It's probably no mystery that most music writers love lists. We love to categorize, compartmentalize, to catalog, and to meticulously maintain databases of music. More than once (I'll refrain from being truly confessional) I've stayed up all night modifying the id3 tags in my embarrassingly large digital music library. While, ostensibly, this allows us to easily locate a particular track, or to find just the right track to scratch an itch, the truth is, many of us are just require this level of order for our own sanity.
Although it may seem odd for someone whom is so dependent on order and maintaining control to dive headlong into the chaos of artistic musical expression, for me (at least) that's the whole point. When I listen to an song I'm giving myself to that musician for 3 minutes. I'm going to ebb and flow with their strummed guitars and my heart will beat along with the band's snare. I'm able to let things happen, instead of busily trying to architect everything.
Of course, that 3 minutes of submission is temporary. After that, we writers then switch our rational minds back on, where we return to analyze, categorize, and document the experience. It is nearly impossible to write brilliantly about music (as Martin Mull put it, "It's like dancing about architecture."), but any hack can catalog it. This brings us to the heart of this project: 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die edited by Robert Dimery.
This book is a monster. It's a chronologically ordered (from earliest to most recent) listing of important (maybe not great) songs, with an attached paragraph or two justifying the tracks inclusion. It's the sort of project music writers like to compile while sitting on stools at loud bars. Even more, it's the sort of thing that all music fanatics delight in critiquing. So here we are.
For Christmas 2011 I purchased this book for my cousin Ryan Kegley (a music fanatic with all those anal categorizing tendencies turned up to 11). As serendipity would have it, that same year I received the book as well. As each of us pawed through our copies, we scoffed at some choices and lauded others. It was then, being pre-disposed to documentation the way that I am, I presented Ryan with an idea – let's go through the book, one song a week, and provide our comments. I was sure this isn't a novel idea (after all, these urges are inherent to all music writers), but it a good idea is a good idea regardless of where it comes from. When my wife pointed out that this would be a 20-year endeavor, the idea suddenly seemed all the better. I declared this would be a marvelous way to ensure that Ryan and I maintain our close friendship throughout our lives.
So here it begins, but how it ends, and the forms it takes in the middle are best left to the guesses of technologists and time. I look forward to finding out, and I hope you enjoy following along as well.
Sid Says: A little blues, a little rag time. Bessie Smith can belt it out, but the cornet here (by Louis Armstrong) is what really shines. The harmonium in the middle of the track lightens the mood a bit, but there's no getting around it, this is a sad Bessie Smith lamenting a no good man. Although I'm sure I must have heard this track before (it's been recorded a million times, and even named a hockey team), this is the first time I've payed much attention to the nuance of the composition or the pain in Smith's vocals on this version. Put it on repeat, dive through the poor recording techniques of the era, and you'll realize the editors got it right on this one.
Ryan Says: I know Bessie Smith was the most popular blues singer of her era. And that her 1925 recording of "St. Louis Blues" was considered important enough in 1993 to earn a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. And that this version of the song features Louis Armstrong on cornet performing call and response to the song's woeful tale of love lost. And, finally, that "St. Louis Blues" has been recorded by scads of artists including Louis Armstrong, Bob Wills, Chet Atkins, Louis Prima, Chuck Berry, The Flamin' Groovies, Stevie Wonder, Merle Haggard, Cybil Shepherd (yes, that Cybil Shepherd) and David Sanborn. That surely a fine set of credentials (excepting, of course, the Cybil Shepherd connection). But you know what? I just can't get into this version of the song. For starters, the pace is simply too languid. Add to that the accompanying harmonium, which fills out the sound but is far too plodding. Then there's the "duet" between Smith and Armstrong, which I don't find terribly equitable; Armstrong's cornet comes out on top every time. This take on "St. Louis Blues" is simply too monochromatic, too lazy, too funereal to draw me in. Give me Armstrong's 1933 Victor Records instrumental or, better yet, his 1954 Columbia Records version featuring Velma Middleton on vocals over Bessie Smith's 1925 version any day.
Sid Says: What are the editors trying to tell us about this song? Sure I understand its important link between highbrow opera and popular song. And I'm told that Naples would have sunk into the sea if not for this. But those tidbits can't change the fact that it is impossible to hear this song without being transported to the Olive Garden. Caruso's heartache is completely lost because the song cannot overcome its new modern context. Maybe the editors would like us to stop and really hear this song – truly hear it for the first time – but I just can't. It's too tainted.
Ryan Says: Sure, like you, I've heard "O Sole Mio" a hundred times in one incarnation or another and never thought a thing about it. Translated as "my sun," the song is about (what else?) the narrator's love and how brightly that love shines upon the face of his lover. What's not clear is whose face is actually beaming. Is it the narrator's face upon his lover, or is it in fact the lover's face that's lit up at the thought of our narrator? Is this one of the mysteries that's helped keep this song part of popular culture for nearly a hundred years? After all, it's been used by, among others, the Marx Brothers, Sesame Street, SpongeBob SquarePants and Men Without Hats. As for the song itself, the music is traditionally Italian (technically Neapolitan), likely perfect for ballroom dancing, and certainly takes a backseat to the vocal. I can't say whether this is the definitive take on the song (after all, Pavarotti did win a Grammy in 1980 for his version), but Caruso's voice is beautiful: full of ache and melancholy one moment (when the sun goes down) and rapturous joy the next (when he realizes his own sun is better still). All the same, I could take or leave the song, and wouldn't consider my life in any way enhanced by having spent this much time thinking about it.