Smile: Your Smile's a Drug

Patrick Park: Your Smile's a Drug

[Purchase]

Patrick Park is a singer-songwriter who, like many, hasn't gotten a fair shake due to record label issues. His 2003 debut album "Lonliness Knows My Name" should be known by more than it is, there are many great folk-pop songs on there that college girls should be swooning over. He reminds me a bit of Rhett Miller's folkier more melancholy side.

The song's title tells us most of what we need to know. He has fallen for a girl who's smile he is addicted to. Despite knowing that pursuing a relationship with her will mean a lot of work and possible torment, he can't seem to help himself. She smiles, and he loses all sense of what's good for him.

Smile: Your Smile Stops The Hands Of Time

Roddy Frame: Your Smile Stops The Hands Of Time

[purchase]

Roddy Frame was signed by David Bowie when he was only 16 years old. Since then, he has produced a long string of hit albums in the UK and has had some limited success in the US. As much as I loved Aztec Camera when I was in high school, it is Roddy's solo work that has stood the test of time. The all acoustic album, Surf, is his best work. This song is one of a couple of slow moving, but beautiful, tracks from that album.

Smile: The Cheshire Cat Song

Gilbert Hetherwick: The Cheshire Cat Song

[purchase, by download only]

I wasn’t about to let this week go by without honoring the most famous smile in western literature. But I also didn’t know of any particular songs on the subject, and I certainly didn’t have any. So, I went hunting. And I found that there seems to be a rule that, in order to tackle this subject, you have to be someone I never heard of. Try it yourself, and see if you get the same result. Obviously, however, I did find something I like.

Gilbert Hetherwick was once a record store manager in a shop that sold classical music to the people of Louisiana. He began writing to people at the record companies, telling them how to improve their albums. Soon enough, Hetherwick had a job at one of these companies, and in due time, he rose to be the head of the classical division at Sony/ BMG. So what would someone like that do with his spare time? Why, he would write and record a psychedelic rock musical, based on Alice in Wonderland and the life of Lewis Carol. Oh yes, of course.

The Cheshire Cat Song comes from that musical, Dreams For Alice. And the song is on the soundtrack album, from 2002. The songs were written over a ten year period, and given to friends, before the whole thing was released as an album. I can find no information to indicate that the show was ever staged. The version of The Cheshire Cat Song on Dreams For Alice is marred by a production full of the worst cliches of psychedelic rock; here are corny electric guitar parts and heavy reverb on the vocals, for starters. But, in 2008, Hetherwick returned to these songs for a live album. Now The Cheshire Cat Song has a nice mostly acoustic arrangement, and the quality of the songwriting comes through much more clearly. This is the version I chose.

Smile : (You Caught Me) Smilin'

Sly & The Family Stone : (You Caught Me) Smilin'

[purchase]


Simple, melodic, fun, just like a smile ... illegal smile ? With Sly, it's likely...

PS : Can somebody explain me the meaning of this AMG review (I mean the part about the lyrics). Maybe I got it wrong, but why does the guy think the hedonistic lyrics feel so wrong ? Is it because what happened to Sly next (his addiction)? Or is it that this man thinks that being hedonistic is wrong ? Why would an artist be necessarily depressed to write great things ? And is smiling when you're hurt a forbidden thing ?
I'm just wondering...

Smile: Bathsheba Smiles

Richard Thompson: Bathsheba Smiles

[purchase]

In the bible, Bathsheba is the beautiful woman who causes David to turn away from God. How could anyone have such a powerful allure? According to Richard Thompson, it’s her smile. His lyric describes this power in some detail. And that’s all there is to the song. But it’s enough.

Smile: When You Smile

The Dream Syndicate: When You Smile

[purchase]

The Dream Syndicate´s ´84 album The Days Of Wine And Roses is one of the great debuts of all time if you ask me. Right up there with the first signs of life from the Velvets, the Stooges, the Doors, the Modern Lovers and Television, to name but a few kindred souls. Just check the bittersweet, feedback-drenched (that´s their guitar wiz Karl Precoda btw) When You Smile for proof.

"When you smile, I don't know what to do
´cause I could lose everything in a minute or two
and it seems like the end of the world when you smile..."

Smile: I Can't Stop Smiling

Velocity Girl: I Can't Stop Smiling

[Purchase]

I can't stop smiling
And I am not sure why I'd want to anyway.

I can't say rock and roll is known for it's utter joy. It's difficult to be edgy when you can't stop smiling. All the same, Washington D.C.-based 90's rock band Velocity Girl made a fantastic pop-rock song about that feeling when you can't seem to wipe the goofy grin off your face, and did it well.

This particular song is from their aptly-named sophomore album "Simpatico!", and is one of my favorite Velocity Girl tracks. The band broke up in 1998, but singer Sarah Shannon has since released a few solo albums.

Smile: Winsome Smile

Chris Smither: Winsome Smile

[purchase]

Acoustic bluesman Chris Smither does the blues exceptionally well, but his wry vocal mannerisms and fast fingerstyle are also surprisingly well-suited for upbeat songs such as this one. Listen carefully, though -- while the song is celebratory on the surface, there's a mature dissonance between the tune and tempo on one hand, and the lyrics on the other. Cue the last verse:

Time will wound all heels, and it ain't pretty
With any luck at all, she'll find some dope that you can pity
Your loss is measured in illusions
And your gain is all in bittersweet intelligence
And your winsome smile will lose some of its innocence...

Cry Cry Cry: Cry Cry Cry

Johnny Cash: Cry Cry Cry

[purchase]

Cry Cry Cry: By Way of Sorrow (written by Julie Miller)

[purchase]

I batted around a few different ideas for my contribution this week, but kept coming back to the phrasing of the theme... and couldn't resist my need to tie together the two incarnations of Cry Cry Cry of which I'm aware:

~ the title of Johnny Cash's song (released in June 1955, it reached number 14 on the Billboard country charts)...

Cash wasn't used to writing on demand, but back at the house on Tutweiler with Vivian's due date approaching, Cash labored at the kitchen table. He chugged his coffee and burned down cigarette after cigarette as if he were back at the radio intercept controls. Inspired by Memphis disc jockey Eddie Hill's trademark "we're gonna squall and ball and climb the walls", recalled Cash, he came up with Cry Cry Cry in two weeks... Cash enhanced the recording with a chucka-chucka percussive effect that he produced by threading a folded sheet of paper between the strings up around the neck frets...

~ the name of the 1999 folk supergroup (comprised of Dar Williams, Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky)...

"The name comes from "three things," Shindell says, speaking softly by phone from his "quiet house in the woods" of Valhalla, N.Y.

"It's the threeness of it all, obviously, but it's also the sound of the voice, the way a singing voice can often sound like it's crying at the simplest of times. And there's a melancholy to the whole thing, in that most of the songs on the album are pretty damned depressing."

There's also the matter of his newborn son. "The sessions were interrupted by his birth, and a few of the arrangements were inspired by him. And he was around a lot . . . crying."

As a synchronistic sidenote, I actually did witness the trio performing the Cash tune... in February 1999 at the Centro Astureano in Tampa, Florida - sigh sigh sigh...

Cry Cry Cry: Cry On Demand

Ryan Adams: Cry On Demand

[purchase]

Though it's somewhat blasphemous to say so, I'm a much bigger fan of Ryan Adams the sensitive folkpop artist than Ryan Adams the alt-country rocker. It's not that I don't understand the appeal, really -- the man can write a hook in any form, and his heavier side makes for some danm good listening. I just think there's few other artists recording today who can hit the emotional nail on the head with such heartfelt quietude. And the tangled web of confused loss and longing which frames Cry On Demand makes it one of the best pensive, brooding acoustic ballads in his catalog.

Cry, Cry, Cry: You´re Gonna Make Me Cry

O.V. Wright: You´re Gonna Make Me Cry

[purchase]

"Love is something... it´s hard to figure out,

but love is something the whole round world wanna know about..."

Granted, not exactly lyrics to win a poetry prize with. But just do yourself a favour and check out the dynamite vocals on this ´65 gem. If southern soul giant Overton Vertis sang the Memphis telephone book from cover to cover I´d buy the box set.

Cry, Cry, Cry : Dancing With Tears In My eyes

Alvin Youngblood Hart : Dancing With Tears In My Eyes

[purchase]

I love Alvin Youngblood Hart because he's a great guitar player, singer songwriter, and of course, because like me, he's a old-time blues lover and a fan of the great Leadbelly.

"Dancing with tears in my eyes",is not a cover of the new wave hit by Ultravox, but a much more ancient Tin Pan Alley song in 3/4 time, that Alvin took from Lead who, in turn had learnt it in the thirties. It's a good song about sadness and life that must go on.

Cry Cry Cry: My Blue Tears

Dolly Parton: My Blue Tears

[purchase]

Dolly Parton.

My first impression of her had nothing to do with music. It was the enormous breasts. Parton was the one who made sure everyone knew about them. So, she was the trashy blond who had something to do with country. Then, I heard that she had opened an amusement park named after herself. And there was the movie, 9 To 5.

I actually saw it in the theater. I don’t remember why. It was a slight comedy. The songs were my first introduction to Parton’s music, and it wasn’t even country. It was bad pop.

At the time, I was in my “cool” phase. I wasn’t about to like country music. New wave was the thing. Jazz gave me an edge. So did blues. Folk was a secret only my closest friends knew about.

But, I got older, and left the peer pressure of high school behind. A girlfriend liked going to bars to dance to local country bands, and I began to realize that, yes, it was corny, but country music had something honest to say. Still, even the idea of liking Dolly Parton was embarrassing.

Cut to 2001. Now I am married to a woman who doesn’t care for most country music. The sound of country music has changed. Line dancing is big, and the classic sound of country is becoming a distant memory. And word reaches me that Dolly Parton has made a bluegrass album! A good one, even! The idea is so weird that I have to check it out. And it really is true.

The album was Little Sparrow, and the song My Blue Tears is right there in the middle of it. Here, it is a slow ballad about the sorrow of having a lover leave. The lyrics are a plea by the wounded protagonist to a bluebird whose sad song reminds her of her loss. The song has a naive simplicity to the concept, and the listener cannot help but sympathize.

It turns out that My Blue Tears is a Parton original that has been with her for a while. She first recorded it on her album Coat of Many Colors, in a more upbeat early seventies country arrangement. There is also a beautiful duet version on Linda Ronstadt’s album Get Closer. So, maybe Parton will record the song again in the future. I’ll be keeping an ear out, to see what she does with it next.

Cry Cry Cry: Everyday I Have To Cry Some

Arthur Alexander: Everyday I Have To Cry Some

[purchase]

If you are only going to listen to one of my tearful posts this week, this should be the one.

Arthur Alexander was an extremely gifted artist but many music fans don't know his name. You should. Check out his interesting story here, here, and here.

(If you like what you hear, please consider leaving a comment so that I know a connection is being made.)

Cry Cry Cry: 1000 Oceans

Tori Amos: 1000 Oceans

[Purchase]

This Tori Amos song is from her 1999 double-disc album "To Venus and Back", which featured a disc of new songs and a disc of live songs recorded during her previous tour. "1000 Oceans" was the last song on the disc, and as is typical for many artists, and almost always the case for Tori, the album ends with a melancholy ballad.

This particular song was inspired by the passing of her father-in-law and was written to help her husband deal with the grief. She sings about how she has cried "a thousand oceans" but would cry a thousand more if it meant bringing him back. It's a touching and beautiful song, that, though sad, feels more like a sympathetic hand squeeze or a shoulder to cry on.

Cry Cry Cry: Tears Don’t Care Who Cries Them

kd lang: Tears Don‘t Care Who Cries Them

[purchase]

Patsy Cline. Brenda Lee. Loretta Lynn. Female country singers who had (or have) big voices. You think of them singing in front of a small band augmented with real strings. And, I at least think, this is what country music sounds like.

But were it not for producer Owen Bradley, country music might not sound like that at all. Bradley was the producer of all of these ladies’ biggest songs. And he was one of the chief architects of the “Nashville sound”.

By 1987, kd lang had made one album that had anything to do with country music. Absolute Torch and Twang had more to do with Texas country, including western swing. At this point, lang decided to do her next project in Nashville.

Mary Martin had been a friend of lang’s in Canada. Martin relocated to Nashville, and went to work for RCA’s country operation there. It was she who introduced lang to Owen Bradley. In Bradley, lang found a legend who was willing to take chance on a young singer. In lang, Bradley found a singer who blossomed, and proved able to more than hold her own as a classic country singer. The result was an album that sounded like it could have been made 35 years earlier. The album was Shadowland.

Most of the songs on Shadowland are covers that match up well to the originals. I have been unable to determine who may have done an earlier version of Tears Don’t Care Who Cries Them. But the song fits write in with the vintage material here.

Cry Cry Cry: You Would Cry Too If It Happened To You...

Lesley Gore: It's My Party
Lesley Gore: Judy's Turn To Cry

[purchase]

These pop hits from 1963 (sung by 16-year-old Lesley Gore and produced by 30-year-old Quincy Jones) constitute history's most famous two-part, tear-dropped, teen-pop melodrama.

Cry Cry Cry: Crying, Waiting, Hoping (and sometimes Prayin')

Buddy Holly: Crying, Waiting, Hoping [purchase]

This gem is a home recording made by Buddy Holly in 1958, shortly before his untimely death.

While not the same song, it bears some resemblance to this 1955 recording from the Singing Ranger, Hank Snow:

Hank Snow: Cryin', Prayin', Waitin', Hopin' [purchase]

Cry Cry Cry: Cry on my Shoulder

Bonnie Raitt: Cry on My Shoulder

[purchase]

Some musical pairings seem obvious in retrospect, but make no apparent sense at the time. In 1988, executive producer Hal Willner was working on Stay Awake, his album of unusual takes on songs from Disney movies. Here were Sun Ra doing Pink Elephants on Parade, Tom Waits voicing the seven dwarves, and Sinead O’Connor on the title track. And Willner had the crazy idea of pairing Bonnie Raitt, known at the time mainly as a blues artist, with Don Was, from one of the strangest groups of the 80s, Was (Not Was). And remember that, to be one of the strangest groups of the 80s, you had to be really strange.

The song was Baby Mine, (heard here during the week of the same name), and the pairing worked amazingly well. So well, in fact, that Raitt tagged Was as her producer for her next album. This was Nick of Time, and the album proved to be Raitt’s commercial breakthrough, after almost twenty years in the music business.

Of course, Cry on My Shoulder comes from Nick of Time. The song was written by Michael Ruff. Ruff is one of those people who is regarded as a “songwriter’s songwriter”. You’ve probably heard his songs without knowing they were his. Besides Raitt, artists who have recorded his songs include Natalie Cole, India Arie, Kenny Loggins, Huey Lewis and the News, and The Doobie Brothers. Ruff doesn’t really tour, never venturing much beyond his native Hawaii. And he is primarily a Christian artist, doubly insuring his distance from the mainstream.

Cry Cry Cry: All My Tears

Julie Miller: All My Tears

[purchase]

It's no secret I'm a coverhound, and this one's been done plenty raw and emotional, both by Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris, not to mention an oddly endearing christian rock take from Jars of Clay. But though most covers take both Julie's original intonation and Buddy Miller's ringing electric atmospheric undercurrent as gospel, I prefer the sparse mountain banjo and breathy vocals of Julie Miller's own solo effort, revisited as an appalachian tune for the 2001 film Songcatcher years after the song first debuted as a countryrock duet with Emmylou on Julie's 1993 album Orphans and Angels.

Emmylou's Wrecking Ball demo recording isn't bad, either. The piano is a nice touch.

Emmylou Harris: All My Tears

[demo unreleased; final version here]