Resolutions: I’m Gonna Be an Engineer

Bobbie McGhee: I‘m Gonna Be an Engineer

[purchase]

I don’t usually post quizzes here, but I have a few questions for our readers as we go along. Please respond in the comments. Thanks.

I had two introductions to folk music growing up. One was what I heard at the peace demonstrations I attended, starting at age eight. The other was a program that was broadcast on WQXR out of New York City when I was young. The show was called Woody’s Stepchildren, and I don’t remember the name of the host, so that’s question 1. Does anyone else remember the show? At any rate, that was where I first heard I’m Gonna Be an Engineer. I believe the song was written by Peggy Seeger, and hers was the version I heard. It was my introduction to feminism, before the term had even been coined. I never thought about what kind of engineer the singer was going to be. My father was an electrical engineer, so that must be it.

The version here is by Bobbie McGhee. Who was she? I have no idea, so that’s question 2. All I know is that I like her version better than Seeger’s. McGhee sounds more determined to me, perhaps because feminism had made some strides by the time McGhee recorded it. I can tell you that McGhee’s album came out on Collector Records in 1981, and was reissued by Smithsonian Folkways in 2006.

Years after I first heard this song, I dated a woman who was a mechanical engineer. That was the mid 1980s, and she was still paid less than her male colleagues. I hope things have continued to improve since then. If there are any female engineers among our readers, feel free to report. I hope there will come a day when we no longer have to talk about someone being a female anything; that is what true equality will mean.

Resolutions: Tamara

Juliana Hatfield: Tamara

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There's lots of quotes about tomorrow, most of which are about change, about how tomorrow will be better than today. There's no time like the breaking of a new year to really feel like tomorrow has arrived.

In this early Juliana Hatfield b-side, from her "Forever Baby" single/EP, she has almost created tomorrow as a person, an entity. In that way, she names the song "Tamara", a play on the word "tomorrow". The song is about plans for betterment in general. In the song, she has big plans to make herself better tomorrow than she is today, but by the end of the song she's already started to give up hope that tomorrow/Tamara can ever really change anything and is destined to always be the same.

Resolutions: I Won't Be Your Dog Anymore

Paul Kelly: I Won't Be Your Dog Anymore

[recent web-only recording; purchase alternate live version here]


For every battered woman who keeps promising herself that this time, she's going to leave.

For every man who compromises his ethics daily just to make that next paycheck.

For everyone who has ever been a dog.

May this be your year.

In Memoriam/ Resolutions: Gregory Isaacs - Write Myself a Letter

Gregory Isaacs: Write Myself a Letter

[purchase]

In 2010, the world lost three important reggae artists, Yabby You, Sugar Minott, and Gregory Isaacs. Isaacs was probably the best known. He is credited with creating the reggae style known as “lover’s rock”, which obviously involved love songs. Isaacs wrote many such songs, and he set the mark in reggae for how to sing them. But Write Myself a Letter is an unlikely cover. The original version, which you will find below, was a classic early jazz song by Fats Waller. The conversion of the song into a reggae number shows the rare musical imagination that Isaacs possessed. He also did a fine version of House of the Rising Sun.

Isaacs’ stage persona was all lover, except when he performed his protest songs. But off-stage, he battled an addiction to cocaine for most of his life, and he spent time in and out of jail. This hard lifestyle finally claimed him in 2010.

Bonus track:

Fats Waller: I‘m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

[purchase]

To be honest, I did not set out to do a transitional post at all. The first song I thought of for our new theme was this classic by Fats Waller. The singer’s resolution is to not allow himself to be lonely. I wanted to find an interesting cover version to go with it, and that’s when I discovered the Gregory Isaacs version. He certainly deserves to be honored, so I’m glad it worked out this way.

In Memoriam: Alex Chilton

The Box Tops: The Letter

[purchase]

Big Star: I'm In Love With A Girl

[purchase]

Alex Chilton: Baron of Love Pt. 2

[purchase]

Chameleonesque singer-songwriter Alex Chilton, a legend of the Memphis music scene, died in March on the cusp of a comeback, perhaps the fifth or sixth such comeback in his long career - more if we include such personal notes as his escape from Hurricane Katrina, and his scheduled high-buzz set with a resurrected group performing under the name of the grungy proto-altrockers Big Star at SXSW in 2010, which went on as a tribute without him just days after his passing [and which included was also originally intended to include Big Star cofounder Andy Hummel, who in a curious synchronicity of events, would pass a few months later].

But though his post-seventies turn to post-modern jazz tinged with Memphis soul never brought him the same recognition as his earlier work, Chilton, who at sixteen had made a splash with The Box Tops - the first recording artists to have a Memphis recorded, nationwide, number one hit - and then in his early twenties resurged at the helm of Big Star, is still recognized widely for his role in the evolution of modern Rock music; both bands featured prominently in the annals and archives of both the Stax museum and the Smithsonian museum of Rock and Blues, which I just came back from visiting down in Memphis, and their song On The Street found fitting placement as the theme song for That 70's Show. I shared my own tribute over at Cover Lay Down in the days after his death, but fittingly, today's post also marks the sixth time we've visited him here at Star Maker Machine since our inception. Surely, it won't be the last, either.

In Memoriam: Kate McGarrigle

Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Tell My Sister

[purchase]

Happy new year to all of our readers. Before we leave 2010 behind completely, let me say that this week of tributes would not be complete for me without Kate McGarrigle. After the beauty of her music, Kate McGarrigle makes me think of family. That may seem odd, given the fact that her marriage to Loudon Wainwright III famously ended badly. But McGarrigle was at the center of a series of annual Christmas concerts which included her children, Martha and Rufus Wainwright, her ex-husband, and various members of the Roche clan, who were included because of Loudon Wainwright’s later relationship with Suzzy Roche. So even if the structure was far from conventional, this all tells me that family was important to Kate McGarrigle. And the bond between her and her sister Anna was clearly very strong. So, I’m not sure which sister wrote Tell My Sister, but it seemed appropriate. The line in the song, “I’m coming home”, perhaps takes on a new meaning in this context, but that seems appropriate as well.

This is not, perhaps, the usual kind of writing for a tribute post. Other people have written some tributes to Kate McGarrigle that are far more beautiful than anything I could do. To conclude, I would like to refer you to one those, here.