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The Four Greatest Songs of All Time
Some of the very best people say I have impeccable taste in music. So when I say that these are the best songs of all time, you can take that to the bank.
Folsom Prison Blues. Well, duh! Johnny Cash’s song is terrific in any context, but when he sang it for the inmates at Folsom Prison in 1968, he added another dimension to the song. The back and forth between the prisoners and Cash gives the song a gritty and authentic feel. That “conversation” transformed Folsom Prison Blues from merely great into a pop masterpiece.
The inmates, who seem to embrace Cash as one of their own, cheer and whoop throughout the song. Inspired by his audience, Cash shouts right back at them. At one point he shouts “Sooie!” at them, which is the word a farmer uses when he calls his pigs to slop.
Some of the shouts of approval by the audience take us into the creepy minds of the inmates themselves. When Cash sings, “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” the prisoners’ whoops and hollers of approval remind us why these guys were behind bars in the first place.
The actual Folsom Prison lies just above Sacramento and close enough to a railroad line that the prisoners can hear the trains’ whistles. Cash puts us in the minds of prisoners who hear those whistles:
I bet there’s rich folks eatin’,
From a fancy dining car,
They’re probably drinkin’ coffee,
And smokin’ big cigars,
Well I know I had it comin’,
I know I can’t be free,
But those people keep a-movin’,
And that’s what tortures me.
Darby Ram (by the Greenbriar Boys). This seminal folk group first got together in impromptu jams in New York’s Washington Square Park in the early 1960s. I like almost everything they sing, but Darby Ram is my favorite.
Darby Ram’s lyrics resemble a folk tale handed down through the generations, full of bluster and exaggeration, The ram’s horns, for instance, are so large that one guy climbs up a horn in January and doesn’t get back till June. More surprising yet is the song’s sympathy for the ram himself. He’s a marvelous ram, full of spunk, who loves his life as he “rambles” around the village “until the butchers cut him down.”
It’s just a great folk song by three accomplished musicians at the height of their powers. That introductory banjo by Bob Yellin is just a pure pleasure.
Me and Bobby McGee. From the beginning, I knew I was going to include this song. It’s been an earworm through a good part of my life. (It was first released in 1969, sung by Roger Miller.) I just wasn’t sure which singer I was going to choose, so I listened to fifteen different singers’ covers of Me and Bobby McGee.
You probably know the Janis Joplin version (released in 1970 just before she killed herself by overdosing on heroin), but I’ve always been put off by her ostentatious slurring of words and exaggerated Southern accent. I also don’t like the organ in the background. (By the way, I was sitting in a little alcove in the UCLA library doing some post-graduate work on Restoration drama when I looked up at the spines of a few books on a shelf next to my chair. One of those books was called Going Down with Janis Joplin, written by her lesbian lover, Peggy Caserta. This was in 1972 and I was a bit shocked by the title.)
The version I finally settled on is sung by Gordon Lightfoot, Canada’s gift to the ’60s and ’70s folk music scene. In my mind, Lightfoot’s cover is slightly better than other excellent versions by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Arlo Guthrie, and Kris Kristofferson.
The lyrics tell the poignant tale of a couple of rounders who hitch rides on semis as they travel from Baton Rouge to Salinas, California, singing their little hearts away as they move across the country. They eventually lose track of one another when Bobby, male or female depending on who’s singing, “slips” away around Salinas.
In the background, one of the musicians mimics the sound of the semi’s windshield wiper, and a dobro picks out some great riffs between pauses in the lyric stream. (I’ve always been a sucker for a dobro.)
In a surprisingly careless error, Lightfoot mispronounces Salinas, an important part of his narrative. (He pronounces the city with a long i on the second syllable.) I sympathize with Lightfoot because I made a careless error around Salinas one time myself. Just outside of the city on my way to Ford Ord, I blew the engine on my ’51 Ford because I had forgotten to add oil to the car’s leaky crankcase. I sold the Ford for scrap to a Salinas junkyard and hitchhiked the rest of the way to Fort Ord. I made it just in time for reveille.
Proud Mary by Tina Turner. Has there ever been a more electric moment in pop music than the moment when, exactly halfway through Proud Mary, Tina, Ike, and the band suddenly shift from first gear to overdrive as they turn up the speed and volume of the song. In live concerts, Tina breaks into frenzied dancing that always brings down the house.
The lyrics of the song are also compelling. The speaker tells us she has worked at a lot of menial jobs in Memphis — washing dishes and pumping gas — but she had never seen the “good side of the city” until she hitched a ride aboard the paddleboat named Proud Mary as it traveled by Memphis on its way down the Mississippi.
So after, oh, 70 years of listening to music, those are my choices for the four best songs of all time. (In the spirit of openness, I must confess that I may not have given a fair shake to Sergey Ivanev, the Slovenian who, strumming on his balalaika, sang a love song to his goat on Russian television in 1975. I’m a nationalist. Sue me.)
Here are six that almost made the cut:
The City of New Orleans by Arlo Guthrie. I love the piano riffs on this long piece by the son of Woody.
Sink the Bismarck by Johnny Horton. All of those songs by Horton, including The Battle of New Orleans and North to Alaska, are narrative songs at their best.
Foggy Mountain Breakdown by Earl Scruggs. Best banjo picker ever.
England Swings by Roger Miller. Cleverest songwriter ever.
Saginaw, Michigan by Lefty Frizzell. The best of classic country. That distinctive catch in his voice, in which he moves half a note up or down, makes Frizzell always fun to listen to.
It’s obvious that I‘m partial to uptempo folk narrative songs. I’ve liked a few rock songs over the years — ZZ Top’s Legs comes to mind — though none made the cutoff. I don’t care much for classical, rap, ska, emo, punk, heavy metal, or slow love songs. There are only two love songs on the list, both of which are quirky, medium tempo narratives, Me and Bobby McGee and Saginaw, Michigan. I used to hate slow love songs when I was a kid. I still do. I’m just not much of a romantic.
Postscript: I know, Mr. and Mrs. Ricochet, my list is an old man’s list, heavy with narrative songs and folk music, the most outdated and lifeless of music genres these days. At any rate, perhaps you can come up with a song or two that you think are the “greatest.”
Published in General
Well done, old-timer, I think this is the first “music post” on Ricochet in which I know every song mentioned.
But, inquiring minds want to know: Do you know the “real” Darby Ram?
My mother, who knew more bawdy (and worse), songs than anyone else I’ve ever met, certainly did.
I have, and I agree. Trent Reznor, who wrote the song and recorded it with his band Nine-Inch-Nails, said after hearing Cash’s cover, “that song isn’t mine anymore.”
She, I did’t know there was “real” version of the song. BTW, I didn’t think any Ricocheters would have heard of Darby Ram.
Please sing the bawdy version for us.
The ram has big horns and big wool. I suspect the ram has more big stuff on the bawdy version.
I like rebellious songs:
* Won’t Get Fooled Again (The Who)
* Authority Song (John Cougar)
* Fading American Dream (Street Dogs)
* Fortunate Son (CCR, but I prefer Dropkick Murphys)
Bonus:
* Take Back the Power (The Interrupters)
We enjoyed this, don’t recall ever hearing the whole thing before – just that some of the Scots is a bit difficult to understand.
Bingo!
Now, that is funny.
That’s Garth Hudson playing a Clavinet through a wah-wah pedal.
The Clavinet was an electric keyboard instrument made by Hohner. Basically an electric clavichord, although the actual mechanism is more of an upside-down clavichord.
It has strings and electromagnetic pickups. And each key on the keyboard has a little foot underneath it, with a tip that looks a little like a pencil eraser, that taps the string directly.
The Clavinet was intended to be a home keyboard instrument for baroque music.
I believe Frank Zappa was the first to use it on his second album, Absolutely Free. And Stevie Wonder is most associated with it on “Superstition”, “High Ground”, and all.
A wonderful instrument. I have one, and it’s just great.
It’s from a time when it wasn’t obvious how to build an electric keyboard instrument, so folks did all sorts of creative things.
You’d probably like Fairport Convention. Their singer, Sandy Denny, died after falling down the stairs leaving a stage at a concert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1it7BP5PckI
El Paso…beautiful ballad.
Kent, you have excellent taste in music.
The Bismark is back in popular culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVWEb-At8yc
That last part is not actually true. Those whoops and hollers were added later, in the mixing studio. The prisoners did not cheer when Cash sang about murder.
Smart marketing, though. And it worked – it added to the allure of the song, and made Cash seem more brave to hang out with psychos like that. Too good to check.
But it didn’t actually happen like that.
Really? I never knew that. Are you sure? If so, you’ve destroyed a story that I’ve been fond of all these years. That was cruel of you. Next you’re going to tell me that Merle Haggard was never imprisoned in San Quintin — and thus never heard Cash sing Folsom Prison Blues there.
I’m not much for music but I am a sucker for Oh Danny Boy by any drunken Irishman. Another than I like is Mack The Knife by Bobby Darrin because of it’s intriguing history.
A song lyric written in Bath, England by an Englishman and first set to a different tune, later being set to Londonderry Air.
Jim, thanks. I suspect you and I like the same kinds of music.
Sorry about that. Check Wikipedia:
I would dispute the entire concept of “Greatest Songs of All Time”. For me songs and music are all about memories and the people associated with those memories. Certain songs come on and I’m instantly transported to a place in time with particular people. Are they my favorite songs? Maybe. Sort of. My favorite song at any given moment most likely is different than at the same time the day before. But there are songs that definitely resonate with me.
Today, for instance, the Portland area is experiencing a soggy one. So, of course, The Rhythm of The Rain is at the forefront. And it can only be the Dan Fogelberg version. Nobody else captured that song like Fogelberg.
For memory songs, Fool If You Think It’s Over by Chris Rea instantly takes me back to college. I had just broken up with a girlfriend of 2 years and was working with my friend Rick painting the inside of our frat house. No idea why, but that song was playing on a loop.
The Hotel California by The Eagles takes me back to a weekend long gathering at a friend’s cabin at Tie Lake (SE British Columbia). We were all back home after the first year of college and went to the lake to celebrate… I suppose our youth. Water skiing was involved. Copious amounts of beer were consumed.
For a more recent number, there’s This Dance by Five For Fighting. My daughter sang in her HS a capella group (they made it on NBC for The Sing Off in 2011!). I asked one of the young men in the group to arrange this song for the group and they had my daughter sing the solo at their spring concert – which happened to be on my wife and my 25th Anniversary. Was pretty freakin cool! And I had 2 other ladies come up to us after the concert and propose to me! ;-)
True by Spandau Ballet harkens back to the early 80s when music videos were just becoming a thing. There was a new club in my hometown that had a huge screen, playing music videos by the dance floor. I was up there for a few days visiting. Met a girl named Martina and spent a lovely evening with her. No, it wasn’t a one night stand – just spent a lovely evening with her. Never saw her before nor since.
And finally, the Christmas season has never officially happened until I’ve heard Same Auld Lang Syne by Dan Fogelberg. Suffice it to say that it involves another former girlfriend – we honestly thought we were going to get married.
Dear Lord, I miss Dan Fogelberg.
TGA, you summed up my thoughts perfectly! Thinking I hadn’t contributed to @kentforrester‘s question, I started running through songs I really like. But then it hit me that what I liked about certain songs was how they tied into events and memories. And then I thought it also depends on my mood, how I’m feeling at any particular moment. So I thank you for the easy out!
(Apologies for the drastic edit of you comment. Couldn’t fit it in with the word limit.)
And clerk is pronounced clark.
I’m thinking Allman Brothers Blue Sky, Jimmy Buffet A Pirate Looks at 40, The Rolling Stones Sympathy for the Devil, and Fleetwood Mac Go Your Own Way.
That song always makes me weep like a baby.
Ah, the Dutch rub. That takes me was waaay back to the misty early years of my childhood. Thank you very much.
Is that the same as noogies?
A troubled and troubling man, but a beautiful voice.
I think it is. A Dutch rub is when you rub your knuckles onto someone’s head. An Indian burn is when you take someone’s wrist and rotate your grip in opposite directions. That was hard to explain. Perhaps you already know what an India rub is. I can’t do any better.
And sung by drunken Irishmen.
As a musician myself, Trying to name my favorite 4 songs would only be a snapshot because they are constantly changing. I’ve fallen into and out of love with whole genres!
Sometimes I even discover past genres and fads I missed. I feel horribly behind the times when I finally appreciate genres I once ignored or disdained.
Clearly this is a micro-genre, as you describe well. Uptempo Folk Narrative.
Actually, the number of songs in another genre, Slow Sad Folk Ballads far exceeds them in numbers.
I briefly partnered with a singer of Irish ballads. He played and sang ands I played fiddle. I had to learn about 40 songs. Many, far too many – were emotional ballads that were fine but too many it becomes outright depressing. I would spend hours becoming familiar playing along to a recording. I started getting depressed after every session. These horrible heart tugging stories…So I quit for my sanity, and preferences.
Arahant- thank you for your broad knowledge! This is an interesting thread!
Thanks
I tend to gravitate to folk narrative songs, and yes I’m a sentimentalist, so here are my contributions to the discussion:
The Patriot Game – Liam Clancy with Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald – Gordon Lightfoot
Danny Boy – (the Irish folksong)
And one of the saddest songs, The Butcher Boy performed here by Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers: