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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
Brian, I used to be a fan of the Clancy Brothers. Way back when. Your response brought back some memories.
And The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald alluded to:
I wouldn’t call it the greatest, but I really like the sentiments expressed. Delbert McClinton’s Watchin’ the Rain.
It’s a crime to spend your time tryin’ to comply
When the best you’re gonna get if you’re lucky is to just get by
I finally made some money and that’s good
The price I had to pay was rude
But now I’m where I wanna be
Sittin’ here watchin’ the rain
We can never be friends.
The Holly and the Ivy. Steeleye Span version. You may not want to go back to the one you know after hearing this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACvDYTfWupM
But that is the one I know. 😉
One of the best singer-songwriters working today, IMO, is Tom Russell. His song-cycle ‘The Man From God Knows Where’, is based on the experiences of his own Irish and Norwegian ancestors and is a real masterpiece. Three songs from that album:
Mary Clare Malloy
Ambrose Larsen
The Dreamin’
More from Tom Russell:
A different kind of love song: Mineral Wells
and an unconventional metaphor: Stealing Electricity
Whatever happened to Quinn the Eskimo?
No, not the song.
Don’t know, but it looks like it was a thorough scrub.
Sorry for the diversion, but, you know . . . music.
He had game.
It almost sounds like you are talking about someone who was “disappeared” by an authoritarian regime…
Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” would top my list:
Cows with Guns
Weird Al’s Yoda
Dylan’s Shelter from the Storm
Just listened to the studio version the other day. It directly follows one of my S&G faves, “So long, Frank Lloyd Wright,” on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album–both great songs.
I’m a youngster; that you put Arlo Guthrie’s “City of New Orleans” makes me very happy. But let me nominate a rendition of a classic song that I’ve mentioned recently elsewhere on this site.
Another nominee from little ole me:
Marci, I think you’re right. I didn’t know that Simon and Garfunkel song, so I downloaded it so that I could hear it over my earphones. Great tune, especially the accompaniment. Begins simple and builds in complexity. Thanks for sharing.
I believe that’s one of @lidenscheng‘s (LC) faves.
At least that’s how I learned about the guy.
Tina Turner changed the meaning and feel of Proud Mary. She made it an exciting song about rolling.
I completely forgot Weird Al. I could have included two or three from the best satirist of hit songs ever. Fat and Eat It were masterpieces of satire. But now that I think of it, Weird Al’s satires require the visuals, which are often as clever as the lyrics.
Me too. LC is the best!
I find it truly shocking that you didn’t know that song, it has been at the top of my list forever. The top of my list is very deep, probably at least 100 toppers, sorry I just can’t thin it further.
If you have a big stereo I recommend listening to this in lossless format:
That’s a good one.
Danny Boy would never make my list, but Eva Cassidy’s version sure helps. Just about anything she ever sang is my favorite version of it. Enjoy the next hour or so listening to her on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSKM0YiU8LU&list=PLYnKGwaBwrWqtZ3K6gL2pn8OGCgW9ZhRJ
Lovely Child by The Living Christmas Card never fails to make me cry, but it’s more about the perfection of the voices and the arrangement, that perfect Bach-like dissonance at the end. Scrumptious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSH1mAKsXg&list=PL6jFna869EvLBwHGMg2PRxpQDQkvgdLHc&index=8
That album is my favorite Christmas album. Next in line is Calypso Christmas.