Saturday, October 11, 2003 Gordon Jenkins & The Weavers, "Goodnight Irene" (August 19, 1950) They were a bunch of Commies who tricked American circa 1950 into believing a blues song by Lead Belly with a verse about killing yourself was a fine thing to sing along to. And then there's the thirteen weeks at number one, subsequent covers by Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole, Jim Reeves, Jo Stafford even Bob Hope! Forget "Smells Like Teen Spirit" going to a measly six on Billboard -- this is even better proof is there of the dictum that in the charts, anything is possible. Yes, Gordon Jenkins put an army of sparrow's-breasted sopranos playing mandolin behind them, and Pete Seeger here sounds like a shoe salesman (when he's usually either insufferable or magnificent, or both sometimes, within seconds of each other) but it is still a blues -- a blues waltz about a man helpless against his most self-destructive impulses -- and that is something that cannot be smoothed over. 10 (link)

Wednesday, October 08, 2003 Nat 'King' Cole, "Mona Lisa" (July 15, 1950) A lovely woman flashes her smile but never seems to let on, never seems to reciprocate and never gives any man's dreams the slightest chance ("they just lie there/and they die there": a terrible, lazy rhyme on paper but Cole with his unnervingly intimate voice doesn't sing it as if was one.); Nat cross-examines her in his mind, skeptically, beguiled. But he's not in love, since love requires mutual feeling. He keeps his distance, which is sadly what may be the most safest way to approach someone who may be "a cold and lonely, lovely work of art" -- and who, by her association with the famous painting, may or may not be a white woman. Sonically, the song has all the hallmarks of a romantic song -- the cascading strings, the psuedo-troubador guitar, the vocals pushed way up front of the sound spectrum -- but lyrically it's not espcially romantic, unless you consider unconsummatable desire a romantic notion. (By "romantic" of course I mean romantic-with-a-lower-case-r, something that might pass the snuggle test i.e., does it make you want to snuggle your honey?) 8 (link)