Here, I have the recently departed Odetta's masterful performance of the song, as well as Waylon Jennings' more jaunty take, an unreleased studio duet between Beck and Beth Orton, and a funereal version by Soulsavers.
The Stones make an appearance between all these covers with the insolent "Let Me Go" from their Emotional Rescue album. The late 70s "New York" era Stones is my favorite, and Emotional Rescue is an underrated album from that period. Living in NYC now, I enjoy the many references to the decadent past of the city in their songs from this time, as in "Shattered" and here, where Mick Jagger muses that "Maybe I'll become a playboy/ Hang around in gay bars/ And move to the west side of town". Hmmm...wonder what his wife thought of that plan.
Rosemary's Baby is a film that harkens back to a slightly earlier period in New York, and I have here from the soundtrack to that film Krzysztof Komeda's eerie "Main Title", with Mia Farrow's wordless singing over plinky piano and harpsichord. Try walking around the city some day listening to this on your headphones. It will scare the hell out of you, I promise.
Speaking of movie tracks, I also threw on the moody "Risky Business" theme from Tangerine Dream. It's excellent background music when you share public transportation with a beautiful hooker who has a heart of gold. I speak from what I've seen on the screen, not experience.
"I Turn My Jizzo On" is The Mr Rusty Collective's bizarre mashing of Jay-Z with Spoon. Speaking of remixes, I love Pete Rock's remix of Onyx's "Shout".
The Isley Brothers' "For The Love Of You" is here with covers by John Holt and Joss Stone, reggae followed by white-girl melisma. Both fine on their own, but it's the lush production of the original that endures.
"I Put A Spell On You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins was, like a couple of the previous tracks, also used to great effect in film--Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise". This was one of those "arty" movies I dug up in a non-chain movie rental place when I was a suburban high school student. I had never heard this song before that, and it made a hell of an impression. It lives up to its title as much as the artist lives up to his name. Creedence Clearwater Revival's version is also spellbinding. John Fogerty is an amazing songwriter, but here he proves again what a powerful singer and interpreter he is. The driving guitars are pretty great too.
"Over The Hills And Far Away" by Led Zeppelin reminds me of high school as well, as this was some of the great music easily available via classic rock stations. Their stature, unlike a lot of what I listened to back then, has only grown more in time. While we're in the area of terrain, a Kate Bush cover of "Running Up That Hill" by Chromatics.
Finally, this mix was thrown together a year ago after a couple weeks in France, where after driving along in the French countryside with the car radio I discovered something odd. It is against French law to play 2 non-French songs in a row on any commercial station. It's intended to preserve French culture.
Well, as catholic as my tastes are, a little modern French pop goes a long way for me, so part of the game in long drives was to flip around and find some sort of non-French song...or wait for something happily familiar to surface in its alloted spot.
And it was interesting to hear what songs from the States are popular over there. Christopher Cross is huge there. And 2 songs I've included here were on many of their stations in heavy rotation: "If You Leave Me Now" by Chicago and "You're The First, My Last, My Everything" by Barry White. So I have them here as mementos of my trip.
What do those songs have in common, except perhaps a hyper-romantic quality to them? Why did they becomes such staples of French radio, played constantly some 30 years after they were hits here?
The Chicago song reminds me, like a few soft rock songs of that era, of being a child in the back seat of my parents' car...so hearing it as an adult, driving in a foreign country where I was not 100% sure of the directions, was surprisingly comforting.
The Barry White song had never been one of my favorites by him. And I've never dismissed his music as a campy joke--I think his stuff is great. Of his songs, "Love's Theme" is the most romantic, "It's Ecstasy When You Lay Next To Me" his funkiest, "I'm Gonna Love You Just A Little More, Baby" his most seductive, "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up" his most heartfelt...this one used to seemed sillier than his others to me.
But when I heard it in in the middle of France, tossed over the airwaves like a musical lifesaver in a sea of French crap, I gave in to the love platitudes over strings with the sticky-sweet back-up singing.
In the Barry White catalog, "You're The First, The Last, My Everything" is his most hopeful.
