For Every Hung-Up Person in the Whole Wide Universe

Bob Dylan came out 50 years ago today, launching the most remarkable career in modern music history. The recently released Chimes of Freedom four-CD set, featuring nearly 80 Dylan covers by fans, friends, acolytes and people I've never heard of, pays tribute to the breadth of that career.

As a measure of the rise and fall of Dylan's songwriting muse, I've made note of the album that each of those songs represent, to see when Dylan was writing his most fabled compositions. This is the first appearance on an official Dylan LP for each, so that "The Mighty Quinn" is not listed on The Basement Tapes, when it was first recorded, but on Self-Portrait, which is always nice to stick up for. Albums without any songs on Chimes of Freedom aren't listed; sorry, Knocked Out Loaded.

The biggest upset is that there are more songs from Street-Legal (3) than from Highway 61 Revisited (2). There's even one song that's never been released on a Dylan album - or even recorded by Dylan, I don't think. But we'll get to that.

Bob Dylan: 1 ("Baby, Let Me Follow You Down," by Marianne Faithfull [!])
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan: 5
The Times They Are a-Changin': 7 (That's seven out of ten total.)
Another Side of Bob Dylan: 3
Bringing It All Back Home: 7
Highway 61 Revisited: 2
Blonde on Blonde: 6
John Wesley Harding: 2
Nashville Skyline: 2
Self-Portrait: 1
New Morning: 1
Greatest Hits Vol. 2: 3
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: 1
Planet Waves: 1
Blood on the Tracks: 4
The Basement Tapes: 1 (Other songs from The Basement Tapes appear on the package, but the only one that got its first release on a Dylan LP here was "This Wheel's on Fire.")
Desire: 1
Street-Legal: 3
Slow Train Coming: 1
Shot of Love: 2
Infidels: 2
Empire Burlesque: 1
Biograph: 2
Oh Mercy: 3
Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3: 4
MTV Unplugged: 1 ("John Brown." Believe it or not.)
Time Out of Mind: 4
Never released: 1

That never-released song is "I'd Have You Anytime," which Dylan wrote with George Harrison and appeared as the opening track on All Things Must Pass.

Come, Mr. Yossarian, Tally Me Bananas

Alan Arkin, longtime actor and Academy Award winner for Little Miss Sunshine, is often credited as the coauthor of Harry Belafonte's classic hit "Banana Boat (Day-O)," which was a huge hit back in 1957. See, for instance, here. Alan Arkin, right? It seems too good to be true.

And it isn't - true, that is. Arkin was a member of a folk trio called the Tarriers, alongside Erik Darling, who was later in both the Weavers and the Rooftop Singers of "Walk Right In" fame. The Tarriers also recorded "Banana Boat," and even had a hit with it. In fact their version went to Number Four, while Belafonte's only went to Number Five, in what seems to have been a Pat Boone/Fats Domino kind of thing. But the song had been around for a while; it's often described as a Jamaican folk song, and had been recorded as early as 1952 by a Trinidadian singer named Edric O'Connor. All the sources I can find say that the Tarriers got the song from the folk singer Bob Gibson.

Nevertheless, the label of the Tarriers' single does credit them with writing the song. Here, see for yourself:




Weird, right? I can think of three reasons why this would happen:

* The Tarriers would get more money if they claimed they wrote the song, as opposed to just crediting it to Trad.
* Songwriting credits in those days were subject to notoriously unscrupulous factors.
* The Tarriers' version also interpolated part of another tune, a traditional Jamaican folk song called "Hill and Gully Rider." So in one sense, it was an original creation.

I can't find a copy of the label of Harry Belafonte's single, but I have seen a piece of sheet music that credits the song to Irving Burgie and William Attaway. And who knows, they may have had something to do with the creation of the song as well. But they ain't Alan Arkin.

The Game of Clue

If you don’t do word puzzles on a regular basis, you probably don’t appreciate what a skill cluing is, and you may not realize that Mike Shenk is currently the best cluer in the business. Shenk edits the word puzzles in the Wall Street Journal, and constructs several of the puzzles as well, including the Acrostic, as appeared today. I’ve always enjoyed acrostic puzzles, but Shenk’s acrostics leave my jaw dropped in wonder at the brilliance of his cluing.

A good acrostic clue is like a good trivia question: The answer should not be well-known or obvious, but you should be able to suss it out, or at least home in on a possible answer. That’s the way Shenk’s clues are, and they often have the added benefit of teaching you something about the answer. (You can find and solve the puzzle for yourself here; there are no out-and-out spoilers in this post, although there are several hints. If you've never done an acrostic because you find them too daunting, this post might help you get started.)

Let’s look at some of the clues Shenk used in today’s puzzle:

• The first one I got was “U. Popular name for the Queen’s Yeomen Warders.” Ten letters. I’d never heard the term "Yeomen Warders" before, but that didn’t deter me. In fact, this was the first answer I filled in. What group does the Queen have, known by a nickname, who do something that could be construed as yeomen warding? C’mon, this isn’t hard.

• "Q. 1955 courtroom drama with a title taken from Proverbs 11:29 (3 wds.)” This shows how the seeming minutia around the meat of a clue are often the key signal to what the answer is. If it had said, “Drama with a title taken from Proverbs 11:29,” I would have had no idea. I’d have had to crack open the Bible. But a courtroom drama from the 1950s with a three-word biblical-sounding title? Once I assumed it wasn’t “Twelve Angry Man,” it was a snap.

• “T. Her first novel was 1920’s ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles.'” Again, if the clue had been “Author of ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles,'” I would have been utterly lost. But we know it’s a woman, who started her writing career in the 1920s, and wrote more than one novel, at least one of which dealt with mystery. The title of that first novel, which appears on first glance to be the crux of the clue, is almost irrelevant. Another gimme.

• “L. Prime minister whose education secretary was Margaret Thatcher.” “British prime minister from 19whatever to 19whatever” would have been perfectly acceptable, but look how much more this clue does for us. We now know that it’s a prime minister prior to Mrs. Thatcher – probably not immediately prior, since it presumably takes a while to rise from education secretary to the Big Cheddar, but no more than a decade or two prior, either. Plus we learn that Mrs. Thatcher was someone’s education secretary, which I didn’t know. (Note too that Shenk never has to use the word “British.”)

• “J. Networking service launched July 15, 2006.” “Networking service” is pretty nebulous, but the key here is that it’s some kind of connecting thing that has been operational for less than six years, but in that time has grown famous enough to be used as the answer in a Wall Street Journal acrostic. In retrospect, I should have gotten this a lot quicker than I did. When you know the answer, you can see that Shenk could have gone a hundred different ways with this one, but I can't say that any other way would have been better.

There’s lots more, 23 clues and answers in all. A crossword puzzle can’t have this kind of involved cluing, since there are three or four times as many clues. Only an acrostic or other kind of puzzle with fewer, longer answers calls for cluing this elegant and indirect, and Mike Shenk shows, time after time, that he’s up to the challenge. Well done, Mr. Shenk.

They've Never Heard of Me, Either

No, I'd never heard of Lana Del Rey or Karmin before they made their appearance as Saturday Night Live's musical guest. But they're hardly the most obscure acts on SNL, either. Every once in a while, the show will peg its reputation on naming little-known talent, and sometimes it gets away with it: Natalie Imbruglia was on before she had a record out in the U.S. (March 7, 1998; Scott Wolf was the host), and of course "Torn" went on to be one of the biggest hit of the 1990s and is still somewhat inescapable on the radio today.

But sometimes they aren't so lucky:

Harlan Collins and Joyce Everson (May 29, 1976; Elliott Gould was the host) Folkie duo who, best as I can tell, never released an album or even a single. Collins was the longtime author of the syndicated newspaper feature "Today's Chuckle." No, I'm not making that up.

Richard Baskin (March 12, 1977; Sissy Spacek) Hot because he was the key arranger and sideman for Robert Altman's Nashville, he never released a record of his own. Spacek was making 3 Women with Altman at the time. Brother of staff photographer Edie Baskin, which probably didn't hurt.

Alan Price (April 23, 1977; Eric Idle) Former keyboardist for the Animals who had launched a solo career. His biggest American solo hit had been a cover of "I Put a Spell on You," which went to Number 80 on the Hot 100 back in 1966. Gets extra credit here because his performance was a godawful, lounge-worthy mess.

Libby Titus (October 15, 1977; Hugh Hefner) Another boring folkie. Wikipedia says she released "several solo albums," although the only one I can find evidence of is 1977's Libby Titus. Very well-connected in the music business; Carly Simon wrote a song about her, Donald Fagen married her, and Levon Helm had a son with her. [EDIT: As has been helpfully noted in the comments, it's actually a daughter, Amy.]

The Spanic Boys (May 12, 1990; Andrew Dice Clay) One of the fill-ins when Sinead O'Connor suddenly announced she wouldn't appear with Dice Clay, supposedly because of his misogyny but also, I hope, because he wasn't funny. Father-son roots band from Wisconsin; I actually saw them open once for the BoDeans. Opening acts for the BoDeans generally don't get to go on SNL.

The Tragically Hip (March 25, 1995; John Goodman) Huge in Canada, their biggest splash in the U.S. came with the 1996 album Trouble at the Henhouse, which peaked at Number 134 on the Billboard album charts. Fellow Canadian Dan Aykroyd is apparently a big fan; he introduced them on the show, among several guest spots he did that evening. So thoroughly Canadian they have both a "Gordon" and a "Gord" in the band.

This Logic Will Self-Destruct in Five Seconds

Most people remember two things and two things only about the classic series Mission: Impossible, which ran from 1966 to 1973 on the CBS television network. First is the pounding theme music, in 11/4 time, by Lalo Schifrin, which is pretty much the only thing to survive from the TV series into the Tom Cruise movie franchise. And the second is the instructions given to the chief operative (Jim Phelps as portrayed by Peter Graves for most of the series run) in some out-of-the-way locale where there was a tape recording set to self-destruct in five seconds.

I now seem to be watching every episode of this show, in chronological order, and it strikes me that there is something quite odd about those instructions from headquarters. For instance, in the episode I'm watching now ("Operation Heart," episode 7 from season 2), Jim goes to some sort of photo booth on what looks like a desolate side street in urban Los Angeles. Inside the booth, he inserts one key that starts up the photography mechanism, then unlocks a metal drawer with another key - or maybe the same key, who knows - wherein lies the tape recorder.

At some point, Jim had to be sent those keys and given the directions to that photo booth. Within the photo booth, all there was was a 60-second recording and two photographs. So wouldn't it have been just as easy to relay that information to him as it was to get him the location of the photo booth and the key?

It's not as if there were a limited number of drop points where Jim could retrieve his self-destructing tapes, so that the secretary could just send him to Drop Point B this week. As Christopher Bennett, who has much greater patience for this sort of thing than I do, counts it up, Jim went to 12 distinct locations for the 21 missions the team undertook in season two. So more than half the time, they have to send Jim a MapQuest for a new dropoff point. Why not just send the tape and photos directly to his apartment as well? All those fancy tape recorders cost money, not to mention all that ruined high-tech tape, and remember, it's all being paid for by you, the American taxpayer.

Maybe at some point during the third season the secretary will wise up, and in one of the elaborate drop boxes, the message will say, "Mr, Phelps, all this tape stuff is silly. From now on, your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to sign for the FedEx delivery when we send the briefing to your home."

Top Ten Supporting Characters in Pop Hits of the Seventies

10. The bus driver in “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”

9. The neighbor boy with evil on his mind in “Angie Baby”

8. The night man in “Hotel California”

7. My mama in “The Night Chicago Died”

6. Gilbert O'Sullivan's mother in "Alone Again, Naturally"

5. The truck driver in “Me and Bobby McGee”

4. Elton John’s sister in “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”

3. Ethel in “The Streak”

2. The judge in the court with bloodstains on his hands in “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia”

1. The cook in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Fellas, it's been good to know ya!

Old-Timey Football

Cognizant though I am that there is no shortage of pontification on the Internet, I have nevertheless decided to start a new blog, this one concerning my hobby of watching videotapes of old NFL games from the 1970s and 1980s. I have written about these things in this space before, to a response of mostly crickets, so I don't expect I will be sending very much traffic over there from the loyal DS audience. So you may just consider this an announcement that I won't be polluting this blog with references to Dandy Don Meredith any longer.

American Without Tears

The Rolling Stones song "Play With Fire," recorded very early in 1965, is steeped in England, with references to locales around London: Knightsbridge, St. John's Wood, Stepney. I have no idea what those areas are supposed to represent, so I don't really get the song. Neither did most Americans, since the single - it was actually the B side to "The Last Time" - peaked at No. 96 on the American charts.

By the time of "Get Off of My Cloud," cut in L.A. in September 1965, the band was still using Britishisms: "The parking tickets were just like flags, stuck on my windscreen." We don't have windscreens here in the U.S.; we have windshields. But maybe Mick didn't know that.

It didn't take long, though, for Jagger to realize where the money was, and who his real retail market would be. In December 1965, on "19th Nervous Breakdown," he sang, "Your mother who neglected you owes a million dollars tax." They don't have dollars in England.

Whitney Houston, RIP

I was intending to write something about Whitney Houston, who was laid to rest yesterday, but I found that basically everything I wanted to say had already been said, much of it in this here post by Jim Bartlett, who covers Whitney's chart domination about the same way I would have. Perhaps the best tribute to the power of Whitney's voice was that she took "The Star-Spangled Banner" into the pop Top Twenty in 1991 - then took the same recording into the Top Ten in 2001. (That was her last Top Forty hit, by the way.) It is as if someone had a massive hit with "Happy Birthday," and I don't mean by covering Altered Images.

Then our own Joe Levy (whom you may have seen as part of CNN's team coverage of Whitney's funeral yesterday) wrote this magnificent appreciation of "I Will Always Love You," which he calls "almost like a historical tour of American singing." Plus, he made me pause and figure out if I knew what "caesura" meant. So really, there's nothing left for me to say.

One Fine Day

As my friend Rob Sheffield has been pointing out on every form of social media known to man, today is Carole King's 70th birthday. There's another important pop-music anniversary today as well: On February 9th, 1964, the Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Carole King was no doubt watching, along with every other rock & roll fan in America; it was her 22nd birthday.

Carole King was arguably at that point the most important songwriter in pop music. She had already co-written four Number One hits - "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," by the Shirelles, "Take Good Care of My Baby," by Bobby Vee, ""Go Away Little Girl," by Steve Lawrence, and "The Loco-Motion," by Little Eva. She had done all that by the age of 21.

It's common to think of the Carole King/Brill Building revolution giving way on the radio to the Beatles revolution, but if Carole was watching CBS on that February evening, she was looking at two musicians who were older than she was - John and Ringo were both 23. Paul McCartney was (and still is) four months younger than Carole. There aren't many people who get to change the world before they turn 22, but Carole King sure did.