The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #164

#164: "I Want You to Want Me" (2007) - The Holmes Brothers

A couple of weeks ago, one of my band's members and I discussed an internal conflict he was having. See, our band has had several offers recently to play at a variety of venues, and several of these gigs are at bars. This band member--let's call him H.T., shall we?--had a spiritual re-awakening several years ago. He has since been called upon to witness at church, and he's been asked to preach as well. H.T. feels that his renewed connection with God places him in a difficult situation with our band. He enjoys playing rock and roll music, and he enjoys playing it with us; however, he doesn't want to play in bars anymore, and bars are primarily where our band will be playing.

H.T. feels that if he played with us in bars, he'd be a hypocrite, as since he was preaching on occassion and witnessing for congregations, knowing that he was the reason that anyone fell from grace would crush his soul. He believes that if anyone saw--or even heard about--him playing in a bar, then they might feel that it if this man who preached following the word and will of God was out there playing in a place where the sole reason for gathering was to drink alcohol, then why should this man--this preacher--be believed? Why should his word be trusted anymore?

H.T.'s reasoning--and, depending upon one's interpretation of scripture--or, rather, which scripture one wants to interpret--I believe is sound. The scripture (according to the committee King James appointed to refine and reinterpret the Bible)--in several instances--backs up H.T.'s beliefs and concerns of this matter. H.T. doesn't want to become a stumbling block to those who are weak in the spirit of the Lord. Instead, he wants others to know of God's grace, to feel God's healing hand, but H.T. is also smart and practical enough to know that the drunk guy in the corner shouting "Freebird!" (yeah, it's a cliche, but I tell you, this still happens) is willing to be open to accept the word of God in as long as it can be mixed in with his next round of Jack & Coke. Performing "I Saw the Light" to a throng of merry men might get them up and dancing, but the only saving going on will be when it saves the band from having to play another Hank song. See, for any saving to happen, you've first got to want to be saved. You've got to meet God halfway across the sky. You have to want to see the light.

In their radical reinterpreation of Cheap Trick's famous song, The Holmes Brothers give the '70s dance-rock classic not only a gospel feel, but a gospel reading as well. The first striking change the Bros. Holmes make is in tempo and time signature, as they switch the 2/4 beat to 6/8, and then they slow the song down about four times from it's normal speed, turning a boogie into a ballad. Producer Craig Street then works his magic, allowing phenomenal pianist Glenn Patscha to play his classical version of gospel blues, which comes across as some sort of Juliard hybrid of the ivory work of Floyd Cramer and Charlie Rich.

More keyboards follow, as someone--probably Patscha--eases in on the Hammond B3, and then we're at church. This is no regular Sunday service, though; it's a revival, as instead of the regaliance of a choir, we get the intimate intonations of the special guest singers, that trio--the ones from that Baptist church in Harlem--that the pastor told us about last week, the ones whose voices surely must drift down from Heaven above, for we all know that God sings in three-part harmony: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost--here now on this earthly plane, represented (respectively) by bass player Sherman Holmes's stentorian and authorotarian deep baritone, guitarist Wendall Holmes's gruff and gravelly earthbound tenor, and drummer Popsy Dixon's angelic tenor and falsetto. The three singers together are soul music's aural Trinity (and they're the best trio of singers working in any form of music today).

Street uses The Holmes Brothers' vocals to extraordinary effect, as he offers them supple support that buffets their resplendent gospel stylings in a setting whose arrangement (which I suspect to be The Holmes Brothers' design rather than Street's) and soft-soul backing works like that marvel of human engineering, the brazierre: the arrangement/production lifts and separates, yet still keeps the goods together, close enough to grasp as a whole. What a beautiful package it is, though. The trio's singing here en toto encompasses the major forms of latter-twentieth-century African-American singing: doo-wop, gospel, soul are all present.

Almost as great as the music and singing here is the reinterpretation of the lyric. No longer is this a romantic come-on, an ode to devotion, an invitation to dance. With the production, arrangement, and vocals steeped so in gospel, the words take on an entirely different meaning. What's implied here--and it's implied heavily--is an analogy of God's desire to redeem.

The title says it all. Here the want in the title--the second one--doesn't mean "desire," at least not in the carnal sense. That second want means a willingness to accept, a willingness to open one's self, one's soul, to the power of God's grace. This meaning struck me about the tenth (or so) time I listened to the song. I noticed the focus on the repeated line, "Didn't I see you crying." In the original, Robin Zander sings the line with joy and enthusiasm, and he sings it quickly, rushing through it, the lyric meaning nothing more than a means to a sound (and there's nothing wrong with that per se). In this cover version, the Holmes sing it slower. Yes, I know that the reason they sing it slower is because the song's tempo is slower, but it doesn't change the fact that they do sing it slower, and this slower recitation of the line allowed me to hear the next line, which I'd never been able to decipher before.* "Feeling all alone without a friend, baby/You know you feel like you're dying": the singer sees someone in turmoil, in anguish and grief, and he wants to help her, to heal her, but she has to be willing first; she has to want to receive help, to receive redemption, and in this version of this song that redemption can only come at the hands of the Lord.

That's how I see it, anyway. Didn't at first, though. Didn't really see it in full until after I'd had that aforementioned conversation with H.T. A day-or-two after that conversation, I listened to this song again (and I didn't listen to it because of the conversation), and Shazam! It hit me like an epiphany. Of course, I'm letting my own personal circumstances dictate the song's meaning rather than letting the song itself dictate the meaning. Then again, though, the song's sound does dictate a gospel reading, if at least a cursory one. Street & Holmes & Holmes & Dixon & Patscha didn't come across the sound here by accident. And....

Oh, but I'm rambling. I think. My wife often tells me I do so. I stray off topic, I go off on tangents, I include trivial and superfluous information, and--worst of all--I repeat. I say things again. More than once. A second time. Twice. Repetitively. With repetition, though, sometimes comes a new insight, as a different way of intoning the same message can lead to a different message entirely. It's all in the interpretation. You just have to be willing to hear it.

NOTES

*Despite having had a computer with internet capabilities for close to ten years now, I'm still loathe to google song lyrics, as often what I hear in the song is what I want to be the lyric, whether I'm right or not. To illustrate: about fifteen years ago, when I was working at the local radio station, another DJ (and a great friend, too) and I argued for days and days over a particular line in John Lennon's "Nobody Told Me." The line's from the chorus. What I heard was, "Nobody told me that you didn't like me," and what my friend heard was, "Nobody told me there'd be days like these." Now, as DJs, we were idiots, because it took us at least a week to realize that we could put the 45 on the turntable and slow it down in order to be able to hear what Lennon was saying. We did so, and I was excited, because I knew--as I always did, and as I always do--that I was right. I wasn't. Dammit. My friend still gloats about this on occassion, and when he does, I ask him which lyric is better. He always says that which version is better doesn't matter, but which version is accurate does. I think he's wrong. I think he thinks so, too, 'cause he's never told me that the accurate lyric is better than the imagined one. 'Cause it's not. 'Cause I'm right. 'Cause I heard it that way.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #165

#165: "Look What All You Got" (2001) - Buddy Guy

...and he may have got too old for love, but he ain't got too old to sing or shred some smokin' electric blues that's guaranteed to work the sweat out of his blues. The fever's in the funkhouse now, baby.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #166

#166: "Done Got Old" (2001) - Buddy Guy

If you look at my pictures (at the top and to the right) on this page, you'll notice that I have long hair. That picture up top is a couple of years old, and my hair has grown longer since. In fact, I don't believe I've cut my hair in four years. If you met me now, you wouldn't think anything odd about that, but if you knew me back in high school or college, you'd be a bit surprised, as many are, when they encounter me (or my pictures on Facebook) for the first time in ten or twenty years. These acquaintances and long-lost friends are shocked by my do because until--you guessed it--four years ago, I always wore my hair short, my locks never coming close to approaching my shoulders.

The most common question I'm asked about my hair is why I decided to grow it so long, and my most common response is that I had a mid-life crisis several years ago, and I got over it, but my hair didn't. Of course, my answer is a joke; I've never been one (and my wife'll vouch for this) to care too much about my image. As long as my looks didn't utterly repulse both (wo)man and beast, then I was fine with whatever was comfortable and socially acceptable.

After so many instances of giving the same pat answer, I started to wonder if the mid-life crisis answer was actually true. Hmm. I had to think. Okay, what was going on in my life four years ago. Well, I was teaching ninth grade English. I'd taught that before, so I could nix that right? Just to be sure, I tried to remember who was in that group of kiddies, and...oh-ho-ho! One of my students happened to be the daughter of a woman who graduated high school the same year I did. Can you say red flag? Yeah, but I started teaching her class in August of '04, and--in the school yearbook photograph--my hair was short then. In the next year's yearbook, though, my hair is much longer, so what happened between August '04 and August '05? What happened in the spring and/or summer?

What happened is what's happening right now, and that's American Idol. Is '05 the year that...yeah, it is: that's the year Bo Bice was on the show. Ding! Another red flag! Despite what I may say here about pop music (and don't get me wrong--I love pop music), I'm a rocker at heart, and so was Bo. I loved his country-blues-rock singing style and vocal ability, and I loved his song choices. My wife Foot Foot loved these things about him, too...but not as much as she loved his looks. Hmm...Bo is a rocker with a beart and long hair, and I'm a rocker with a beart and....It was time to grow the hair. It wouldn't be too long before I'd hit forty, yet my face still looked (comparatively) young, and I did play drums in a rock and roll band, so hippie hair might not seem that ridiculous. Plus, seeing that girl in my class every was a daily reminder of my advancing age, so maybe growing my hair long might be a way to stave off arthritis and senility and gout and Depends, a way to keep my age perennially at thirty-three.*

Four years later, and my hair is finally of the requisite Bo Bice length (even though my body is as of yet of the requisite Bo Bice width), and my band's playing more gigs, and do I feel younger? At school, my students make "old man" comments at least three times a week, and I've found myself constantly telling my students--tongue-in-cheek, but still--that I'm ten years younger than I truly am. Graduation will arrive in two-and-a-half months, and that freshmen daughter of a woman my age will then be a high-school graduate daughter of a woman my age. Mercy...I'm not Bo Bice; I'm Mick Hucknell, and I'm holding back the years. Thank goodness, though, I'm not yet Ian Anderson, as I'm not too old to rock and roll...yet.

I'm not Buddy Guy, either. Guy's recording history spans fifty years, and he's played with the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf back in the early-to-mid sixties when the blues boomed again, when those artists were toured Europe. British blues bands--the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds (and all its subsequent incarnations and spin-off groups), Fleetwood Mac (in its original lineup), the Animals, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and Led Zeppelin were among the most prominent--sprung up left and right, all seemingly inspired by the Chicago Blues sound (and Delta Blues, too, but the primary influence came from the Windy City), all taking the old blues riffs and floating verses and adding screaming electric guitar solos, loud crashing cymbals, and a more-straight-ahead 4/4 beat to create the British Blues movement.

This movement has proven to be hugely influential on the rock and roll music scene, as all across the country--but especially in the South and Southwest--thousands of electric blues & rock bands (and many country bands as well) still play in the aforementioned British Blues form. This form takes the standard twelve-bar blues structure and adds a more straight-ahead 4/4 beat, loud crashing cymbals, and long electric-guitar solos. The latter element comes first from B.B. King, who took what Waters and Wolf (and Dixon) were doing, cleaned it up, and added the numerous and lengthy string-bending solos. Then, someone came along, took B.B. King's style of Chicago blues, and dirtied it back up again while keeping the long solos. And this new form was the primary influence on everyone of those British blues bands, and the man who (primarily*) developed and popularized this new form was Buddy Guy.

Back in the day, Guy never found solo success, but his guitar playing--along with his wild showman's antics (from where Hendrix learned multiple tricks)--on these blues tunes was just what these white mods were looking for: something down deep and dirty, yet fun and frenetic and exciting as well. These British** guitarists--Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, etc...--didn't have to worry about trying to adapt the blues style to their rock-and-roll guitar playing because Buddy Guy had already done it for 'em. If you're ever looking for a link between the blues and modern rock and roll, then look no further than the records Guy cut (solo and as a session/touring guitarist with much more well-known Chess-label acts) in the early and mid-sixties, 'cause it's all right there. Guy's style isn't rock (at least it wasn't yet), but all the seeds of blues-rock phenomenon are clearly evident.

In the late '80s, all of Buddy Guy's work finally paid off, as he released back-to-back Grammy-winning albums (1991's Damn Right, I've Got the Blues and 1993's Feels Like Rain), and they were the best-selling albums of his career (and they--especially the former--are among the best of his career, too), and their success rejuvinated his career, allowing Guy much more publicity, bringing in more concert goers at higher-class venues, and calling forth long-deserved critical and popular respect and attention. However, after these two albums, Guy's music dipped in quality, and he seemed to coast a bit...until 2001.

Guy switched labels (from Silvertone to Jive), changed producers (to Dennis Herring), and recorded an album of stripped-down Chicago/Delta Blues. This album--Sweet Tea--was easily Guy's best in a decade, and its sound harkens back to the some of the early sides he recorded some forty years back (and to his live shows, as well), where Guy sounded fresh and alive and electric and youthful. On the jump-blues cuts, Guy shows that he's in prime form, his fills alternating between raw & serrated and clean & supple. But on his slow numbers, he drops the sleek, soul-blues sound of the previous ten years for something less like B.B. King and more like R.L. Burnside.

In "Done Got Old,"--the best slow blues record Buddy Guy has recorded since the sixties--Guy's admissions and confessions of aesthetic, locomotive, and sexual inadequacies are stark and startling. It's stark because Guy speak-sings half of the song, and he does it in his lower register, accompanying himself with only his electric guitar. It's an intimate performance, and Guy's showmanship is replaced with an invisible veneer that allows the listener a rare, honest glimpse into his soul. It's startling because I don't believe I've ever heard a man--much less a black blues man, one who's built his vocal recording career on either professing his prowess or lamenting a lover's loyalty--come clean the way Guy does here.

Jagger, Dylan, even Lennon never 'fessed up like this. When you have to admit that you're to old to function sexually, too old to satisfy your woman, then...damn, you've got the blues, and you've got them something awful. Guy doesn't try to undercut the lyric*** with humor, either, and his trenchant admission is truly humbling, the work of an artist unafraid to speak the truth, knowing that he has to do so to unleash the frustration of his age, that no matter how much he'd like to run and party with the younger set, how much he'd like to look pretty and handsome and attractive, or how much he'd like to satisfy his woman the way he would truly like to satisfy her, that he's just too old to do so. And he's man enough to admit it.

Hell, even growing his hair out wouldn't help. How do I know this, when this is never even alluded to in the song? Buddy Guy shaved his head...four years ago. I guess he finally realized that he'd never be Bo Bice.

He doesn't have to be; he's Buddy Guy.

NOTES

*I say primarily because native Philadelphia, Mississippian (hooray for my hometown) Otis Rush was as instrumental in this development as Guy was. Thing is, though, Rush wasn't near the dexterous and innovative and lively showman Guy was, and therefore Guy became much more (relatively) popular, and thus his influence spread much further.

**Buddy Guy's influence was felt here in America as well. Acts such as the Allman Brothers and Stevie Ray Vaughn pledged their musical allegiance to Buddy Guy early in their careers, and the sounds they developed wouldn't have been possible without Guy paving the way.

***The lyric--and song--were written (and originally recorded) by none other than Junior Kimbrough. I must admit that I feel a tiny smidgen of satisfaction at being able not only to include Kimbrough on this best of the 2000s list when he died in '98, but also to be able to list him right next to his greatest peer, R.L. Burnside.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #167

#167: "Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down" (2001) - R.L. Burnside

I first encountered R.L. Burnside's signature Delta blues in 1991, on the soundtrack to the film Deep Blues, a documentary about contemporary blues musicians living in the Delta (area of Mississippi). The documentary was inspired by music journalist (not the singer) Robert Palmer's excellent book (of the same name) on Mississippi Delta blues, a book I'd read in high school, sometime in the mid-'80s (the book was published in 1981). Back then, I'd already immersed myself in the music of the traditional blues artists, as well as more modern blues artists (including most of the entire round-up of Alligator Records and Malaco Records blues artists, not to mention the more popular Stevie Ray Vaughn and Robert Cray), so when I read about the film being made, I was excited. I couldn't wait to see the movie.

Well, I was wrong. I could wait to see the movie*, as I never saw it listed as playing in my state (not to say that it didn't play in my state, but just that I never saw I listing for it anywhere, and I looked). I did, however, manage to drive to Jackson to buy the soundtrack. I listened to the cassette--twice--the entire hundred-mile trip back home, and the music just floored me. This wasn't the sound of the new blues I'd been listening to; this was something entirely different. It was rawer and (thereby...sort of) more powerful than any contemporary blues I'd ever heard.

This must be, I thought, what the blues must have sounded like back when Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf first unleashed their early records: primal, hard-core, gut-bucket blues, music that grabbed your crotch and soul at the same time, music that forced you to pay attention, that struck a primordial groove and held it, refusing to change chords, refusing to let go, until you understood...until you understood not what these musicians had been through ('cause you couldn't, 'cause you didn't live their lives--Thank God!), but until you understood that they'd been through these times and lived to tell their tale. These songs demanded a congregation, because these folks were there to witness, and they demanded we listen, 'cause someone needed to take note, and that someone was me.

On the album (which has sadly been discontinued, though you can find it cheap), the first two tracks completely astounded me. The second track is"Jr. Blues" (which was subsequently retitled as "All Night Long" for release on his solo album) by the late Junior Kimbrough, and it contains possibly the best bass/guitar (I'm not sure which instrument it is--really, as it sounds like a hybrid of the two) blues riff of the past thirty-five years. In a year-or-so, when I start writing my best songs of the '90s list, I'll riff more on that riff, as that song places high, as does the first track of the Deep Blues album, "Jumper on the Line," (later re-titled "Jumper Hanging Out on the Line")by R.L. Burnside.

What both "Jumper on the Line" and "Jr. Blues" do is take a lick and run it straight through the song with no chord changes. What this type of song structure--one riff with no/little variation--provides is a holding pattern--a vamp--onto which the singer (in blues it's the singer, but when rock or jazz employ this strategy, it's the musicians that do this) can improvise. Burnside and Kimbrough utilize this instrumental monotony to allow the groove and feel of the song to sink in deeply so that the lyric and vocal can be felt deeply; it's like those of us who study or write (or whatever) better when there's some background noise. This concentrated and repetitive sound drowns out any inessential information and allows for focus, allows us to more fully enter into whatever world we're trying to enter. In other words, the vamp is used by Burnside and Kimbrough to hypnotize the listener, to drag us into their world by taking us out of our own, as the repeated groove eliminates everything else except the performance. It's singular, and it's demanding.

It's not new, this vamping style of Burnside and Kimbrough. Not completely. Burnside's and Kimbrough's sound comes--primarily--via Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Waters and Wolf developed their sound**--the Chicago Blues sound (even though both originally hailed from Mississippi--by removing some of the chord changes inherent in the (more acoustic) country (Delta) blues style (which owes its half its origin to European ballads***) in order to give the new music more drive and more power. What Burnside (whose sound comes more from Waters) and Kimbrough (whose sound comes more from Wolf) do is take the (early) Chicago Blues sound and strip it down even further, taking out even more chord changes, leaving only one or two--and ofttimes none.

This new Delta Blues style was, to me, almost revelatory, as with a musical history and sound as singular as the blues, very little musical change is ever expected or predicted, and what we have here is something new in a world where that hasn't been anything new in almost forty years. So, I did a bit of researched, asked around, called around, trying to find something either Burnside or Kimbrough, and back then, in 1991, I could find nothing. Nada.

A few years later, I read a review of Kimbrough's debut album in Rolling Stone, and I was excited, as well as a little dumbfounded. Debut? Really? Yes, really. I searched for that album in nearby record stores (and Wal-Mart), and I couldn't find it. I asked a few record stores if they could order it for me, and they politely dismissed my request, for they hadn't heard of the record, nor of the artist. Well, somehow, I eventually tracked down Fat Possum records (out of Oxford, Mississippi), and they sent me a catalogue (which, back then, looked less like a catalogue than it did a flier), and there was Kimbrough's record, and...they had one from R.L. Burnside as well. Alright!

Soon, toward the middle of the '90s, both artists' reputations began to grow statewide and then nationally. In '96, Jon Spencer (of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) took a liking to Burnside's music, and the two combined forces and toured and recorded together, and Burnside's popularity began to soar (relatively, that is). Going to Chulahoma to Kimbrough's juke joint began to be the new "in" thing to do, especially if Burnside was going to be there. His records started to sell, and I started seeing national ads promoting them. Then, in '98, Kimbrough (who never became anywhere near as popular as Burnside, though I don't know why) died, and then his club burned down, and then Burnside stopped recording. Period. No more. He'd stopped drinking at the same time, and I believe I read an interview with him once (though I don't remember where or when) where he stated that his sobriety affected his playing/songwriting ability. Huh. Usually, it's the other way around, but go figure. He still toured, though.

In 2001, Fat Possum released the last album containing new Burnside material: Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down. Like all of Burnside's albums of the previous six-or-so years, the results were mixed. Burnside liked to tinker with his material (or either he allowed his producers the leeway to do so), and--usually--on about (at least) every other song, contemporary R&B/hip-hop/nu-rock production and/or arrangement would be tacked onto the song, and the results varied...from bad to worse. Okay, that's hyperbole: some of the hip-hop/blues songs worked well; most didn't, though, and when they misfired, they misfired by miles.

What did work, though, was Burnside being Burnside--either with a traditional jump-blues backing band (usually his sons), or by himself. On the title track of the aforementioned 2001 album, Burnside accompanies himself on guitar. His voice, here, deeper--and wearier--than it was back in 1991, back when I first heard him. His signature style--the modern day Delta Blues vamp--has receded, leaving Burnside's voice as the only distinctively Burnsidian aspect of the song. He's regressed his music back to its original Delta Roots, back to the days before Waters and Wolf, back to Robert Johnson and Son House, back to their songs of impending doom, of death letters and hellhounds on their trails.

Here, Burnside repeats the title multiple times, as if he was hoping he could make it so by wishing, by chanting, as a mantra, as if he stops wishing, stops chanting, that it might not happen. He also asks for redemption, for the Lord to "take away [his] sin and give [him] grace," sounding like a man who either knows his end is coming soon (Burnside had heart surgery in 1999, and never completely and healthily recovered, and would die in 2005) and is afeared that he'll suffer eternal damnation if not forgiven and saved before his time comes, or a man who's too long for this world as he's tired and weary and in pain and has had enough. Burnside's powerful vocals (made all the more effective by their imperfection) are earnest to the point of being nigh-confessional, as if the microphone was his alter, and we--the listeners--his priest, here not only to bear witness but also to transfer the message. And we do. But we're not sure if the message was ever received, 'cause Burnside's still here, opening up his soul, praying to the Lord and us, and the only thing we can do is grant him an audience...and if we listen to him one more time, then maybe, he'll find the peace he wants, 'cause if he doesn't, then his sin is on us, but we'll take it, 'cause he's there, too.

NOTES

*I finally saw Deep Blues about four years ago, on either IFC or the Sundance Film Channel. It's worth a watch, and I enjoyed it, but the movie didn't delve as deep into the music and history of these musicians as I'd hoped it would, though as a document of what life was like back then (and, from what I hear from people who know the area, still is) in a poor Mississippi town, it was an accurate depiction.

**Waters's and Wolf's style--the Chicago Blues sound--is as much the product of Willie Dixon as it is Waters and Wolf, as it was Dixon who wrote some of their earliest, best, and most influential songs. Dixon's talent and influence as a songwriter knows few equals, but as a recording artist and performer--especially the latter--he wasn't very distinctive, certainly nowhere near as distinctive as either Waters or Wolf.

***Which goes to show you that musicians will "steal" from whenever and wherever they can legally**** get away with it. So, the next time you hear someone complaining that all Elvis or Eric Clapton or the Rolling Stones did is steal the black man's music and put a white face on it so that the richer white folks would by it, tell this person that he/she is correct, and that the black people who were robbed also robbed people (musically) themselves, both white and black. It's always been this way, and it ain't changing anytime soon, either. Musicians will take whatever they know to be great, call it an "influence," and make their own music using someone else's...until, of course, the takers--the robbers--start tweaking that sound to make it fit themselves, start adding a bit of this and that, and then they have developed their own sound, which someone later will subsequently take, etc....

****They'll do it illegally, too. Just ask George Harrison*****. Or the Beach Boys. Or M.A.R.R.S.

*****Actually, considering Harrison is dead, it might not be a good idea to try to exhume his corpse in order to be able to do that.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #168

#168: "That's How I Got to Memphis" - (2006) - Solomon Burke

Last week, my wife Foot Foot handed me a journal she found that I'd written about twelve years ago, before we married. She asked me to go ahead and look through it--right then! Uh-oh...something's up. What in the world could I have written in there to have behooved my missus? Oh, dear.

I had no idea, for I hadn't looked at that journal since...heck, I don't even remember writing in it. I flipped it open, and I asked her what particular page or pages she wanted me to read, and she told me the first two. I opened up to the first page, and she immediately reached over and flipped it over and pointed to the middle of the page and exclaimed, "That right there!" I'd written, "I wonder how _______ is doing. I haven't heard from her in awhile."

"See what I mean?" my wife asked. I shook my head.

"Is that all?" I asked.

"Yes," she responded.

"And, what, didn't I write something about you in here?"

"Yes, but you mentioned her last!" she said. Sure enough, she was right. I flipped through the rest of the journal (I'd only written in about two more pages--yeah, I sure was prolific), and I saw no mention of my wife after the last mention of ________. I flipped to the front and skimmed, and I did see that I mentioned my wife...first. Heck, I even speculated (in the journal) about what I could do to win her love. I dropped her name twice, too.

Didn't matter much, though. Foot Foot needed to be Donna Summer, Floyd Cramer, and Robert Johnson. She needed to be the last dance, the last date, and the last fair deal gone down. And she was, I tried to explain to her. Look whom I married, I tried to tell her.

"You didn't think so then," she said. Yeesh! What's a man to do? "You were going to follow her to _______!"

"But I didn't. I stayed here and married you," I said.

"Hmph. Bet you wish you would have gone. Bet you regret not going," she said, and then our two-year-old daughter demanded to be released from the confines of her carseat, and that particular conversation ended.

I've thought before--and not in a long time, not until now--about how my life would have been had I hightailed it north from Mississippi, leaving the life I knew to follow what I once thought might have been--or could have been, or could have turned out to be--love. What would have happened had I followed that girl and the situation not have gone like I'd have wanted it to go? What if the romance were to be doomed? Would have I turned tail and slipped back home? Would have taken that midnight train to Mississippi, back to the world I would have left behind not (to what would have been) so long ago? Would I have traveled elsewhere? Or would I have stayed put there, abandoned?

The latter's the case with the protagonist in Solomon Burke's rendition of the forty-year-old Tom T. Hall country-blues lament (it's been recorded previously by country artists Deryl Dodd, Lee Hazelwood, Buddy Miller, Bobby Bare, and by Hall himself), "That's How I Got to Memphis." The song--and it's a great one, as are most of Hall's during his prime--is the hard luck version of "Midnight Train to Georgia." Here, the tragedy inherent in the Knight song deepens. In the Knight song, the protagonist would rather live in her lover's world than without the lover in her own world, so she follows him home. In the Hall song, once the protagonist arrives, the lover leaves. Ouch. Sounds like it hurts, doesn't it? It does when Solomon Burke sings it.

Burke's voice was once both booming (he started his professional career as a pastor) and supple, as evidenced by this soul pioneer's vocals on his soul hits "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love," "Down in the Valley," "Cry to Me," and "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms) (which was a country cover, too). The years and the concerts and the Sunday sermons have taken a toll on Burke's voice, but that aged and worn quality serves him well here, as that ragged quality bespeaks of years of the blues. Burke must surely realize this, as he drops the volume in his lines at the end of each verse, some ending in barely a whisper. Burke's technique and the record's spare production lend creedence to the heartbreak in the lyric, the saddest part of which isn't that his lover's left him, but that he's determined to still see here again...by waiting for her to come back.

Right at the end of the song, Burke accomplishes something pretty special, something rarefied that only the best actors can accomplish. In the matter of just four recitations of the same line, with just the slightest change of inflection, Burke displays grief, resignation, defiance, and the self-effacing humor that often comes with acceptance. It's tragic and shattering and, ultimately, life affirming, as the once-bemonikered King of Soul plumbs the depth of the soul of a man who suffers a rejection that for most would be life altering. It's to Burke's credit--and Hall's, too, as this interpretation was always present in the lyric (though, until Burke, not the interpreter)--that this song can show us how strong a soul can be, how resolve can overcome whatever life and love and fate and former lovers may throw our way.

"If you love somebody enough/You follow them wherever they go," Burke sings here, and he's right. He knows. Tom T. Hall knows, too. As do I. Resolve and love and loyalty will take you anywhere, to follow the one with whom you can't live without, whether that be Memphis, Georgia, _______, or right here in Mississippi. Love can travel the world, but it doesn't always have to. Sometimes the midnight train leaves the same day it arrives and in the same location. Sometimes, she doesn't leave Memphis. Sometimes, she waits for you just as you wait for her. If she'd have left, you'd have followed, but sometimes she doesn't leave; she just reads your journal instead.