Handy Man

It's been a year and a half since I last posted an entry here. I've been sucked into other social networking, and also trying to focus on, y'know, life and stuff. Maybe I'll pick up the pace here at The Songs in My Head, and maybe not. I tweet at twitter/soozenextthing with a touch more frequency, so follow me there!

For now, the lilting mellowness of a tune from my youth, with Mr. James Taylor's "Handy Man." The "comma, comma, comma, comma, come, come," refrain was ubiquitous on 70s radio, a song not to be confused with Sammy Davis Jr's "The Candyman" and the weirdness that is Neil Sedaka also spelling out that useful bit of punctuation. But I actually didn't realize that the song is much older. It's easy to attribute to JT, since he was mainly known for singing songs he'd also written, but the song was originally penned by roots rock and R&B singer Jimmy Jones and songwriter Otis Blackwell (who also wrote "Don't Be Cruel," "Great Balls of Fire," and many other very influential rock tunes). It's a case of the long, vague memory thread of a song that's been part of the culture for a very long time, arriving in my head one random day in 2015, in the form I'm most familiar with. Likely you've heard a couple of these versions of the tune yourself:

The 1959 original, by Jimmy Jones:



The chart-topper, later that same year, by Dell Shannon and his distinctive clavioline:



And who knew that Frank Black and Teenage Fanclub even banged out an indie cover of the song for a John Peel session record?



Artist: James Taylor
Year: 1977
Rating: Warm

Artist: Jimmy Jones
Year: 1959
Rating: Luke Hot

Artist: Del Shannon
Year: 1959
Rating: Luke Hot

Artist: Frank Black & Teenage Fanclub
Year: 1997
Rating: Warm

Rockin' Robin

I slept soundly last night and woke around 5:00 am to use the loo. This song emerged distinct in my mental landscape. No idea why.

Artist: Bobby Day
Year: 1958
Rating: Warm

You Never Can Tell

Woke up with this tune in my head after a late night out at a club, surrounded by twenty-somethings dancing to trap and bass music. It was a friend's bachelor party. I stood there in the club, sipping my Dickel rye, oldly.

It was a teenage wedding/and the old folks wished them well...
"C'est la vie", say the old folks/it goes to show you never can tell

The unconscious brain is really amazing. This is one of those songs that I didn't even realize I had stored in there. It's not like, say, Carry On Wayward Son, a song I am all too palpably aware of knowing. But somehow, my background neurons were connecting weddings, youngsters, and my growing sense of feeling over the hill.

Artist: Chuck Berry
Year: 1964
Rating: Warm

Splish Splash

How was I to know there was a party goin' on?

Artist: Bobby Darin
Year: 1958
Rating: Warm

Tutti Frutti

It's hard not to take this song for granted, hearing it approximately a bazillion times over the course of a lifetime, but it was a revolution in 1955, and it's still in my head in 2012.

Artist: Little Richard
Year: 1955
Rating: Luke Hot

Note: This performance is from the 1956 film Don't Knock the Rock.

Louie Lime Green

Yesterday at work, I was whistling to myself all afternoon. I do this a lot (it helps that my Friday bookkeeping gig is at an awesome local music school). Working down column upon column of credit card transactions, the mind can automatically conjure up tunes and still manage accurate data entry. I thought I'd share with you the sequence of songs I was whistling. The thematic progression: roots rock, prog rock, Elizabethan minstrel music. Somehow it flowed. It helps that Rush is like, totally, Ren Faire.





Louie, Louie
Artist: Richard Berry (writer); The Kingsmen; etc.
Year: 1957; 1963; various
Rating: Warm

Limelight (Redux; last in my head on July 13, 2010.)
Artist: Rush
Year: 1981
Rating: Warm

Greensleeves
Artist: various; unconfirmed origin.
Year: c. 1580
Rating: Warm

Everyday

Unbelievably the first Buddy Holly song in my head since starting the blog.

Artist: Buddy Holly
Year: 1957
Rating: Warm

(Just Like) Starting Over

I did hear this song on the radio the other day, upon the occasion of John Lennon's would-be 70th birthday. It feels relevant to my emotional space these days, so filled as it is with dramatic endings and nascent beginnings. Artist: John Lennon Year: 1980 Rating: Luke Hot Note: Some of the old Jewish youth group crew might remember that I used this song for my intro-aisle walk when I delivered the State of the Region address in 1990. It's special to me.

Here Comes My Girl/Here Comes the Night

Another instance of one song bleeding into another in the mental soundtrack.



Artist: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Year: 1979
Rating: Warm



Artist: Them
Year: 1965
Rating: Luke Hot

Six Degrees of Fish Heads

This is not a timely entry - the chain of events and songs-in-my-head described herein happened months ago, but I've been wrestling with how to present the tale. Unfortunately, I'm not skilled enough in web design to give you the presentation I had envisioned, which would have involved the linking of images in a flowchart to their relevant examples somewhere on the World Wide Web. Instead, please draw your attention to the two-dimensional flowchart below. Click on the image to enlarge it so's to maximize legibility.

Now in linear form, with links: A while back, a Facebook friend of mine, Lia, wrote on my wall to let me know that Del Shannon's "Runaway" was in her head. (I always appreciate hearing what songs are in your heads, dear readers!)



 The clavioline* bridge in "Runaway" led me to get the Lost in Space theme song stuck in my head. Well, one of the Lost in Space theme songs.** From there, I was inspired, while still on YouTube, to look up Billy Mumy, who played Will Robinson on Lost in Space. I'd heard at some point or other that he'd become a musician, in a career trajectory not unlike Brandon Cruz, another sixties child star who went on to front several irreverent punk bands. Some of you out there may have known this already, but in fact, Bill Mumy was one half of the art-wave/novelty duo Barnes & Barnes, most famous for this Dr. Demento staple:

 And there you have it. This, in sum, is how my friend Lia led me to get "Fish Heads" stuck in my head, and to make the realization, for the first time, that little Billy Mumy was responsible for it. If only I had mad web design skills and could have conveyed this convoluted story to you when it was still au courant. Shouts out to Lia!

Artist (Runaway): Dell Shannon Year: 1961
Rating: Warm
Artist (Lost In Space Theme): John Williams
Year: c. 1967
Rating: Warm
Artist (Fish Heads): Barnes & Barnes
Year: 1978
Rating: Luke Hot

* No, I did not know the name of this instrument until embarking on this tangential internet search
** The other Lost in Space theme song goes like this.

Reruns

Here Comes My Baby (original version) was on rotation yesterday. Last in my head on June 18, 2009.

Also, this morning, Good Night Saigon, over and over again. Last time was February 20, 2009.

All My Loving

In my head 'cause Amber's going away this weekend (pouts!) Also fits right into the cultural zeitgeist, since, as you all well know by now, the Beatles Rock Band and the Beatles stereo/mono box sets are out this week. All my money I will send to you...

Artist: The Beatles
Year: 1963
Rating: Warm

Turn Me Loose

"Eeeee!! Fabian!!"

I was a teenager in the '80s, not the '50s, and since this song hasn't proven to have legs like some other '50s pop hits (it's pretty hokey), I had to encounter it in some way other than listening to oldies stations. In fact, the only way I'd ever heard this song, which has apparently stuck around in my head for the last, oh, 25 or so years, is because it appeared on an episode of Laverne & Shirley, which I probably saw in rerun a few years after its original airdate in 1977.

The premise of the episode is that the girls, huge Fabian fans, miss out on getting tickets to his concert and so sneak into his hotel room to snap his picture and get an autograph. What's fantastically absurd about this scenario is that the show takes place in the late '50s, but is produced, of course, in the late '70s, and so Fabian, guest-starring as himself, is in his mid-30s in the episode when really he should be a teen idol.



There are a few more songs that have stuck in my head over the years as a result of having been featured on Laverne & Shirley. And now that I've opened up the L&S neural pathway, I'm betting the other songs will make their way into my conscious mind at some point…

Artist: Fabian
Year: 1959
Rating: Lukewarm

Cool Rider

Can't tell you how many times I watched Grease 2 when I was a kid/teenager. I was totally obsessed with this cheap knock-off of Grease, and the songs and much of the dialogue are permanently etched into my neocortex. I'm surprised this is the first of the Grease oeuvre that's made it into my head since the start of this project.

Artist: Michelle Pfeiffer
Year: 1982
Rating: "Burn(s) me through and through!"

Maybellene by Chuck Berry

Truth be told, it was the Simon and Garfunkel cover of Maybellene in my head, but I can't find a video for it at the moment. It's great to see the original performed by Chuck Berry though!

Year (original): 1955 Rating: Luke Hot
Year (S & G): 1973 Rating: warm