Endless Quest: Charlie Rich: "The Most Beautiful Girl"

This is one of those songs that takes me back to a time – very roughly, when it was a big hit, a time I don’t recall that well, but this song crossed all kinds of boundaries on the radio, so the song’s easy for me to remember – and a more recent time, the 90s, when I was socially active with a bunch of good folks whose interests and obsessions and completist tendencies had almost nothing to do with mine.  I don’t talk about the Serial Diners much in my writing about music as I didn’t have a lot of experience with them that had a musical focus; they were collectively bound by a dining in a different restaurant every Friday night at 6 or so, and beyond that it was up to the group as to what would happen next.  A movie?  A games night?  A night where we’d just wander around, not up to much?  It all depended, but no two people’s musical tastes were really the same, so going to a concert was never on the agenda, not at even a small, affordable club on Queen St. West.  Why pay for fun when we could convene with a tape recorder and microphone and bell and do improv comedy at someone’s house? 

And so, within the group my own musical epiphanies and enthusiasms were mostly bottled up.  I had a Walkman and listened to CFNY by day and the easy-listening classical station at night to help me get to sleep, but found myself really isolated within the group, forever trying and failing to find common ground with anyone besides one person…and there were a lot of people in the Diners back then, men and women, older and younger than me.  I found myself at a loss once in being asked by one main member what made Jimi Hendrix so special; again at a loss when another one (who was courting me at the time, or about to) didn’t know who Al Green was; and long before I pretty much stopped attending the Diners on an even semi-regular basis (c. 1999) I was disheartened by an event that I will write about in the fullness of time*. 

 

This song I remember mentioning to yet another Diner and she didn’t know it and I attempted to sing it – my voice certainly isn’t like Rich’s – and she still didn’t know it.  I was a little puzzled**, since the song hits the bullseye for American music in so many ways – and it was a #1 hit in the US and Canada, obviously a number two in the UK, too – I remember hearing it on a jazz station at the time.  Rich’s ‘countrypolitan’ music finally saw him succeed in the charts after two decades in the business. . 

Rich was a jazz and r&b guy who wasn’t considered ‘bad’ enough for Sam Phillips at Sun Records, so he worked there as a session musician and songwriter, instead of being one of the Big Five – Elvis, Jerry Lee, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins  and Johnny Cash.  He had the odd hit here and there on one label and another, including at Phillips (“Lonely Weekends”) and at another with “Mohair Sam.”  He considered himself a jazz pianist at heart and wasn’t really getting anywhere*** until producer Billy Sherrill (who helped Rich to write this, along with Rory Michael Bourke and Norris Wilson) turned him into a country crooner, a man with clear experience in his voice, a man who’d been there and back and didn’t need a damn souvenir.  His success came when, as “The Silver Fox” this (and other songs, notably “Behind Closed Doors”) were hits not just in the world of country music but in pop charts, too.

The story is just about the oldest one in pop; he said something he shouldn't have, she leaves, he wakes up in the dawn to the knowledge he's wrong and is looking for her, his "sun" - the one thing he has worth having in the world.  His casualness (starting a song with "Hey") isn't far from The Chi-Lites' "Have You Seen Her" though you get the idea that Rich isn't about to go asking anyone who hasn't had the same experience themselves.  He's not about to talk to kids in the park about her; this is one guy speaking to another in a bar, a truckstop, the laundromat.  He asks if she's crying (not because she misses him too, but because he caused her such pain - this narrator knows he's in the wrong) - and that if she has been spotted, this intermediary should go and tell her that he needs her.  That's it, but the solemnity and maturity back it up, and I can imagine many a man hearing this song and maybe realizing, before it's too late, just how brutal and cold being alone is, that this song is one long exercise in hopeful hopelessness, that being without her is much, much worse than being with her.

As a girl when I heard this I didn't really understand how someone could be the "most" beautiful; someone either was beautiful or she wasn't.  How could he ever find her if there are so many beautiful women, I thought, this man is on a long, long quest.  And knowing now that beauty is also in the eye of the beholder, his quest seems even more hapless, that short of being like The Bee Gees and having a literal picture of her to show to others, or phoning the cops, he's never going to find her.  But the real story is the terrible gulf between the cold morning of his loss and the warmth she brings, as if there were no spring or fall in his life, just summer or winter.  And for his sins, he'll spend the rest of time asking for her, trying to describe the indescribable...

Next up:  the return of Glam Slam, football and the Fog.  

   

*It wasn’t the night I couldn’t go to the 8th  anniversary of the Diners as the guy who didn’t know about Al Green and I had an arrangement wherein I’d miss the dinner but get to hang out afterwards.  I did show up, feeling…odd, and when I asked the Diners if anyone knew anything about Stereolab, no one did.  It was 1997, and I’d just discovered them via a tv commercial for the new VW Bug, so it wasn’t like I was all that hip.  But it was alienating, nevertheless.  Something  much, much worse, however,  had already happened years before…and I will get to it on Then Play Long. 

 **There were plenty of times I'm sure she was puzzled by my musical knowledge (or lack of it) too.

***His exhaustion at being an outsider for so long can be heard in the b-side of this single, "I Feel Like Goin' Home"; this is the demo version.

Turn Around: Kenny Rogers And The First Edition: "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town"

She looks in the mirror, tousling her hair a little it, just to make sure it doesn't look too much like a helmet. She still does her hair, unlike those hippie girls; she's not one of them. She wears short skirts, sure, but everyone does by now; but she goes out wearing stockings and heels, not bare-legged with sandals. She is looking for a man - who he is, she's not sure yet, she'll know him when she sees him. She dresses this way once a week, doing her nails and powdering her face more regularly - he knows mainly by her hairdo where she is going. She has heard his protests before, is inured to them - but what is she supposed to do? Where is she supposed to go?

Her lipstick and nails match; her stockings are straight; she has chosen her necklace to go with her dress, and thence her earrings to go with all of that. She is young and needs attention - the kind of attention that he can't, or won't, give her any more. If only he understood. For him it's that he thinks she wants sex, but sex is only really part of it. There is so much that leads up to it, so much flirting and small talk and just the good feeling of being with someone who is paying attention to you. Doesn't he notice these romances don't really go anywhere? It's not like she has a lover, another man, in particular. And it's not like she does this every Saturday night, either, though lately...it's been that way.

It's familiar, this feeling. She feels as if she is two places at once. She knows she should be with him, that he really doesn't have long, and then she can do as she pleases. Perhaps she should stay home with him; she sees a vet on crutches going down the main road and has to stop and pause, because he's not alone - his woman's with him, and there they are, talking away, going to a movie or restaurant maybe. Sigh. It's his legs that make him want to stay home she thinks, and he can't really go anywhere in his wheelchair.

She pauses again and continues on, refusing to go back. She will sleep on it and resolve herself, give herself up for now, and quit acting like he doesn't exist. Like the war existed just to ruin their relationship, which was a good one. She will try to have a good time, though tonight her heart is in her mouth; that song is on the jukebox, the meanest one in town, but she will withstand its sting one more time, daring fate to give her a better man. If he turns up tonight, then that's that...if not, I'll live with him until he's gone. She is not one for giving up, but she cannot live without romance. Without that zing in the air, that fun. He's got to understand that, right?

He sits and waits. He's murderous; he's resigned - if she dies, then that will be on his conscience too. Doesn't she know he still loves her, still needs her around? Maybe tonight she'll change her mind, come back at a reasonable time, and not late and drunk. As long as she comes back early, he can stand it, just. One day he'll be dead and she'll be sorry, she's got to understand that. She is his soul; his living link to the rest of the world. Sure she can have fun, but he needs her far more than she can comprehend. Maybe tonight he'll tell her nicely, not get angry. Can he do that? He's tried before...he'll have to try again. There is nothing else he can do, and silently suffering is not for him. Neither is breaking up, there's no point.

******************************************

How hopeless they both are; how he said vs. she said are their views; how has this war and decade changed them both. The old world is slipping away, the madness of war has come into their own home. Both armed for battle, one way or another. She is silent, determined; he sounds older than his years, weary, vaguely threatening and scary. This is the anger of the decade bubbling up, a deathly decade that has to end. Maybe he will live longer than they said; maybe she will be faithful. Both will grow either tired of the same routine, or become like stone, unable to move, to grow, to evolve. Perhaps one day she will push him down the street, they will go out and begin to be a couple again. But that's for the spring, when it's warm enough and the flowers are out, the ones he once planted for her.

There Were Two: The Bee Gees: "Don't Forget To Remember"

And now the pace picks up, if only a little. We are in the world of Barry and Maurice Gibb, with Barry, I believe, taking the lead. And it's a country weepie; strings, acoustic guitars, hurtin' lyrics, a piano to ground it all. If Robin has left, to stray into increasingly odd and baroque areas, the other two are playing it utterly straight, ignoring that whole scene altogether. I cannot help but think this song must go back to the country they grew up hearing (in Manchester and Brisbane), the plain-talking that's-the-way-hearts-break music that was the root of so much to come, the seemingly paradoxical no-nonsense attitude it has matched equally with sentimentality.

"You're the mirror of my soul so take me out of my hole" is perhaps a bit much, but unlike so many Bee Gees songs there are no awkwardnesses here, no lines broken down or phrased so oddly as to sound translated from French. Nope, this is about as plain-speaking as The Bee Gees ever got, depicting the smooth misery of an aching heart, a photo on the wall, a whole world that is both present and remote as the stars themselves. The two do a fine job with this song; if it was written to get them a hit, then it did its job; though it wasn't a hit in the U.S. (this is the first time I've heard the song - and the first time I've heard the previous entry's song as well). It was the single from Cucumber Castle (there was a UK tv special to go along with its release, starring Lulu and Vincent Price amongst others) and proved the two could get along just fine without Robin if they had to...though they didn't, as it turned out, have any success with the next single in the U.S. either, which caused Barry and Maurice to part ways themselves for a bit, though by the end of 1970 all three were together again.

So much of what was happening with these three brothers was happening with so many families; fights, reconciliations, experiments and triumphs...the 60s emboldened folks to go it alone, and then being alone was the thing; but the pull for a home is always there, and after one too many strange and disturbing nights, too many bad trips and so on, the pull to go back home looked less like giving up and more like common sense. Maybe the brothers Gibb had to pull themselves apart to appreciate each other more, to sense their own strengths and weaknesses; to realize indeed that for them three was the magic number and what they could do together was far greater than what they could do apart. I can imagine Robert Stigwood shaking his head at them fondly, wondering what took them so long to figure this out.

From these rather slow songs things start to pick up, as '69 comes to a close*...


*I should note here that I won't be writing about M. Gainsbourg et Mlle. Birkin as the same recording that got them to #2 also got to #1; I will eventually write about French music here, but not just yet.

Family First and Last: O.C. Smith: "Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp"

In music, as in life, there is no greater figure of importance than the mother; and especially in music from the South, whether it be folk, country or soul. This is not apologetic or high falutin music; it says what it says as if to say that this is reality, as opposed to the often idealistic/nihilistic edges of rock. Mother is the bedrock of everything; there can be no criticism, because criticizing her is tantamount to criticizing everything else that surrounds you, and ultimately, yourself.

So when O.C. Smith tells the story of how his mother got to be a woman of the night, however exaggerated the tale (how could there be fourteen children who didn't understand adults' gossip?), it is at heart more a song about the pride of the family - the mother and the children - than any factual details. It's a pride that is defiant; the father is feckless, a drunk, who leaves them nothing (and unlike a future song, the children here don't ask about him) and having so many children to look after, she hangs up her "scarlet lamp" and brings them all up, on "chicken dumplings" and "goodnight kisses." Trying to figure out the logistics of how all this works is not the point; the mother loves her children and vice versa, and she dies (no indication how or why; since there's none I'm guessing old age/illness) and is remembered fondly by all of them. (Since they have a farm I guess some of the kids farm, but again that's not mentioned.) The song is about a boy who grows up and returns to his childhood home, defiant in his own way, but not looking to provoke a fight. He is proud - no one helped the family when he was growing up, and so I imagine it became like a military unit, self-sufficient and wary of outsiders. But again, there is no fuss; justified self-satisfaction is due, just as the roses on the mother's grave are due.

That this song was written by Dallas Frazier (who also wrote "Alley-Oop" and "Elvira"), a country songwriter, and done in a soul style seals the link between the two musics - blurs them really, as this song was also a hit for Kenny Rogers. There is, unlike "Honey," no pathos here, no clammy uneasiness; there is some grief that what happened had to happen, but it is not dwelled upon. That this song is at rock bottom about doing what you have to do in order to survive, a mother's sacrifice - well, no one is unfamiliar with that, no matter where you live, in the country or the city.

This song was a hit during a time when the charts could - and did - have just about anything and everything in them, from avant-MOR to easy listening to soul to rock to bubblegum; 1968 in singles was a swirling and sometimes (as we've seen) morbid look at life, life often seen in extremes, as if regular life was somehow not big enough to contain the feelings and tendencies of the time. Apart from all the strangeness, a song like this is like walking barefoot on grass; a reaffirmation of the fundamentals of life, even if that life is lived as the narrator's mother had to live hers. It also feeds into the 'back to basics' movement that had its rock counterpart in The Band, whose first album* caused a whole wave of prominent musicians to take a step back from psychedelic heaviness and get into something more subtle, acoustic and, well, soulful**.

Next up: a song about Cupid, because there have always been songs about him, thank goodness.



*The Band had no doubt played in many of the places O.C. Smith had played and knew both country and r&b intimately.

**There is a whole other wave of musicians in the UK who are coming up via the blues, but I will get to them in time.

This Is The End: Englebert Humperdinck: "There Goes My Everything"

There are certain historians of late who have tried to give a different spin on the 60s, on 1967 in particular; these are the sort who will point out the album sales of The Sound of Music were still going strong and that this man, Englebert Humperdinck (a stage name given to him, after the Hansel und Gretel composer) was the true star of the time. All else is hippy-hypey nonsense, so much florid ephemeral noise. The solid majority of folk did not want backwards guitars and baroque orchestration; they wanted a four-square song they could understand, with lyrics that are brief, lovesick and thus romantic. This is true enough; his first hit was on the charts for over a year, and this one stayed around for over six months. He had been working in the club circuit for years, honing his craft as an entertainer (a term he takes seriously) and his management thought that his way forward was to change his name (from the less exotic Jerry Dorsey) and give him some big ballads that would have women and girls a new idol to worship, more or less.

Idol worship is strange; reality shows that try to find one tend to come up trumps a lot of the time as idolatry is really either one of two things: temporary or permanent. It's also another thing: illogical. No Fullers or Cowells can ever really gauge what any given audience will want after a certain point, and the ones that are chosen who succeed tend to do so because they don't agree with their so-called masters. Cliff Richard still has his fans in part because he does what he wants, as does Englebert*. The "too beautiful to suffer" element is also here, of course; idols are adored and glamorized by women who feel they could be the one, if only in their dreams. (In his previous hit he wanted out of a relationship; in this one she's leaving him - how many adult listeners heard these songs as reflections of their own lives?)

And the narrator in this song is a pitiable creature, indeed. He hears her footsteps as she leaves, her last statement as she goes; clearly he has no energy to try to win her back, to plead or beg. That is all done. And so this song seems vast and empty, as if all the air has disappeared from the room. I could be all new age and say that it's not right for someone to be so utterly dependent on someone else (his only possession is her, he now has no reason to live) but again that would be our good friend logic talking. If you have been in the unfortunate situation the narrator is in, you would know better than to judge the absolute extreme he presents, because to him it's real. His heart is broken and there's nothing for him, he can't even speak. He can't move. It is as if a thick black line has been drawn, dividing him from...everything else.

This does seem terribly romantic, this waltzing misery, and yet there is a horrible realism to it, one that stands stoutly next to Procol Harum or Jimi Hendrix (who learned a thing or two about working a crowd from Englebert when he toured with him). The Summer of Love is here, but love is a risky thing that, like idolatry, is either temporary or permanent. Romantics are those in love with love, who maybe even enjoy a good wallow in despair once in a while; and if they can't sing, then they can listen to music that doesn't think they are backwards or old-fashioned, but instead puts them on a kind of eternal plane. (I'm not saying this is a timeless song though: referring to anyone as a 'possession' as if they were a car or house isn't very hip these days, and must have seemed positively Brontesque to some - not all - in '67**. Country songwriter Dallas Frazier wrote it, but then he also wrote "Alley Oop" and "Elvira" amongst many hits, so I can forgive him.)

The realism and romanticism appealed to women, who love him to this day; women who want a handsome man who has a handsome voice and seems to understand that life isn't always pleasant or fair. He may be an idol, but he is grown-up, laid-back, unlike Tom or Cliff or any of the others. 19th century by name, 19th century by nature? 1967 has opened a time warp wherein the past and the future are blending together, or where time has stopped making sense altogether...but then for romantics, Love is eternal...

Next: another bunch of romantics fight The Man plc in the name of Art. Oh yeah!



*Like Tom Jones, Englebert's son is his manager now, since his previous one turned down a chance to appear on a the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach without bothering to ask the singer first, which upset him greatly (as it would any right-thinking person). This gives me an excellent excuse to post this, of course. Maybe next time?

**Two of the musicians on this song - guitarist John McLaughlin and bassist Dave Holland - were a bit tired of playing such traditional music (as well-paying as it was) and not long after this they both joined (at his request) Miles Davis' group; thus they were liberated to play on In A Silent Way, a sublime album every jazz lover should own (if s/he doesn't have it already). They tried their best with this song, goodness knows, but some musicians just aren't cut out for standard country ballads.

Playing His Ace: Ned Miller: "From A Jack To A King"

After the world-shaking clamor of The Beatles it is heart-warming and surprisingly reassuring to come across this; a song where a man is simply grateful that he took a chance, though as usual there are odd moments. I don't mean that the sentiment is off, because there is a universal emotion here - he proposed, she accepted, he feels like a king. To have this as a card game is what seems odd; as if she was an opponent and not a sweetheart. (Perhaps he had a rival for her that we don't hear about? If they are in love, why should "Lady Luck" have any say in the matter?) But the clearest feeling here is sheer relief; he says he wasn't sure (ah how I remember my anxiety!) and that there was a look in her eye (dubiousness? equal anxiety masked as something else?) and those are now gone, washed clean by her losing/giving in to him (if this is a card game, and his hand defeated hers, so to speak). His success is genuine and heartfelt, though - the song's story is clear enough, and the melody is simplicity itself (Miller wrote it as well as performed it). (For a female version of this, "Your Love Is King" by Sade must be it.) This is as much what folks in Scotland and Northern England were listening to as The Beatles, a constituency that was the same as Jim Reeves (who of course covered this song, as did Elvis). I can imagine a pub, a singalong, a basic story shared, a simple melody echoing around - humble and proud too, a good counter to the excited noises from next door...

(One thing that is endearing about this was that Miller suffered from terrible stage fright, and during the pre-video age this was most awkward for a performer. There will always be those who love to create but hate being in public, and Miller is definitely one of those.)