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My most recent single release - "My True North" - is now available on Bandcamp. Open my profile and click on "audio clip".

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Unveiling #61: The Mt. Rushmore Series

For the first time, this iteration of my longest-running series reflects outside help. An esteemed group of consulting structural engineers - i.e. some of you - assisted me in the construction of Mt. Rushmore #61. My mountain includes four great songs, each with a single word preceding love, man, or woman, three words I posit are part of more song titles than any three in the English language. Though my monument is in alphabetical order, share yours in whatever order suits you. 

Before the final unveiling, I'm obligated to publicly acknowledge the musical savant I'm married to. If not for her, I would have overlooked the great Percy Sledge tune When A Man Loves A Woman, a song using all three of those ubiquitous words in a single title. What a gal!  

1.) First Love: "Older people play little games in another way". From Poco's first album - Pickin' Up The Pieces - this less widely known song is clearly worth adding to your I-tunes library. Richie Furay's plaintive vocal on his own composition tears me up every time I hear it. 

2.) Innocent Man: Of the three words, I struggled most landing on either one or two songs having man as the second word. Billy Joel's classic from his album of the same name made it to onto my Mt. Rushmore mostly because of Billy's obvious nod to the Righteous Brothers. If Bobby Hatfield and Bill Medley were still together when this gem was released in 1983, I'm sure they would have killed it in a cover version.

3.) Natural Woman: This was the easiest addition to my mountain. Although it is arguably the most well known song here, the Carole King/Gerry Goffin composition - expressly written for Aretha - never gets tired. The music/lyric mesh is unimprovable.

4.) Secret Love: The oldest of these four timeless tunes (1953), written by Sam Fain & Paul Francis Webster, is a classic example of the riches that sprang from the Great American Songbook era. My favorite version (there have been dozens) is by John Scofield, even though John delivers it without the lyric. 

OK, consulting structural engineers and others; unveil your mountain.

Reflections From The Bell Curve: Construction Begins On #61

        

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the nice shout out! This one was fun to think about.

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  2. Love Billy Joel's Innocent Man which I had completely forgot about until, naturally for me, I heard the song being used on a TV commercial. Karen, my wife, and I started singing along and fell in love again with the catching melody and lyrics which I immediately added to my iPod, which, I know, is so early 2000's since streaming is the thing now...but I digress.
    As a side note, Karen and I were walking back to the parking garage at Harrah's Las Vegas one night in late 2019 and took a short cut up to the second level where there's a Ben & Jerry's and a Toby Keith's restaurant. Hey, it's Las Vegas. Anyway it was well after midnight and the shows had already let out. Sitting on stools, dressed in identical black suits and ties, casually sipping cokes and conversing with each other, were the two head liners of the Righteous Brothers show, Bill Medley and Bucky Heard. I tried real hard not to stare as we walked by just a few feet from their table, but I was delightfully star struck. Here's a link to recent article about Bill:


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    1. Steve; What an appropriate Righteous Bros. anecdote! And, I'm so pleased my post brought that great Billy Joel song back to your radar. BTW, I use my I-pod just as you do which I know makes both of us relics. Oh well.

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