Last week, I watched an episode of Bob’s Burgers, “The Millie-churian Candidate.” In it, Teddy Francisco has an argument with Bob about which of them has the best tool: Teddy’s hammer or Bob’s new chef’s knife. At one point, Teddy says, “I made a video of my hammer bounding nails. I put a Natalie Merchant song under it… Wanna read some of comments, Bobby? Look at this guy: he says, ‘Nailed it!’ Ha ha ha! Ah, the internet!”

So the end of the episode featured Larry Murphy as Teddy singing “Wonder.” As a result, I haven’t been able to get the song out of my head. Even though I think Murphy better gets to the emotional core of song, here is Natalie Merchant doing it:

Maria Callas was probably the most famous soprano of the 20th century. She also lived quite a tragic live, which may be the thing to do when you are an opera star. But I know her primarily as the star of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film, Medea. There will be more about that elsewhere. For now, let us focus on opera. She is widely considered to have changed opera in a major way. Before her, it was mostly a musical thing. She introduced (or reintroduced) drama to it. And that, rather than having a great voice (opinions differ), is what set her apart.

She really came to prominence in the title role of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera, Norma. So here she is performing the most famous aria from the opera, “Casta diva.” To be honest, I don’t know why there is any question about her voice — she’s amazing:

After doing “Running Bear” yesterday, I feel like I should make up for it. But sadly, you get outside of the twelve-tone scale, and I’m lost. But I decided to look. All I could think to search for were Cherokee songs. I have a special love for the Cherokee people because they totally disprove the conservative claims about the white power elite accepting other peoples. The Cherokee did everything that could possibly be hoped in terms of living inside the context of the western invaders, and they got nothing but abuse for it. But I’ll leave the politics aside.

I came upon this guy, Barry Winfred Bailey. He has a YouTube channel with a whole lot of songs from native peoples. Sadly, it looks like Bailey has died in the last year. But I found the following video of three traditional Cherokee songs. Clearly, they’ve been adapted to our twelve-tone scale. And you can hear some bluegrass influence. But it makes me wonder: did the music of native peoples influence it? Regardless, I don’t know just how authentic this is, but it is very enjoyable music. They are: “Welcome Song”; “Water Song”; and “Mourning Song.” I think I’m right about that last one because it is mournful, but it could be the “Morning Song.”

I’m fascinated by people who try to be respectful but end up being offensive. This is probably because I assume that I do it all the time. Thus it is that I have an uneasy love for the Johnny Preston hit song “Running Bear.” The story in the song sounds like it could be an actual Native American folk story. It’s basically the Indian Romeo and Juliet. Unfortunately, it has this horrible “uga uga” chanting under the verses. It also has embarrassing phrases like “happy hunting ground.”

On the positive side, it presents Native Americans as regular people who — oppressed by unjust societies — act foolishly the way young lovers do everywhere. And it’s a compelling story. And it was written by The Big Bopper. This is the man known for “Chantilly Lace” — a song that is somehow offensive to women and men of all races and creeds. So I think “Running Bear” should be given a pass.

And let’s face it: at this point, it’s charming. At the time, with the depiction of Indians on the television and in movies, it was more sketchy. Regardless, it’s fun to watch Johnny Preston do such a terrible job of lip-syncing:

There is a joke (maybe a running joke, I can’t remember) in Arrested Development where Liza Minnelli makes a bitter remark about the song, “New York, New York.” You see, everyone thinks that it is a Frank Sinatra tune. But of course, it isn’t. It was written for New York, New York, the film Martin Scorsese made after Taxi Driver. It tells the story of a violent jerk who is not Travis Bickle.

I saw the film in 1978, and the only thing I remembered about it was the song. I had to look up the plot of it on Wikipedia. Now, I could provide you with the song from the film — it’s on YouTube. But really, I don’t think it is very well directed — or at least, I don’t think it has aged well. Anyway, I think it is better to see an actual live performance of it. And the title of this one is appropriate: it is the best that I’ve heard:

When I was growing up, Otis Redding meant only one thing to me, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” And it went gold in the US on this day back in 1968 — just three months after his death. He had recorded it only three days before that. It was only well into adulthood that I learned what an important musician he was. Even dying when he was barely 26 years old, he would be a towering figure in pop music without that song.

He is probably as important as a songwriter as he is as a singer. He wrote, for example, “Respect,” which went on to be a mega-hit for Aretha Franklin, and “These Arms of Mine.” But you really can’t go wrong picking up any collection of his work. His death is one of the great tragedies of popular music.

Here he is at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 doing “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” which he wrote with Jerry Butler:

I asked my sister if she could recommend a song for today’s morning music and she told me there was this song that her husband was really into these days. This caused me to (silently) freak out, “No! Not a new song! New music baaad!” But I shouldn’t have thought that, because her husband, Lee, is a musician, professional sound engineer (I think he has a Emmy — or something else of equal impressiveness), and obviously is a very sophisticated listener. The song was “Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)” by Father John Misty. That is the new moniker of singer-songwriter Joshua Tillman. And he is really great. He sounds a lot like Loudon Wainwright.

The song itself is part of a sub-genre of long songs that older people write: the “I love my wife” song. And lyrically, it is largely pretty standard. But it has some unusual lyrics, especially at the beginning. These appear to be in connection with the fear of hipsters and idiosyncratics everywhere: will I lose my authenticity by accepting the traditional expression of my love and commitment? The answer is that it doesn’t matter because when it comes to love, we are all bourgeois. But check out what he tries to do here, “I wanna take you in the kitchen; lift up your wedding dress someone was probably murdered in.” The second line is very edgy, but the first line gives the game away. “Take you”? Unintentionally patriarchal. It’s a good thing his wife is a photographer and not a postmodern feminist scholar! But like I said, we’re all bourgeois. And it is a lovely song.

As you may know, I’m quite fond of Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life. The film is a musical — with at least two major numbers, including the truly amazing “Every Sperm Is Sacred.” If you haven’t seen it in a while, it is worth checking out. I think you may find that you like it a whole lot more than you did when you first saw it.

One of the songs in the film doesn’t get the kind of production that it deserves, “Galaxy Song.” (I’m not sure why so many people call it “The Universe Song.”) It may be that they all thought the song was so great (and it is) that it didn’t need much of a production. Regardless, here it is especially for this Sunday morning when you aren’t in church:

Given that it is Mississippi John Hurt’s birthday, I figured we ought to listen to of him this morning. I love his finger-picking style. His voice is kind of weak, but it’s more authentic than a thousand American Idol screechers. He recorded a few songs in the late 1920s, but nothing much came of them. He went back to sharecropping for the next three and a half decades. But in the early 1960s, an ethnomusicologist was able to track him down. As a result, Hurt spend the remaining three years of his life as a minor celebrity.

The only live performances of his that I’ve fond online are from when he was on a short-lived television program, Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest. And here is “Spike Driver Blues” — his own version of the John Henry legend. But I don’t much care about the lyrics. The music is just brilliant. As usual with Hurt, it’s kind of hard to classify it. There’s blue but also country and even some bluegrass. Beautiful stuff.

Actually, it is possible that Hurt was born on 3 July.

Back in 1987, my once and future girlfriend told me that I must check out this band They Might Be Giants — partly because I too had a high tech duo with weird ideas, but sadly almost completely lacking on the talent side. So I bought their first album, They Might Be Giants, which I loved immediately and from then on. Apparently, she knew of the band because she had seen their music video for “Don’t Let’s Start.” I hear that it was kind of a hit on MTV, but it has never really been clear to me if videos ever create radio hits. But I’ve read in Wikipedia, that the song never made it to the Hot 100.

Anyway, I did go to see the band at the The Kennel Club during that tour. Now that I look back, I saw a lot of bands at that place. It was great — or at least it got a lot of great acts. They featured well known but small acts. I mean, They Might Be Giants would never play there now. Of course, The Kennel Club is long gone now. And I am much too old and agoraphobic.

Anyway, here is the song that started it all. It’s weird that I tend to find music of that period almost unlistenable because of the synth sounds. But somehow, it works with this stuff — probably because it is the basis of it and not a featured instrument. Besides, it’s all so silly, how can one not love it? Even if everybody dies frustrated and sad:

Reader Ryan Hall introduced me to the folk/country singer-songwriter Sam Baker. He’s rather like John Prine in his approach to telling a story through music. But he’s less inclined toward traditional melodies with greater care in his lyrics — using a kind of talk-singing that is highly evocative. Apparently, when he was 32, he was badly injured during a terrorist attack while traveling in Peru. Many of those traveling with him died. His left hand was so damaged that he had to relearn the guitar with the other hand. Regardless, he’s just amazing.

Here is the title song off his album Say Grace. It’s about an older woman considering her life — past and present. Things don’t have to go wrong — they just get sadder inch by inch — and we push on. I especially like these lines: “The TV says war in the holy land; she looks at the wrinkles on the back of her hand.” Exactly.