earle is the most overrated songwriter since Gram Parsons. That said, "Texas Eagle" is a shot of true greatness. He's written a three chord song about something he truly understands and feels strongly about, and it's a tape measure grand slam that won the series. The Del McCoury band is eating this with a spoon, too. If he could be at his best as often as, say, Dave Alvin or Graham Parker, I'd be devoted. That said, you only have to be this good once to have been this good.

4. Tom Waits -- "I Don't Wanna Grow Up"


Not every real emotion is attatched to romantic love or the Springsteen-esque working class. At the risk of sounding corny as hell, for all the acclaim attatched rightfully to Rain Dogs, this song is profound. The idea of a kid laying in bed and listening to his parents arguing and going through it all in his head... Pretty much as good as it gets.

3. Nick Lowe -- "I Trained Her To Love Me"


Nick's ascendancy as the greatest songwriter of the post-Pistols world (even if he was pre-Pistols) seems to have started with 1994's The Impossible Bird, specifically with "The Beast In Me", which is as perfect a song as any, but I kind of prefer this one as an example specimen, because it has everything -- perfect pop melody and hook, dark evil lyric, and an overall sensibility that can;t be described, except to say that it might be the intelligent person's answer to "To All The Girls I Loved", which goes down in history as the worst lyric ever written by the greatest lyricist of a generation, the otherwise unimpeachable Hal David.

2. Bob Dylan -- "Mississippi"


Bob Dylan has never not mattered. These last few albums have given us a handful of his best songs, and picking one is nearly impossible. But few have been as mythical as "Mississippi", which is actually about me and this girl from AZ I knew. I know Bob didn;t really write it about me and her, but he write it about me and her.

1. Randy Newman -- "Losing You"


I'd have to give Randy Newman the ultimate nod, the way I give it to Roger Miller or Johnny Mercer. He's a songwriter in the classical sense, and -- like far too few of the post-Dylan luminaries -- his songwriting takes in the full range of life, and not just one segment. He has been at turns mean, funny, romantic, philosophical, loser-ly, etc -- and he's always been the right guy for the job. Again, as with Dave Alvin, his most affecting moments are when he takes a turn to the small. "Losing You" is for me the most powerful thing I've heard in so many years, and it explains why I'm a lifelong advocate of the guy.

PS Honorable mention to Big Sandy for "Between Darkness and Dawn", Stan Ridgway for "Fork Lift", and the late, great Walter Hyatt for "Where The Blue Begins".

The Hawk Still Flies

If Louis Armstrong distinguishes himself as the first jazz soloist in the modern sense of the term, Coleman Hawkins is in some ways the first soloist with a style listeners today would recognize has modern. Had he lived, he would be 107 today. He died in 1969, half a year shy of his 65th birthday.

he joined Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds in 1921, then left a couple years later for Fletcher Henderson's band, before Louis Armstrong joined. He seems to have first recorded in 1925 (with Fletcher). From Wikipedia:

In the late 20's, Hawkins also participated in some of the earliest interracial recording sessions with the Mound City Blue Blowers. During the time with Henderson, he became a star soloist with an increasing amount of star solos on record. While with the band, he and Henry "Red" Allen recorded a series of small group sides for ARC (on their Perfect, Melotone, Romeo, and Oriole labels). Hawkins also recorded a number of solo recordings, with either piano or with a pick-up band of Henderson's musicians in 1933-34, just prior to his European trip. He was also featured on a landmark Benny Goodman February 2, 1934 session for Columbia, which also featured Mildred Bailey as guest vocalist.

It was by the mid-30's that Hawkins was the undisputed star of saxophone, and he was invited to join Jack Hylton's band as a star soloist. Hilton was sort of England's Paul Whiteman. The pay was large, and so Hawk went to London. Lester Yound took his place in Fletcher's band before ascending to true greatness in the Basie band, and he more than made a mark on the literature of tenor saxophone.

Hawkins came back to the US in '39, playing mostly in small groups in MYC. On October 11, he cut a very significant recording of "Body And Soul". What Wagner's Tristan and Isolde is to 20th Century Music, "Body and Soul" is to bebop: a prototype that at once belongs to its time and the future. Hawkins' command of subsitute chords, passing chords, and other structured dissonances was masterful, and "Body and Soul" became to tenor saxophonists what Eddie van Halen's "Eruption" would become to a later generation of stadium rock guitarists. It is an expressive masterpiece as well as an intellectual one:



A recently unearthed radio transcription from 1939 of him playing "Body" is mindboggling. A lot of what he's playing is advanced to the point of sounding as if he'd been listening to 60's Joe Henderson. Except that it's about 25 years before Joe Henderson.

By 1944, Hawk was among the earliest cutting full on bebop, and became the first bandleader to record Thelonious Monk, heard here. Funny to hear Monk so unapologetically fleet-fingered.



Hawk was an Old Lion, but the style he had put forth on "Body" kept him both contemporary and tied to tradition. Here his is with Charlie Parker.



Through the fifties and sixties, he cut with older players like Pee Wee Russell, with younger guys like Sonny Rollins and Monk, cut great modern(ish) records as a small group leader, did some (not enough but more than most) TV, and passed away leaving an incredible legacy.

"Body and Soul" was his signature, and here he is playing it in 1967. Humble yourself: