Notes from Upstream: What Makes a Good Song, Part 2

Some often overlooked gems

In Part One of my series What Makes a Good Song, I posted links to a few fine performances of a few songs from the so-called “Great American Songbook.”

The first half of the Twentieth Century was a time of profound sophistication in American music and lyrics. The best songs of that era blended advanced musical harmonies with sophisticated rhyme schemes.

George Gershwin possessed the technical chops not only to compose popular songs but symphonic concert music like Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F.

My first post made me wonder, what about not-so-famous songs, by not-so-famous songwriters, performed by less famous performers?

For those willing to take a dip in relatively uncharted waters, here are some songs not so many will have heard. If there’s only one song you haven’t heard yet then reading this post is worth your time.

The harmonies and lyrics of these songs may seem relatively unsophisticated compared to those from the Twentieth Century’s first half. I will explore some of the reasons for the changes in a separate post, but no one can imagine Bob Dylan composing a concerto.

Which is more than okay. Sometimes the widely quoted advice which applies to a speech applies just as well to a song: “be sincere, be brief, be seated.”

Steve Goodman provides an example of sweet brevity in California Promises, which says what it has to say in just over two and a half minutes.

Goodman was a strikingly generous performer and person. In 1971, he was playing at a Chicago club as the opening act for Kris Kristofferson. When Kristofferson and the recording star Paul Anka told him how much they liked his songs, his response was unusual for any professional: “If you think I’m good, you should hear my friend,” and took the others across town to an even smaller club to hear John Prine, whom nobody had heard of, and was still working days as a mailman.

As my wife the professional comedian has told me, no one does that.

Goodman didn’t write The Dutchman. It was written by Michael Peter Smith, another idiosyncrat, who later composed an entire album of songs based on lyrics taken from the novel Moby Dick. Goodman recorded this solo version accompanying himself on guitar.

Everyone’s heard of Merle Haggard, and some have heard of his son Ben, but who are the elderly backup musicians behind the Haggard boys in the photo below, who show so much grace and taste in the live performance to which I will link? If you watch a fair number of country music videos the way I do, you will spot these players over and over again, backing up all manner of more famous performers. Someone who knows music must think pretty highly of them. Ben himself is happy to win their approval for his guitar solo on his father’s song It’s All In the Movies.

Another less well-known country music performer was Kinky Friedman, who led a band with the awe-inspiring handle, “Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys.” The National Organization for Women once awarded him their coveted Male Chauvinist Pig Award, probably for his song Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed, or perhaps it was the horde of “cranked-up Lesbians” (to quote him, not me) who attacked him and his band on stage in Buffalo.

In 2006, Kinky ran for Governor of Texas, He received 12.6% of the votes in the six-candidate matchup.

He was also a gifted songwriter, who wrote When The Lord Closes The Door, He Opens a Little Window, sung here by Billy Swan:

It’s only a few thousand miles farther west from Texas to Hawaii. We might as well drop by the Hawaiian beach, where the Opihi Man risks his life gathering the limpets which live on seaside rocks and provide food for the locals. The Ka’au Crater Boys explain the danger he faces from the Pacific’s huge swells.

The song Fields of Athenry is familiar in Ireland, but not so much in the U.S.. It may seem like an old folk song, but Pete St. John wrote the words and music in 1979. An Irishman has stolen grain to feed his starving family during the 1840s potato famine. His English overlords sentence him to deportation in the Australian Botany Bay Penal Colony.

Charlie Haden was one of the great avant garde innovators in jazz, internationally renowned for his bass playing and his teaching.

He started his music life at two years old, in 1939, as a small child singing with the Haden Family Band on Iowa’s KMA Radio, performing country music and American folk songs. Late in life, in 2008, he returned to his origins by creating a family band of his own, including his wife, his triplet daughters and his son. They were joined on their album Rambling Boy by banjoist Béla Fleck, Vince Gill, Pat Metheny, and Bruce Hornsby, among other fine musicians.

Their recording of Fields of Athenry clocks longer than average at seven and a half minutes. But the band includes Bruce Hornsby (piano), Jerry Douglas (Dobro) and guitarists Vince Gill and Pat Metheny, among others. When you’ve got musicians like that, you’ve got to give them time to stretch, as they do on this recording, which takes its time building before its climax in Pat Matheny’s glorious 90-second guitar solo.

Max Cossack is an author, attorney, composer, and software architect (he can code). His soon-to-released work of fiction will be White Money. He lives with his wife in Arizona in a house where two opinionated people trade songs to listen to.