Now we move forward to 1977, with John Martyn’s more experiment, more electric One World. Overall the album is a bit more “pop” in its own way. But don’t worry: Martyn is always Martyn. That’s one of the things that most defines him: he always seems to remain true to himself. He reminds me of something that was written about the artist Bernard Frouchtben, “In [his case] the ego appears worth knowing.” Indeed. (For both men.)

The song I’ve chosen from the album is one of the more classic, “Couldn’t Love You More.” The album cut is really interesting in its production. But you know, I like to get live cuts if I can. After all, I’m not on the radio here.

At long last we get a live performance of John Martyn. We are now in 1973, and Martyn has fully arrived with his album Solid Air. What is it? Folk? Jazz? Blues? Pop? It is all these things and none. It is John Martyn. The title tune was written about and for Nike Drake. I mentioned Drake at the beginning of this week, because he and Martyn are similar in many ways. I didn’t realize that they were friends. But the tune is very clear about Drake’s mental problems. But it includes these touching lyrics, “I know you, I love you; And I can be your friend; I can follow you anywhere; Even through solid air.”

But “Solid Air” is actually too depressing to listen to, given that Drake would be dead less than two years later. Anyway, I prefer another song on the album, “May You Never.” It’s a beautiful song about friendship and love. I could interpret it in a number of ways, so I’m not going to go into it. Anyway, the lyrics don’t matter that much. And it would probably only be in the sixth or seventh listen that you started to really grok them. But I’ll bet “may you never lay your head down without a hand to hold” will be going through your head all day.

As we explore the music of John Martyn, I figure we should skip past his fine work with his wife Beverley Martyn to what is kind of the real beginning of his career, Bless the Weather. He really expanded on this album. For one thing, he has a full French jazz kind of band. It is still focused on his amazing guitar work. But his singing became more jazzy too.

This is how I discovered Martyn. Off the second America album, Homecoming, they did his song “Head and Heart.” And even at the time, I thought it by far the best thing on the album. So in later years, I looked into him. Sadly, all I have is another album cut for this one. But I promise you a live performance tomorrow. In addition to everything else, check out the amazing guitar work at the end of the song:

I promised you something nice this week, and that would be the songs of John Martyn. He kind of reminds me of Nick Drake, but without the whole “Do we kill ourselves today?” vibe. It’s kind of hard to categorize him — especially because he lived a lot longer than Drake and got into a lot more stuff. And actually, I think he just was a far more varied creative mind. But that’s the last I’ll mention Drake — except to say that I might do a week of him too.

Let’s start with his very first, very folk, album, London Conversation — on which he performs alone. This is “Ballad of an Elder Woman,” which I just love. And if I had to guess, it will impress a number of you:

I’ll admit it: mom’s favorite songs was a bit of a bust. But I can’t be smart all the time. What’s more, tomorrow we are going to start a week of really great music by a guy you probably have never heard of. What’s more, he has a (distant) connection to this week’s selections. So stay tuned!

But we finish out this week strongly, I think. We are going to listen to Stevie Wonder perform “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” It was my parent’s “song.” That’s interesting because my first wife and my “song” was “Holiday in Cambodia.” And my second wife and my “song” was “I Wanna Be Sedated.”

My mother really liked Bobby Vinton. But the truth is that I can’t really remember any particular song. But I do remember hearing her sing, “Roses Are Red (My Love).” It is a memorable song. It’s interesting that the writers were able to transcend the simple rhyme with the insertion of “my love.” Also, the music works really well.

Even as a kid, I didn’t think much of Vinton. His voice lacked character. The arrangements were all standard. He never took a risk. But what the hell? He made a boat load of money. And in the end, isn’t that what pop music is really all about? This is something that my friends who like modern pop music really don’t understand. It doesn’t matter how much the production techniques have changed: they are still listening to the same soulless music that Bobby Vinton was producing in the early 1960s.

I’ve done Gordon Lightfoot before for Morning Music, Don Quixote. In that one, I mostly complained that Lightfoot clearly had never read Don Quixote. But my mother was a big fan of Lightfoot, and I remember that she loved the song “Sundown” off the album of the same name. It’s a song about a troubled relationship — something my mother knew a lot about.

What I never knew was that the song is most likely about Lightfoot’s ex-girlfriend Cathy Smith. You may know her for having given John Belushi the speedball (heroin and cocaine mixture) that killed him. For that, she spent 15 months in a California state prison. Personally, I think if Belushi hadn’t allowed his health to get so bad, he wouldn’t have died. Regardless, I hate this habit we have of blaming (mostly) women for getting (mostly) men drugs that end up killing them. They made their choices.

Anyway, it’s a good song:

I’ll admit: this is an embarrassing one. My parents both loved the song “Tin Man” by America. As I remember it, they thought that it was profound: “Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn’t already have.” Even at ten years old, I thought that was lame. I mean, I’d seen the movie. That’s the whole point. The whole point is that the Tin Man who doesn’t have a heart is the most emotional and caring of the characters. The Cowardly Lion is the bravest when it comes down to it. And the Straw Man is the smartest.

Years later, my friend Will and I got into America. And the “Tin Man” album, Holiday, is one of the more listenable of their albums. But it was a transition thing. I know their first ten albums forward and backward. And never has so much care and attention be wasted on such dreck. It’s not all bad. It has its moments. And the guys were clearly all talented. But there is no substance. And Dewey Bunnell, who wrote “Tin Man” and “A Horse With No Name” and many other “word collage” songs almost seems like he could have developed into a fine songwriter if he hadn’t found success so easy with gibberish.

My mother was very sentimental. I doubtless get it from her. And there is probably no better example of this is Bobby Goldsboro’s recording of “Honey.” The song was written by Bobby Russell (who also wrote another hit, “Little Green Apples”). There is much to admire in the composition. The use of a tree to show the passage of time is really compelling. It does tend to infantilize the title character, but it does render her with much more depth than most songs — then or now.

When I listen to it now, I’m struck by the third verse (or second half of the second verse). He comes home in the middle of the day and finds her crying needlessly. I think there are two ways to take that. First, it could be that she has learned that she is dying and doesn’t tell him. Or it could be that she suffers from depression and that she eventually took her own life. Regardless, that part of the song makes it far more interesting.

It flips things. Because suddenly, it is the singer who is silly — who doesn’t see reality. He saw her “young and heart; kind of dumb and kind of smart” because that’s all that he was capable of seeing. She was much more. But I doubt very much that my mother would have approved of that take on the song:

A story my mother used to tell me was that in the early years of her marriage with my father, he wanted to go out partying with his friends. And she had to explain that he was married now; he had children and responsibility. He felt trapped and wanted his freedom. And she used to repeat the refrain from the song, “Me and Bobby McGee”: freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. As I’ve written before, my mother didn’t think there was a problem that couldn’t be fixed with the appropriate application of a song lyric.

There’s just one problem with that story: the timing is off. My parents had been married for over ten years when Janis Joplin had her megahit with it. But maybe my mother was referring to the Roger Miller version of the song, but that only gains us a year and a half. I’m not doubting my mother. I’m sure she did mention this to my father at some point. But for all my parents problems, I don’t recall my father’s lack of commitment to the family being one of them. So I’m going to give him a pass on this one. Anyway, maybe I have the story all wrong and it wasn’t even about my father. I’ve got a lousy memory for that kind of stuff.

Anyway, here is what I still think is the best version of the song off by far Joplin’s best album, Pearl:

Well, it’s another week and that means that I have to come up with another theme for the Morning Music posts. And I’ve come up with a great one. But it’s dangerous, because I haven’t thought a whole week through. And I really want to get this one right. I’m going to do some of my mother’s favorite songs.

My mom was a big popular music fan. And there was pretty much never a situation in which she couldn’t pull a pop music lyric out to help explain. This is going to be an eclectic collection — spanning a few decades. I’m afraid the last decade or two, I don’t know much of what she liked.

But let’s start with a song that she sang all the time. And I hate it. It’s a Frank Sinatra tune — one of the few of his that I don’t like. And it was made famous to a new generation of people as the theme song to Married… with Children — a show that I also hated, but might appreciate more now. The song is, of course, “Love and Marriage” off the album, This Is Sinatra!:

Afterword

Given the state of my parents’ marriage, I always sang it, “Love and marriage… go together like a horseless carriage.”

Charm City Devils are not exactly my kind of band. But I appreciate standard hard rock in the tradition of Blue Öyster Cult or early Black Sabbath. But maybe it is more correct to say that Charm City Devils are more like the very early Nirvana. Regardless, back in 2012, they recorded a cover of “Man of Constant Sorrow” off their album Sins. And I really think they make it their own.

Given most of us around Frankly Curious are a bit long in the tooth, I’d be curious to hear what others think of it. “Man of Constant Sorrow” is a great song that really can work in any format at all. It’s just a question of performers deciding that they want to do it. And as much as I love the Dan Tyminski version of the song, I’m glad to hear very little of it in his version.