Music – Page 28

Midweek Music Break: Lizzy Ross Band, “Waves”

December 14, 2011 by John 3 Comments

How do you put together your music playlists — the casual, randomized, no-occasion playlists, the non-obvious playlists (not “Oldies,” “Blues,” etc.) — the ones you listen to when you’re not trying to “send a message” or serve some particular purpose (like writing/editing music)?

Myself, I don’t like to think too much about the decision (other than to pull music from non-conflicting genres). So I tend to gather up a bunch of songs with related words in their titles. I’ve got a “Road Music” playlist, for example — it’s surprising (or not) how many song titles mention thoroughfares of one kind or another. And one of my favorite such playlists is the one called “Water Music.” What’s it include? Pretty much any song, in nearly any genre but classical, whose title references water in any form: oceans, rivers, rain, snow and ice, teardrops…

With no hesitation on my part, today’s selection went straight to the Water Music list. It’s by the Lizzy Ross Band, a North Carolina-based loose-genred group whose first album, Read Me Out Loud, came out just a few weeks ago.

The band is fronted by Lizzy Ross herself, a diminutive early-20s-something songwriter and vocal pyrotechnician. (That’s her over at the right, obviously, belting out something or other at a live performance.) While her voice is capable of great power, she modulates it superbly, mixing up sweet, unforced little grace notes with rocking bursts which channel mature, big-voice singers from other generations. While she doesn’t yet have a Wikipedia page, it’s not hard to find her mentioned online in the same breath with Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Edie Brickell, Joni Mitchell…

I have to admit I was charmed, too, by a little irrelevant detail I found while rummaging about on the Web for information about her and the band: she recently attended a “Beowulf themed Xmas party.” In decades of attending parties of all kinds, hosted by all manner of creative people, I have never seen — never expected to see — those proper nouns in the same sentence.

Given that voice and its magnetic appeal, it’s kind of exciting to listen to Ross’s band: the whole ensemble plays that well together, so seamlessly that they seem to have been doing this for years. They’re perfectly well-suited to one another.

And then there’s “Waves” itself:

I first heard it (not surprisingly) at Beat Surrender. The swinging rhythm immediately grabbed me, and of course there was Ross’s voice skipping above it. But I completely fell for the lyrics. If you read them apart from the music, you might wonder what sort of tune could possibly carry them; they seem almost like free verse, like prose: a peculiar sort of prose, a prose furnished wall-to-wall with metaphor and little stylistic flourishes uncommon to much of rock music. It’s a cleverly constructed song, and (I think) an honest pleasure to listen to.

[Below, click Play button to begin Waves. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:24 long.]

[audio:waves_lizzyross.mp3|titles=’Waves’|artists=Lizzy Ross]

[Lyrics]

The Chime of the Moment

December 9, 2011 by John 6 Comments

[Image: night view of House Attack, a 2006 installation by artist Erwin Wurm — a real house, turned upside down and embedded in the roof at Vienna’s Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK). See the daytime look here.]

From whiskey river (which, I think, offered an especially rich selection this week):

Everything That Acts Is Actual

From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull me

into December? a lowland
of space, perception of space
towering of shadows of clouds blown upon
clouds over
new ground, new made
under heavy December footsteps? the only
way to live?

The flawed moon
acts on the truth, and makes
an autumn of tentative
silences.
You lived, but somewhere else,
your presence touched others, ring upon ring,
and changed. Did you think
I would not change?

The black moon
turns away, its work done. A tenderness,
unspoken autumn.
We are faithful
only to the imagination. What the
imagination
seizes
as beauty must be truth. What holds you
to what you see of me is
that grasp alone.

(Denise Levertov [source])

…and:

The beginning of being fine is noticing how things really are.
1. Life is uncertain, surprises are likely.
2. If you are alive, that’s good; lower the bar.
3. In a dark place, you still have what really counts.
4. If you are in a predicament, there will be a gate.
5. What you need might be given to you.
6. The true life is in between winning and losing.
7. If you have nothing — give it away.

(John Tarrant [source])

…and:

Time is constantly passing. If you really consider this fact, you will be simultaneously amazed and terrified. Time is passing, even for tiles, walls, and pebbles. This means that every moment dies to itself. As soon as it arises, it is gone. You cannot find any duration. Arising and passing away are simultaneous. That is why there is no seeing nor hearing. That is why we are both sentient beings and insentient beings.

(Norman Fischer)

…and:

I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.

(J. B. Priestley)

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Midweek Music Break: The Black Keys, “Lonely Boy”

December 7, 2011 by John 9 Comments

The Black Keys have been pumping out well-received music for almost ten years now. Critics love it; audiences love it; and to even skim the Wikipedia entry about them made me wonder, a little, how film and TV-show soundtrack producers would have done without them in that decade.

But — true to form — I’ve always seemed to be looking in the wrong direction. When their 2010 album, Brothers, won a Grammy as best alt-rock album of the year… um, yeah… well… [whistling to fill embarrassed silence]

Their most recent, El Camino, just came out yesterday; it already seems headed for the same level of acclaim as Brothers. Metacritic puts it at a composite 84 “Metascore,” vs. 82 for the previous album. Yet reading those reviews, even just their capsule summaries, raises a weird question: have they all listened to all of the band’s music? (Some of the criticism implies that El Camino burns the bridges carefully built by earlier releases; some insists that it’s rehashing history. Go figure.)

Obviously, I’m in no position myself to judge El Camino next to The Black Keys’ other stuff. But I’ve at least listened to this one, and now I’m really embarrassed to have overlooked the band for so long. I couldn’t decide which of several tunes to include in today’s post… and then I saw the video for “Lonely Boy,” the first track: an instant classic in the get-up-and-dance genre.

[Lyrics]

Damn. They never show that guy’s feet, but he may have been told to keep them inside a two-foot-square box — and then followed the instructions.

Liquid Assets, Compounded

December 2, 2011 by John 10 Comments

[Image: “Butterfly Splash,” by Alex Koloskov. For more information, including an “e-videobook” tutorial on creating this sort of effect, see the photographer’s site, which is where I found it.]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

Poem Holding Its Heart In One Fist

Each pebble in this world keeps
its own counsel.

Certain words — these, for instance —
may be keeping a pronoun hidden.
Perhaps the lover’s you
or the solipsist’s I.
Perhaps the philosopher’s willowy it.

The concealment plainly delights.

Even a desk will gather
its clutch of secret, half-crumpled papers,
eased slowly, over years,
behind the backs of drawers.

Olives adrift in the altering brine-bath
etch onto their innermost pits
a few furrowed salts that will never be found by the tongue.

Yet even with so much withheld,
so much unspoken,
potatoes are cooked with butter and parsley,
and buttons affixed to their sweater.
Invited guests arrive, then dutifully leave.

And this poem, afterward, washes its breasts
with soap and trembling hands, disguising nothing.

(Jane Hirshfield)

…and:

I had a discussion with a great master in Japan, and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, “That’s a waste of time. If you really understand Zen, you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.”

(Alan Watts)

…and:

In the end, writing is like a prison, an island from which you will never be released but which is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the thoughts, the incredible joy of putting into words the essence of what you for the moment understand and with your whole heart want to believe.

(James Salter)

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: Sophie Madeleine, “Stars”

November 30, 2011 by John 11 Comments

The bigger some project or product is, the more difficult we assume it must have been to bring off properly. Apocalypse Now is not just a bigger deal literally than a two-minute Looney Tunes cartoon; it’s also more “significant” (by most measures).

So what motivates a legitimate musician decide to specialize in an instrument like the ukulele, its image stamped in popular imagination by OMG-you-can’t-be-serious performers like Arthur Godfrey and Tiny Tim? Singer-songwriter Sophie Madeleine (that’s her newest album’s cover at the right) explains the appeal for her, for the Brighton Source:

Though she started on the piano, before teaching herself the guitar, it was finding that small, four-stringed instrument that made her feel at home. “To begin with I used to play jazz/soul/blues sort of stuff,” she says. “I was doing that for quite a while and then picked up the ukulele and realised that my vocals were better suited to folk because my voice is quite quiet, or delicate or whatever. When I picked up the ukulele the genre I was in changed and everything slotted into place.”

But as someone who considers herself a songwriter first and a singer second (“Singing was just something I had to do to show people my songs,” she reckons), does having four strings make composing more tricky? “I wouldn’t say it’s more difficult or easier,” she says. “It’s just different. Which is why I liked it. There’s only so much you can do so it’s down to the bare bones of the song. If you can make a song sound full and good on a ukulele with just your voice then you’ve written a good song. And because I learnt it as I was going, half the time I didn’t know what chord I was playing so I was discovering new chords that I didn’t know existed.”

The answer to “Why specialize in the ukulele?” sounds a bit like the reason why poets take up haiku: the challenge of using a seemingly simple instrument to plumb unexpected depths — or even to achieve, in the listener, effects not at all possible just by piling on more sound.

Aside: If you’ve ever written tens of thousands of words for a single book, you probably know the difficulty of suddenly turning around and writing short. But it’s not unrewarding, exactly: you’ve just gotten used to (read, maybe, spoiled by) the novel’s lavish canvas of action, emotion, meaning. Nothing about any of those values requires depiction on a grand scale, any more than a jewel requires a grand setting. And it’s similarly difficult: you just have to spend more time in the cutting. Any flaws you miss or let slide will be magnified enormously, not swallowed up and blurred over in a mass of text.

Here’s Madeleine performing her single “Stars” (which appears around the Web, sometimes, as “The Stars”):

[Lyrics]

For a completely different feel, here’s “You Are My Favourite” — in which Madeleine suddenly finds herself joined by a host of other ukulele aficionados from around the world:

I agree with Madeleine that the ukulele’s sound suits her voice, which itself doesn’t qualify as, y’know, a Big Instrument. (It reminds me a little of Lenka’s (featured here).) And generalizations about scale and importance can be a bit tricky: the smallest beauties generally can’t sustain the biggest meanings. I don’t want to ascribe more significance to these pieces than they can hold without bursting.

Still, well, there’s a reason why full symphony orchestras include a triangle. By the same token, I love that music’s stage has room for performers like this, and songs like hers.

Split and Crazy

November 25, 2011 by John 12 Comments

[For information about this image (“Mirror Mask”), see the artist’s statement at the foot of this page. Clicking on the image above will enlarge it, if you want to experiment.]

From whiskey river:

This writing stuff saved me. It has become my way of responding to and dealing with things I find too disturbing or distressing or painful to handle in any other way. It’s safe. Writing is my shelter. I don’t hide behind the words; I use them to dig inside my heart to find the truth. I guess I can say, honestly, that writing also offers me a kind of patience I don’t have in my ordinary day-to-day life. It makes me stop. It makes me take note. It affords me a kind of sanctuary that I can’t get in my hurried and full-to-the-brim-with-activity life.

(Terry McMillan)

…and:

Get yourself in that intense state of being next to madness. Keep yourself in, not necessarily a frenzied state, but in a state of great intensity. The kind of state you would be in before going to bed with your partner. That heightened state when you’re in a carnal embrace: time stops and nothing else matters. You should always write with an erection. Even if you’re a woman.

(Tom Robbins)

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: Bix Beiderbecke, “I’m Coming, Virginia”

November 23, 2011 by John 5 Comments

Jazz cornetist Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke’s life sketched out the template for generations of stereotypical pop-music biographies to come: self-taught musician comes out of the suburbs of Nowheresville, remakes his chosen genre — wowing the pros — while laboring in the chains of commercialism, and dies, in mysterious, seedy circumstances, before the age of 30… leaving behind a legacy of just one or two hours of music.

When I first heard his recordings, I didn’t know anything about that. I’m not sure what even led me to him in the first place (thirty-some years ago). My dad’s taste in jazz was formed in the mid-1930s and later; Beiderbecke’s career arc carried him through the mid- ’20s to 1931. So I’m pretty sure Dad’s jazz collection included nothing at all by Beiderbecke. (And Dad hated the sound of bandleader Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, which was the last band Beiderbecke played regularly with.) I think what stirred the initial interest may have been that I kept coming across his distinctive name in context with other names I did know: Benny Goodman, Jess Stacy, Paul Whiteman, Louis Armstrong, Hoagy Carmichael…

Beiderbecke played with all of those guys at one time or another. Songwriter Carmichael, especially, formed a sort of frame for Beiderbecke’s professional life: the two of them met in college, in Indiana, and Carmichael always lavished regard on Beiderbecke as an inspiration, if not exactly a mentor. (I’ve read one report that Beiderbecke deserves credit for pushing Carmichael into songwriting, at a time when the latter couldn’t make up his mind to continue his budding legal career. Beiderbecke, according to this account, said something like, Why don’t you write songs, kid?) “Stardust,” supposedly, is an extended riff on a piano improvisation which Carmichael had first heard from Beiderbecke; and the very first recording of “Georgia On My Mind,” by Carmichael’s own ensemble, was one of the last recordings which Beiderbecke would sit in on.*

Hugely influential among fellow musicians, Beiderbecke was pretty much unknown to the general public during his life. It’s hard to describe what about him so appealed to me. I’ve seen his improvisational solos described as warm, lyrical, introspective…

Maybe it’s that last one which got me. One account of his live playing style said that he tended to stand in one spot, looking down at the floor or his feet. (Contrast this with the showmanship of his “other half,” Armstrong, who had moved from the cornet up to the bigger, brasher, more sweeping sound of the trumpet.) Among those whom Beiderbecke influenced (at a distance of years, through a chain of associations): Miles Davis. I can just see Davis striking that pose, lost in the cool. Introspection is virtually the cornerstone of the cool.

One of Beiderbecke’s solos — in a number called “Singin’ the Blues (Till My Daddy Comes Home)” — is almost unversally cited as one of the best jazz solos ever put on record. For my (musically unsophisticated) taste, though, I much prefer his longest, on “I’m Coming, Virginia.” The song is undistinguished at the outset, with the rather corny-sounding ukulele-picking and dreamy running-on-autopilot ensemble playing that characterized jazz at the time. Suddenly, at about 1:29, that cornet chimes in. It reduces the rest of the band to little more than bystanders — to sawdust under the shoes of a talented dancer — for the duration of the piece.

And yes, it strikes me as warm, lyrical, and introspective.

(Beiderbecke’s solo was reproduced note-for-note by trumpeter Bobby Hackett, in the Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall concert of 1939.)

And, for the record, here’s “Singin’ the Blues (Till My Daddy Comes Home).” About the one-minute solo, which starts a little over a minute into the tune, one commentator says (among other things; follow the link for more):

Over a mid-tempo two-beat groove, Bix makes a statement that sits squarely in the middle of the instrument’s register, never pushing the tempo or reaching for showy high notes or tricky articulations. The intent would seem to be a syncopated lyricism. Bix places the notes with deliberate care against the beat, generating excitement through the subtlety of his rhythmic displacement. His note choices are logical but occasionally startling, having the quality of melodic invention rather than mere riffing.

But most fascinating are the tonal qualities he brings to his playing. While the recording quality from 1928 is such that much is masked, Bix’s tone is distinct… like a voice in conversation rather than a virtuoso musician. Bix speaks here in logical phrases that develop with gradual logic.

The voice, however, is witty and unpredictable.

_______________________________

* I’ve written before of Hoagy Carmichael, in the What’s In a Song entries on “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” both Part 1 and Part 2.

The image at the top of this post is probably the most frequently reproduced photo of Beiderbecke. I came across this scan of it, among other places, at the Hoagy Carmichael Collection at the University of Indiana. There’s a note (shown at the right) attached to the original, on what appears to be the cover to sheet music for Beiderbecke’s piano composition “Candlelights”: “To Mr. Carmichael — I am glad to have met such a man — ‘~~long~~ lang may your ~~bum~~ lum reek’ — Your friend, Leon Bix Beiderbecke. P.S. I am not a swan!” If all those apparent in-jokes don’t convince you of the easy friendship between the two men, consider the name of Carmichael’s son: Hoagy Bix Carmichael.

Edit to add: As pointed out by commenter Alex, below, the note in fact says “Lang may your lum reek” — a decidedly more pleasant aside from Beiderbecke to Carmichael than the one I imagined! I’ve corrected it in the preceding paragraph.

Reluctant Words

November 18, 2011 by John 6 Comments

[Image found someplace or other on the Web, while searching on this post’s title. It suggests a battleground on which a writer went head-to-head with his words — with neither emerging the clear victor.]

From whiskey river:

I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: the world of art is the only such realm. I entered it without any apparent talent, a thorough novice, incapable, awkward, tongue-tied, almost paralyzed by fear and apprehensiveness. I had to lay one brick on another, set millions of words to paper before writing one real, authentic word dragged up from my own guts. The facility of speech which I possessed was a handicap; I had all the vices of the educated man. I had to learn to think, feel and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink. The great majority of artists are throwing themselves in with life-preservers around their necks, and more often than not it is the life-preserver which sinks them.

(Henry Miller, “Reflections on Writing” [source])

…and (italicized portion):

Spelling

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

(Margaret Atwood [source])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: Simon and Garfunkel, “The Boxer”

November 16, 2011 by John 24 Comments

The digital music market exploded as it did thanks to — among other reasons — the laziness and/or venality of record labels, producers, and even the artists themselves: filling each album, cassette, and CD with ten pounds of musical Styrofoam and an ounce or two of, like, actually good music. When it became possible to purchase single tracks, it became possible to purchase just the good stuff.

Simon & Garfunkel have sometimes struck me as performers who did particularly well by becoming popular when they did — before consumers could pick and choose. They released only five albums together, over the course of only six years. Each of those albums was padded with so-so covers and original songs and experiments. (Come on, now: would you really spend 99 cents for your very own copy — for repeated listening, yet — of “Benedictus,” “Blessed,” “7 O’Clock News/Silent Night,” or “Voices of Old People”?)

And yet, every album also contained a handful of songs so melodically beautiful, so sweet-sounding, so achingly meaningful to young people… How could you not buy their albums?

Which became the other fact of life with a Simon & Garfunkel album: you listened and re-listened, over and over during the course of entire decades, memorizing every note and nuance, so that to skip over (say) the nerve-jangling “A Hazy Shade of Winter” from Bookends would throw the whole thing out of whack. Even if not actually crafted as wholes, those five albums became wholes. People fall madly, crazily in love with other people, seeing in them physical perfection despite lopsidedness, asymmetry, strabismus… and so it was with Simon & Garfunkel’s albums. Even now, people who were around then can hear a lyric from a lesser song — say, It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw — and be transported.

Of their albums, I’ve always thought the last, Bridge Over Troubled Water, to be a bit peculiar. I don’t know what was going on behind the scenes; I understand that the two of them had for some time been having the classic “creative differences” (and maybe personal ones too). Whatever the reasons, in BOTW they managed to assemble an album in which every song is no worse than charming, catchy, pleasant. It doesn’t feel (to me) to have been produced as an album, but rather to have been assembled from pearls found scattered on the floor after a lovers’ quarrel.

Among those pearls, “The Boxer” really shines, I think. There is so much going on in this song. The lyrics, and how they wrap around and within the unconventional rhythm without ever sounding awkward… And the music? A beautiful melody and (it almost goes without saying for S&G) beautiful harmonies in their two voices. And mysteries: I’ve always wondered what that sound is — an instrument? electronic effect? — which goes sort of wooba-wooba-wooba behind (for instance) the words “When I left my home and my family/I was no more than a boy.” In its excellent section on the song’s composition and production, Wikipedia doesn’t answer the question, exactly, but it hints that it might be a bass harmonica. (It also includes a great extended quote from an interview with Fred Carter, Jr., who played guitar during the recording.)

I’m not 100% convinced that the lyrics tell a coherent story (not that they need to). Wikipedia reports, “It is sometimes suggested that the words represent a ‘sustained attack on Bob Dylan'” — which strikes me as an even goofier implausibility. But whadda I know?

Anyhow, here’s that glorious pearl, “The Boxer”:

[Below, click Play button to begin The Boxer. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 5:13 long.]

[audio:theboxer_simonandgarfunkel.mp3|titles=’The Boxer’|artists=Simon and Garfunkel]

[Lyrics]

As for Bridge Over Troubled Water, the BBC recently broadcast an American-made documentary about its making, The Harmony Game. The only related things I’ve found so far on YouTube or other video sources have been blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em “trailers.” It’d be nice to see sometime, though!

Midweek Music Break: Jack White, “You Know That I Know”

November 9, 2011 by John 2 Comments

Hank Williams fell off this mortal coil, unconscious in the back seat of a Cadillac, on New Year’s Day, 1953. (You can read the story of that ride here.) Not even 30 years old, he left in his wake a trail of hits which almost single-handedly remade the standard by which country-music songwriting would be judged.

But his songs’ story didn’t end there. Aside from their gazillion cover versions to follow, he was also survived by a clutch of handwritten but unfinished lyrics, left behind in that Cadillac and recovered by police at the scene. Somehow those sheets of paper found their way into a dumpster outside the offices of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, where they were discovered by a janitor. After a little legal rough-and-tumble (you can probably imagine), they ended up in the hands of Bob Dylan.

I’ve seen debates whether anyone at all should have attempted to finish these songs. Some comments have questioned whether Dylan should have been that someone. Maybe he anticipated these arguments; maybe he also felt that even his large, multitude-containing self couldn’t contain Hank Williams. In any case, Dylan himself finished and recorded only one, turning the rest over to an interesting handful of collaborators: Jakob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Norah Jones, Sheryl Crowe, Levon Helm, Hank Williams’s granddaughter Holly Williams, Lucinda Williams (unrelated), Alan Jackson, Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell, Patty Loveless, and irrepressible indie chameleon Jack White. The result: a recently released album, The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams.

Williams is often regarded as a troubadour of heartbreak music, based on songs like “Cold, Cold Heart” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” But he also injected into some of his tunes a healthy shot of wry-and-bitters — witness, for instance, “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” Witness, for another instance, Jack White’s interpretation of “You Know That I Know” on the Lost Notebooks album.

White’s take springs, obviously, from the original (a fragment of which appears at top left of this post). He set it all to a whimsical swinging rhythm, filled in the gaps in the lyrics, and — well, listen for yourself.

[Below, click Play button to begin You Know That I Know. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:53 long.]

[audio:youknowthatiknow_jackwhitehanklyrics.mp3|titles=’You Know That I Know’|artists=Jack White]

Lyrics (this very generous transcription courtesy of children’s author and music aficionado Brenda Hollyer; read her own post about the song here):

You Know That I Know
(Hank Williams/Jack White)

Now you know that I know
That you ain’t no good
And you wouldn’t tell the truth
Even if you could
Lying is a habit
You practice wherever you go
And you may fool the rest of this world
But you know that I know

Now you told some of my friends
That you turned me down
But I wouldn’t take you
If you’re the last gal in town
If I had a-wanted you
I could have got you long ago
You may fool the rest of this world
But you know that I know

So baby when you pass me
Don’t you give me the run-around
’Cos if you recall correctly
I’m the guy that brought you to town
To some folks you may be
Mrs So-and-So
But don’t turn your nose up at me
’Cos you know that I know

The last time I saw you
Your pretty hair was red
But today I see you’ve got
Black hair on your head
You say you’ve got you a new man
With plenty of dough
But baby you may fool him
But you know that I know

So baby when you pass me
Don’t you give me the run-around
’Cos if you recall correctly
I’m the man that brought you to town
To some folks you may be
Mrs So-and-So
But baby you may fool them
But you know that I know

Yes you may fool the rest of this world
But you know that I know

Williams’s music is covered in what appears to be an idiosyncratic tome from Harvard University Press (!) called A New Literary History of America, specifically in an essay, “The Song in Country Music,” by Dave Hickey. I haven’t read the essay, and the book’s contents aren’t visible via Google Books or Amazon preview. But that essay — especially its appreciation of Hank Williams’s songwriting — is quoted widely. One place to see the relevant passage: writer Maud Newton’s blog, in a post from 2009.

And what the heck, now that I’ve mentioned it… here’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” too (no cover or “interpretation” this time: from the man himself):

[Below, click Play button to begin Your Cheatin’ Heart. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:44 long.]

[audio:yourcheatinheart_hankwilliams.mp3|titles=’Your Cheatin’ Heart’|artists=Hank Williams]

____________________

Update: Here’s a “making-of” mini-documentary about the album: