Mama Said

It has been estimated that the late Ann Landers received more than 1,000 requests for guidance every week. Considering there are millions of willing sources of advice already available, it’s surprising Ann stayed so busy.

For starters, you can count on the mothers of the world to offer their counsel on every subject under the sun. And what mothers don’t cover, fathers will. Then you have sisters, brothers, friends and nosy neighbors. All are more than happy to give their two cents’ worth at any time.

It’s only natural that these voices of prophecy should be echoed in the oldies.  And just like in real life, some words to the wise are heeded, others aren’t.

In “Good-bye Yellow Brick Road,” Elton John ignores his father’s advice, then lives to regret it. Bill Withers appreciates his brother’s concern, but doesn’t mind a bit that he’s being used.   Neil Diamond begs his girl not to listen to her family. The Four Tops aren’t sure whether to believe the neighborhood gossip. And in “Maybe I Know,” Lesley Gore (may she Rest in Peace) is certain her boyfriend’s a cheat, but hasn’t a clue what to do about it.   
Well, Mama did say there would be dilemmas like this.

 

 My mama told me she said “Son please beware,

there’s this thing called love and it’s, ah everywhere.”

And she told me it can break your heart

and leave you in misery.

Since I met this little woman

I feel it’s happened to me.

         “Too Late To Turn Back Now”

         Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose

         When I became of age my mama called me to her side

She said “Son, you’re growing up now,

pretty soon you’ll take a bride.”

And then she said just because you’ve become a young man, now

there’s still some things you don’t understand, now.

Before you ask some girl for her hand now,

keep your freedom for as long as you can.

         “Shop Around”

         Smokey Robinson and The Miracles

• People at school told me I couldn’t make it, that I’d wind up making potholders.   -  Stevie Wonder

You know my Papa disapproved it 
My Mama boo and hooed it.

But I told them time and time again:

“Don’t you know I was made to love her.”

         “I Was Made To Love Her”

         Stevie Wonder

• At a time when he was having marital problems himself, Ernie K-Doe rescued a song from writer Allen Toussaint’s trash that became an anthem for everyone who’d ever had the mother-in-law blues.

She thinks her advice is a contribution

But if she would leave that would be the solution.

And don’t come back no more.

         “Mother-In-Law”

         Ernie K-Doe

All through this long and sleepless night

I hear my neighbors talking

“She don’t love you.”

Saying out of my life into another’s arms

she’ll soon be walking.

         “Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over)”

         The Four Tops

• Before he died, Gale Garnett’s father -- a carnival pitchman and music hall entertainer -- advised his daughter to find her own place in the sun. Although the glow of success lasted for only one song, she did shine at the 1965 Grammy Awards when she won “Best Folk Recording of the Year.”

My Daddy he once told me

“Hey don’t you love you any man.

Just take what they may give you,

And give but what you can.”

         “We’ll Sing In The Sunshine”

         Gayle Garnett

       Oh, how you tried to cut me down to size

telling dirty lies to my friends.

Well my own father said

“Give her up, don’t bother.

The world isn’t coming to an end.”

                  “Walk Like A Man”

                     The Four Seasons

               

My brother, he sit me right down

and he talked to me.

He told me that I ought to not

let you just walk on me.

And I’m sure he meant well,

but when our talk was through

I said “Brother, if you only knew

you’d wish that you were in my shoes.”              

         “Use Me”

         Bill Withers

• In 1971, I’d gotten out of military school, had a bad draft board experience, a father in the FBI, and of course, there was Nixon. I had so many people trying to tell me what to do, I guess I revolted against a panorama of authority figures in the song. - Jonathon Edwards

     He can’t even run his own life,

     I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine.

                  “Sunshine”

                  Jonathon Edwards

         Love you so much, can’t count all the ways

I’d die for you girl and all they can say is

“He’s not your kind.”

They never get tired of putting me down

and I never know when I come around

just what I’m gonna find.

Don’t let them make up your mind.

         “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon”

                  Neil Diamond

• Fourteen and fifteen-year-olds are really intense. They write in journals and they think really deep thoughts and spend a lot of time being real philosophers in a way.  - Janis Ian

         Come to my school, baby

         Everybody’s acting deaf and blind

         Until they turn and say

         “Why don’t you stick to your own kind?”

                  “Society’s Child”

                  Janis Ian

They said stay at home, boy, you gotta tend the farm

Livin’ in the city, boy,

Is gonna break your heart.

But how can you stay, when your heart says no,

How can you stop,

When your feet say go?

         “Honky Cat”

         Elton John

• While waiting for a stoplight to change, a ragged girl rushed up to Bob Gaudio’s car and started washing his windshield.  The girl’s face so haunted the Four Seasons member that he eventually wrote a song about her. For her trouble, she got a $5 tip. He drove off with a clean windshield and the inspiration for a gold record.

I’d change her sad rags

 into glad rags if I could.

My folks won’t let me ‘cause

they say that she’s no good.

         “Rag Doll”

         The Four Seasons

        

How many times did she fall for his lies?

Should I tell her

or should I be cool?

         “Silence Is Golden”

         The Tremeloes

• Woven into the lyrics of this Holland-Dozier-Holland hit are the names of two friends Diana claims are ill-suited to give her advice: fellow Supremes Mary and Flo.

All day long I hear my telephone ring

friends calling, giving their advice.

From the boy I love I should break away,

‘cause heartache he’ll bring one day.

I listened once to my friends’ advice,

but it’s not going to happen twice.

‘Cause all advice ever got me

was many long and sleepless nights.

         “Back In My Arms Again”

         The Supremes

  My folks moved to New York from California.

I shoulda listened when my buddy said

“I warn ya. There’ll be no surfin’ there,

and no one even cares.”

         “New York’s A Lonely Town”

         The Tradewinds

• The only time a group ever made it to number one while on active duty was with a song inspired by the beat of teletype machines in a Marine communications center.

My buddies tell me “fly to him, sigh to him,”

tell him I would die for him.

Tell him he’s the one.

         “Easier Said Than Done”

         The Essex

They told me “Be sensible with your new love,

don’t be fooled thinking this is the last you’ll find.”

But they never stood in the dark with you, love,

when you take me in your arms and drive me

slowly out of my mind.

                  “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me”

                  Mel Carter

• On the occasion of my first broken heart, a kind teacher told me “boys are like buses, another one will be along in ten minutes.” Obviously, Lesley Gore didn’t have such good counsel. She sticks by her jerky boyfriends in every song .

I hear them whispering when I walk by,

“he’s going to break her heart

and make her cry.”

I know it’s me they’re talking about,

I guess they all think I’ll never find out.

                  “Maybe I Know”

                  Lesley Gore

 









Honey don’t go; don’t leave this scene;

be out of the picture, and off the screen.

Don’t let them say “we told you so;”

they tell me you’ll love me

and then let me go.

         “Being With You”

         Smokey Robinson

•My father told me not to go into music which I couldn’t understand because he’d  once been a musician himself.

-Elton John

I should have stayed on the farm.

I should have listened to my old man.

         “Good-bye Yellow Brick Road”

         Elton John

People say you’ve been making out o.k.

She’s in love, don’t stand in her way.

                           “Hurts So Bad”

                           Little Anthony and The Imperials

My folks were always putting him down.

They said he came from the wrong side of town.

They told me he was bad,

but I knew he was sad.

         “Leader of the Pack”

         The Shangri-Las

Some jealous so and so wants us to part

That’s why he’s telling you

That I’ve got a cheatin’ heart.

Don’t believe all those lies,

Darling just believe your eyes.

         “My Heart Is An Open Book”

         Carl Dobkins, Jr.

I hate to say it but I told you so.

Don’t mind my preachin’ to you.

I said don’t trust him, baby,

now you know.

You don’t learn everything there is

to know in school.

         “Laugh, Laugh”

         Beau Brummels

One time or other, everybody listen to me,

You lose somebody you love.

But that’s no reason for you

to break down and cry.

         “Everybody”

         Tommy Roe

Ev’rybody tells me I’m wrong

to want you so badly.

But there’s a force driving me on

I follow it gladly.

         “Bend Me, Shape Me”

         American Breed

Mama told me not to come. She said “That ain’t no way to have fun, son.”

         “Mama Told Me”

         Three Dog Night

I remember what my Mama told me

she said “Girl, stay in your class.

You got a lot of growing and learning to do,

so girl, don’t you go so fast.”

                  “Mama Didn’t Lie”

                  Jan Bradley

I need love, love to ease my mind

I need to find, find someone to call mine.

But Mama said you can’t hurry love,

no, you’ve just got to wait.

She said love don’t come easy

It’s a game of give and take.

         “You Can’t Hurry Love”

         The Supremes                          

My eyes were wide open,

but all that I could see

were chapel bells tolling

for everyone but me.

But I don’t worry

’cause Mama said there’d be days like this.

         “Mama Said”

         The Shirelles

So cheers to all those advice givers in oldie goldie land. Now tell me YOUR favorite piece of advice from a classic tune!

47 years later, the cake is still out in the rain. (And still in our heads.)

                                                                                                                    Cartoon courtesy Rick Kollinger

My freshman year at the University of Florida, my English professor gave the class an intriguing and unexpected essay assignment.

Having heard the song “Chewy, Chewy” by the Ohio Express on the radio one morning, he wondered if there were any thoughtful tunes on the pop charts. He challenged us to pick a contemporary song and write about the meaning of the lyrics.

I chose “MacArthur Park.”

I opened the essay with this snippet of one of Millay’s sonnets. To my 18-year-old brain, it seemed to capture the meaning of the song in a nutshell.

That April should be shattered by a gust,

That August should be leveled by a rain,

I can endure, and that the lifted dust

Of man should settle to the earth again;

But that a dream can die, will be a thrust

Between my ribs forever of hot pain.

                                    - Edna St. Vincent Millay

I went on to write “ dreams and aspirations are an inseparable part of the human spirit. The death of a dream destroys part of that spirit and leaves in its void only the hope that life will go on, that another dream will come another day.”

Old postcard painting of MacArthur Park

“In the song MacArthur Park, a dream has died. Located on the somewhat-seedy fringe of downtown Los Angeles, the real MacArthur Park is a 32-acre refuge for the elderly and wanderers. Here, perhaps near the duck pond, the ingredients were added to someone’s dream – a yellow cotton dress, men playing checkers by the trees.”

I won’t bore you with the entire essay, but I speculated that a once “fevered” love had gone cold, and although the narrator believes he can go on, he knows the ingredients that created his dream can never be duplicated.

MacArthur Park in more recent times

I finished by writing “MacArthur Park is the story of the ingredients that nurtured a dream. The death of that dream blurs the memories, perhaps through tears of sorrow.”

All these years later, people are still guessing what MacArthur Park is about and what possessed Jimmy Webb to write it. Did he have a bet with Richard Harris he could pen a #1 song for the Irish singer and actor? Was it about drugs? Did he purposely compose a 7-minute song to annoy British record producers? Or was it indeed about a love affair gone wrong?

Last October, writer Jimmy Webb provided some answers during an interview with Newsweek.

“…it's just a song about a girlfriend of mine, Susie Horton, and this place on Wilshire Boulevard where we used to have lunch and feed the ducks which is called MacArthur Park. And the truth is that everything in the song was visible. There's nothing in it that's fabricated. The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw. And so it's a kind of musical collage of this whole love affair that kind of went down in MacArthur Park.”

Jimmy Webb

As it turns out the girl who broke Webb’s heart eventually got married in MacArthur Park. Unable to stay away, he went to the park and hid in a gardener’s shed during the ceremony. Apparently the heavens opened up and the rain running down the shed window made the wedding cake look like it was melting.

 

Webb also said, " I remember that that was also when I wrote 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix' because this affair was winding down to a kind of dreary close, and I was thinking, 'Well, I'll just go back to Oklahoma,' and so I wrote 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix.' Of course, I never even got in the car and turned on the engine to go back to Oklahoma. But it's related to 'MacArthur Park' in that sense. It comes from the same period when I was experiencing things and pretty much transferring them immediately into music."

"My writing technique, my style, is a lot different now, so in a way, it's a lot more accessible and easier to understand. Back then, I was kind of like an emotional machine, like whatever was going on inside me would bubble out of the piano and onto paper.”

So it sounds like the take on ‘MacArthur Park’ I thought up way back in 1969 wasn’t far from the truth. 

Happily I got an “A” for my efforts, but my professor wrote, “why did it happen here?” in the margin by the section where I talked about the actual park.

Now we know, Dr. Childers. Now we know.

Sir Paul names his pick for best ever album

Our guest columnist and Karaoke King Jim Borgmann writes about Paul McCartney and what may be the greatest album ever.

Ask someone over 60 to name the greatest record album ever made and chances are they will say "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" by the Beatles. 

It is hard to argue with that, unless and until you ask a certain Sir Paul McCartney.  Sir Paul will look you straight in the eye and say "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys.  Here's what he said in a 1990 interview with Albumlinernotes.com: 

WHEN DID YOU BECOME AWARE OF THE BEACH BOYS?

PAUL: "The early surf records...I was aware of them as a musical act, and I used to like all that, but I didn't get deeply interested in it---it was just a real nice sound...We used to admire the singing, the high falsetto really and the very sort of 'California' lyrics.

"It was later...it was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. First of all, it was Brian's writing. I love the album so much. I've just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life---I figure no one is educated musically 'til they've heard that album. I was into the writing and the songs."      (To see the complete interview, visit http://albumlinernotes.com/Paul_McCartney_Comments.html)

If you ask me, the Beatles and the Beach Boys, their combined bodies of work, had more influence on music from 1963 to 1969 than all the other bands of that era put together.  Of course there were other great artists and groups, but they all seemed to have their moment in the sun and then faded.  But if you read all the literature, you find that the "unofficial" competition between the Beatles and the Beach Boys drove them both to create more and even better music than  even they knew they were capable of!  Amazing.

So my question for you today's is, what is your favorite song from the Pet Sounds album and how does it touch your soul?

Mine would have to be "God Only Knows", a song Paul McCartney once called "the greatest song ever written".  

Certainly one of the classic love songs to come out of the 60's, "God Only Knows" features the incredible voice of Carl Wilson, which only adds to the song's appeal.  But it's those simple, yet amazing lyrics that find their way into your very being:   "I may not always love you, but long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it, I'll make you so sure about it, God only knows what I'd be without you".  

In a recent "rockumentary" I saw on YouTube, Brian Wilson was asked about the circumstances of the writing of the song. He admitted, rather nonchalantly, that he and Tony Asher wrote that song in one hour. One Hour!?!?  That's just not fair. But that sure is talent.

Until next time,

Jim

Thanks Jim!!

Now “God” weighs in on what he believes to be the greatest pop LP ever:

"I consider Pet Sounds to be one of the greatest pop LPs to ever be released. It encompasses everything that's ever knocked me out and rolled it all into one. Brian Wilson is, without a doubt, a pop genius."  – Eric Clapton

More golden oldies good stuff is coming up, so please sign up as a Follower so you don’t miss a single groovy thing.

Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

In the last Wisdom of the Oldies posting, guest columnist Jim Borgmann wrote that for years, he had been singing the wrong lyrics to “What a Day for a Daydream” by the Lovin’ Spoonful. He thought the lyrics were:

Tomorrow I’ll pay the dues for dropping my load

And find me a place for being asleep before dawn.

The actual lyrics are quite different.

Tomorrow I’ll pay the dues for dropping my load

A pie in the face for being a sleepy bulldog.

I’d venture that at some point or another, all of us have gotten a lyric wrong. I remember my younger sister going around the house for months in 1966 singing “Wild Thing, you make my heart stink.”

I was surprised to learn there is actually a word for these mistakes: Mondegreen.

According to Wikipedia, a mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to clearly hear a lyric, substitutes words that sound similar, and make some kind of sense.

Probably the best showcase for misunderstood lyrics was Wayne’s World on Saturday Night Live. Their Top 10 screwed up songs included There’s a bathroom on the right instead of CCR’s There’s a bad moon on the rise. Also, from “Benny and the Jets”, She’s got electric boobs, a mohair suit, you know I read it in a magazine.  Party on Wayne and Garth!

Here are a few mondegreens I love. Tell me about your favorites.

Hold me closer, Tony Danza. Count the headlice on the highway.                                                      
                                                                   

                                                                    
                                                                    


                                                                        

                                                                          Tiny Dancer

–      Elton John

Well since she put me down I’ve had owls pukin’ in my bed

                                                               Help Me Rhonda

                                                               – The Beach Boys

The ants are my friends, they’re blowin’ in the wind.

                                                               Blowing in the Wind

                                                               ­– Bob Dylan

Gross spiders in the sky…

                                                               Ghost Riders in the Sky

– Sons of the Pioneers

She’s a good girl, loves her Mama

Loves Cheez-its and America, too.

                                                               Freefalling

                                                               – Tom Petty

This is the dawning of the age of asparagus, age of asparagus.

                                                               Aquarius

– The Fifth Dimension

Like a virgin, touched for the thirty-first time

                                                               Like a Virgin

                                                               – Madonna

Rock the catbox, rock the catbox.

                                                               Rock the Casbah

–      The Clash 

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly

A girl with colitis goes by

                                                               Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

–      Elton John

Sugar fried honey butt, you know that I love you

                                                               Can’t Help Myself

–      The Four Tops

 

Goin’ to the jack-o-lantern, gonna get married.

                                 Chapel of Love

–      The Dixie Cups

I think it’s so groovy now that people are finally getting together

I think it’s wonderful and how that people are finally getting together

Freak out in the garden

And you may find a friend

                                                               Reach out in the Darkness

–      Friend and Lover

I’m not talkin’ bout Bolivia

And I don’t want to change your life

                                                       
                                                                         I’d Really Love to See you Tonight

–      England Dan and John Ford Coley

We got the Flintstones microwave ovens…

                                                               Money for Nothing

                                                               – Dire Straits

I dig a French bikini on a wild albatross

                                                               California Girls

–      The Beach Boys

And when he died, all he left us was a lawn

                                                               Papa was a Rolling Stone

–      The Temptations

Baby come back, you can play Monopoly

                                                               Baby Come Back

                                                               – Player

I wanna know, have you ever see Lorraine?

                                                        Have you Ever Seen the Rain

– Creedence Clearwater Revival

It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you

There’s nothing that a hundred Men on Mars could ever do

                                                                        Africa

–      Toto

Muh, muh, muh, muh muh, mice aroma.

                                                               My Sharona

                                                               – The Knack

And then there’s Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away.” I’ve been singing these lyrics since 1973:

Gimme the Beach Boys and free my soul, I want to get lost in your rock and roll and drift away.

The actual lyrics are:

Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul…

                                                              

I like my version better.