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.

At this point it seemed that anyone you think might have been tempted to cover “Man of Constant Sorrow” has. Of course, you knew that after Judy Collins did it everyone would have to. What I think is strange is that it really wasn’t picked up by punk bands. (But just wait until tomorrow before correcting me!) The truth is that musically, punk and folk aren’t that far apart.

Which brings us to the version in O Brother, Where Art Thou? It was recorded by Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen, and Pat Enright, with Tyminski on lead vocals. But here Tyminski is with Alison Krauss and Union Station doing the song live:

In a sense, I think this version kind of destroys the song in the same way that Jean-François Paillard’s version destroyed Pachelbel’s Canon. It is so powerful that everyone will agree that it is the way that the song ought to be performed and people will stop trying to innovate. Of course, there will always be the iconoclasts who insist that Emry Arthur or Sarah Ogan Gunning had it right all along and the song will be plopped on the end of a disc. But to really please an audience, it’s going to have to have that three-part harmony and the prominent banjo. It will be just like that damned pizzicato counterpoint in “Pachelbel’s Canon.”

Moving on with our week of “Man of Constant Sorrow,” I thought we would visit Waylon Jennings. Yesterday, I wrote that he turned the song into “an easy listening monstrosity.” And that’s true. But I listened to it again, and I was right to add that it “is good in its way.” Part of the problem we have is that as time went on, the people singing became more removed from the subject of the song. Jennings was not a man of constant sorrow.

This song is off Jennings’ second solo album, Folk-Country. The album isn’t bad. It’s got that late-60s sound that I associate with people like Bobby Goldsboro. But it has nothing of what I love this song for:

During the folk revival of the early 1960s, many people did “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Both Joan Baez (pretty good) and Judy Collins (meh) did versions of Gunning’s. Peter, Paul and Mary turned it into a dirge. Waylon Jennings managed to turn it into an easy listening monstrosity, which is good in its way. And Rod Stewart did his thing to it in 1969, before “his thing” became harming otherwise good music. But the most interesting, because he really does mold the song to himself, is Bob Dylan:

Although Emry Arthur’s version of “Man of Constant Sorrow” sold well, it was not until The Stanley Brothers released their version in 1951 that it really became popular. Their version changes the song into much more of what we know today. Specifically, they turn it into a bluegrass song with that classic howling voice. It also adds a much more lively accompaniment with that relentless fiddle. Ralph Stanley just had his 88th birthday. His brother Carter died back in 1966 at the age of only 41.