Music That Speaks to Me #2
Dolly Parton is just a bit over a year older than I am, so it isn't odd that some of the same music would be meaningful to both of us. This past Christmas, I received this CD:
Eleven of the twelve songs on this album have special meaning to me. The exception is Yusuf Islam's (Cat Stevens) "Where Do the Children Play?" which I don't remember. I think I had the cassette of Tea for the Tillerman, and the song would have reflected my own concerns, so it's strange, but I have no recollection of it. I'm putting these in chronological order of my acquaintance with them.
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone": I first learned this one from the Kingston Trio, on my very first folk music album. There are so many versions of this, but what's better than Joan Baez? "When will they/we ever learn?" https://youtu.be/cDZ8BN0ZfvU
"Blowin' in the Wind." It was on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan released the month of my 16th birthday. Bob Dylan was my real introduction to the idea that music can say something about the world, about the human condition--something beyond the personal. This song said so much of what I was wondering about the world, our country, the people--especially the adults--around me. https://youtu.be/vWwgrjjIMXA
"The Cruel War": I'm not sure when I got the album, but my growing antiwar feeling--and the knowledge that my brother, my cousins, my dear male friends might well be drafted into the horror in Vietnam--took this to heart when i got the Peter, Paul, and Mary album. https://youtu.be/iwuMW2MYFBM
"Twelfth of Never" was THE slow song I liked for dancing with my high school boyfriend. I felt that way. He didn't. https://youtu.be/nNNRGa3pKyw
I graduated from high school in 1965, when the Byrds sang "Turn, Turn, Turn." Combine the Bible with Pete Seeger and there's a lot of wisdom! "A time for peace, I swear it's not too late!" I am still hoping...
This was the year my father told me that if I didn't change my thinking, he wouldn't pay for college. Anyone who knew the two of us could have predicted how that would turn out. https://youtu.be/W4ga_M5Zdn4
"Both Sides Now" (Judy Collins version): 1967, the year I got married the first time. It was certain lines of this that resonated with me: "Som many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way"; "Something's lost but something's gained in living every day." https://youtu.be/A7Xm30heHms
"Those Were the Days": I remember it by the Limelighters earlier in the 1960s, but the big hit was by Mary Hopkin in 1968. Then I was 21, and I certainly couldn't relate to the lyrics as I can today, But I loved the tune, the rhythm, and in those days when I thought my generation would change the world for the better, I still had a fear that there was truth in the lyrics. https://youtu.be/2O5EeBjxhiY
"Crimson and Clover" was released in 1968. I had been married a year and already had an occasional thought that I had made a mistake. This song prompted such an occasional thought. https://youtu.be/GpGEeneO-t0
I was listening to, and buying albums by, both Gordon Lightfoot and Kris Kristofferson in 1970, so I don't know which of them I first heard sing "Me and Bobby McGee." But it was Janis Joplin's version (released in 1971, after her death) that really grabbed me. I can't find a video I like, but heck, you know the song. I moved to Minnesota that year with my then-husband, leaving behind everything else that I cared about: my parents and brothers, sister-in-law and nephew and many cousins, my long-time friends, newer friends sharing a hobby I loved, the ocean, the desert... everything. See previous paragraph.
"Imagine": I was never much of a Beatles nor a Lennon fan, but when I first heard this I had already lost any belief in heaven and hell and religion, and I could imagine all the things he sang about. I still can, but it gets harder all the time. https://youtu.be/DVg2EJvvlF8
"If I Were a Carpenter": no one needs a reason for Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. https://youtu.be/tCBiQcdTR8A