On Saturdays I pop one of the 40 or so CDs I've burned for the car into the player. Today I was listening to #18. Two of the songs stood out. The first was Rock-a-Bye Your Baby (with a Dixie Melody), one of Judy Garlands many signature songs, which her idol, Al Jolson, popularized originally, music by Jean Schwartz, lyrics by Sam M. Lewis & Joe Young. The song was also recorded by Sammy Davis Jr., Aretha Franklin, Cher and Jerry Lewis, who had a hit with it in 1957, #64 on Billboard's Top 100 for the year. Lewis changed the following lyrics:
"Sing "Old Black Joe," just as though
you had me on your knee."
To: "So soft and low, just as though
You had me on your knee."
I guess he feared the original's were offensive. Curious, I looked up Old Black Joe at Wiki. Written by Stephen Foster, it was controversial, although W.E.B. Dubois, a founder of the NAACP and editor of its monthly magazine, The Crisis, was among those who did not believe it was racist.
The second song on the CD is not at all controversial: Smoke of a Distant Fire, one of my all-time favorite pop tracks, written by Ed Sandford and John Townsend, performed by the Stanford Townsend Group. Its highest chart position was #9 in 1976. The band had no other hits, broke up after three albums, and the leaders went back to session work. One couplet always strikes me as ingenious:
"If things are the same then explain why your kiss is so cold
And that mist in your eyes feels like rain on the fire in my soul."
Given the beauty of the music and that lyric, it is a mystery why the band had no other hits.
My thanks to Bad News Billy, who grossly overpaid for a VHS of Double Bang (2001), a Billy Baldwin vehicle, and to the two ladies who purchased romance novels.
Vic's 4th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/bszwlxh
Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
Vic’s Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
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