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I'm your fire at your desire, my Susannah
Feb. 10th, 2013 02:01 amOK, I'm slow.
Back in the early days of Readers' Poll (1987) I'd asked, "Who wrote 'Hey Joe'?," and listed some of the pretenders/contenders. And in the late '90s in my early Internet days I did a bit of searching on that topic, then let it sit. Then last August the thought flapped its way towards me, "I'll bet that the Wild World Web has this question answered by now, if it's answerable." Went to Wikip, and indeed the answer is there (usual caveat about not believing everything one reads on the Web). It's not our old buddy Trad, despite what Tim Rose claimed in the credits to his version. Is not Dino Valenti either. Is Billy Roberts, the guy credited by Jimi Hendrix (though Hendrix' version is based on the Tim Rose variation); song was probably written sometime in the mid to late 1950s, possibly with the help of Scottish folk singer Len Partridge. Copyright was registered in the U.S. in 1962.
( The old pretender, the young pretender, the deposed queen )
Meanwhile, speaking of people named Neil, we now arrive at the actual topic of this post, which is that Neil Young's Americana album last year with Crazy Horse is a pisser. He takes a bunch of songs from the American songbook, in some cases simply jettisoning the melody and inserting his own, going wide, sloppy, and long in his guitar playing, just as you want when Neil hops aboard the crazy horse. Seems to toss in new lyrics, or at least unfamiliar ones — says he was frequently disinterring original words and restoring suppressed verses. In "Oh Susannah," he fortunately allows a couple of verses to remain suppressed (so the racism is left out); he does add a spelling lesson, and makes the melody a raving rock 'n' roller with no apparent relationship to the original, sounding much better than if he'd stuck with the Stephen Foster ditty.
But as I said, I'm slow.
Here's Neil Young & Crazy Horse:
( A rose by any other name )
Back in the early days of Readers' Poll (1987) I'd asked, "Who wrote 'Hey Joe'?," and listed some of the pretenders/contenders. And in the late '90s in my early Internet days I did a bit of searching on that topic, then let it sit. Then last August the thought flapped its way towards me, "I'll bet that the Wild World Web has this question answered by now, if it's answerable." Went to Wikip, and indeed the answer is there (usual caveat about not believing everything one reads on the Web). It's not our old buddy Trad, despite what Tim Rose claimed in the credits to his version. Is not Dino Valenti either. Is Billy Roberts, the guy credited by Jimi Hendrix (though Hendrix' version is based on the Tim Rose variation); song was probably written sometime in the mid to late 1950s, possibly with the help of Scottish folk singer Len Partridge. Copyright was registered in the U.S. in 1962.
( The old pretender, the young pretender, the deposed queen )
Meanwhile, speaking of people named Neil, we now arrive at the actual topic of this post, which is that Neil Young's Americana album last year with Crazy Horse is a pisser. He takes a bunch of songs from the American songbook, in some cases simply jettisoning the melody and inserting his own, going wide, sloppy, and long in his guitar playing, just as you want when Neil hops aboard the crazy horse. Seems to toss in new lyrics, or at least unfamiliar ones — says he was frequently disinterring original words and restoring suppressed verses. In "Oh Susannah," he fortunately allows a couple of verses to remain suppressed (so the racism is left out); he does add a spelling lesson, and makes the melody a raving rock 'n' roller with no apparent relationship to the original, sounding much better than if he'd stuck with the Stephen Foster ditty.
But as I said, I'm slow.
Here's Neil Young & Crazy Horse:
( A rose by any other name )
