The Monkees - Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)

Written by Neil Diamond before he became big as a solo act. Nicely sung by Davy Jones. Sorry we lost him recently.

Sweet Caroline

Probably my favorite cover version of this classic song. Sung by Bobby Womack.

Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show live 1970

Evangelical groups tried to have this song banned because they thought it was disrespectful to Christianity. Fortunately, progressive Christian artist Johnny Cash didn't feel that way.

"Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" (Neil Diamond) review

To hear a Neil Diamond record of circa 1969-70 is to find Middle American peace sign, hitch-hiking, earth-in-balance transcendence. It’s a breaking through of the walls erected to place us all within categories and definitions.

Diamond’s serrated voice on vinyl of that era opens – like sweet blown grass – a window into what my mom would’ve been listening to at the time – somewhere in the cross-cultural bag of the Stones, The Band, Herb Albert & the Tijuana Brass, the Temptations -- in the kitchen of our little house beside a gravel road.

"Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show," the opening title track to Diamond’s 1969album deserves a listen a listen on your turntable. Put aside the overplay the Top 40the song receives on the corporate world’s Oldies and Classic Hits station and hear the song with new ears. Listen to the entire album and put life in its circular perspective.

While none of the other tracks have the ’45 hit single appeal of the opening or its phenomenal closing track – “Sweet Caroline – taken as a whole, the album emanates a breezy, spiritually sound feeling befitting the up-and-coming singer-songwriter of the era --appropriate because Neil Diamond is not conventional pop. Or is he?

Depends on how you define pop music. If your definition is limited by a post-MTV era paradigm of machinery, manufacturing and imagery, then no – Diamond is not standard pop. However, if your understanding has been broadened by 60s era Wall of Sound, Wrecking Crew and the Civil Rights amalgamation of rock n’ roll, soul, pop and country, then Diamond and his band stand with the artists who molded commercial pop with a sense of craftsmanship.

As an ‘80s teen-ager I lacked historical perspective and dismissed Neil Diamond as some adult contemporary wimp liked by old people. Some of that, Diamond brought on himself. “Love on the Rocks.” What the hell is that? “Heartlight” from the E.T. soundtrack? Bland, corporate contrived and uninspired. Like some of the most multi-talented, yet non-purist artists – Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder, Elton John – Neil Diamond became more about the name – the brand – than the artistry.

It was only in college during the early ‘90s, while listening to stuff like Sonic Youth, the Pixies, the Jesus and Mary Chain…that I learned Neil Diamond had relevance. That brings me to back to Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show. In January of 1969, after his last two albums failed to chart, Diamond left New York and went to 827 Thomas St. in Memphis, home to American Sound Studio and laid down tracks with the house band, the Memphis Boys. Guided by record producer Chips Moman, the band added a complementary musical groove to Diamond’s growing prowess as a songwriter.

While not as lauded as Stax’s Booker T. and the MG’s, the Memphis Boys were steady and steeped in southern traditions of gospel, soul, rock and country. Having cut his teeth on tunesmithing at New York’s Brill Building in the early 60s, Diamond’s lyrics and music at the end of the decade had the feel of his earlier catchy pop hits like “Cherry, Cherry,” but also revealed the growing introspection that would mark his early ‘70s work.

Bobby Woods played the gospel piano intro to “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” setting the stage for Diamond to enter hot and stoic, vocals steady. Starting soft and slow-ow, like a small earthquake and when he lets go-o, half the valley shakes. The song builds to a crescendo as he narrates a tale, straddling the line of fleshly pleasure and spiritual sensations. Diamond – with strong support from the band –pays homage to southern gospel tradition as only an East Coast Jewish boy, dazzled by the early sounds of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, can.


Tunes like “Dig In” and “Deep in the Morning” are sexy, grooving song with a blues edge driven by Guitarist Reggie Young and bassist Mike Leech. “River Runs, Newgrown Plums” features Bobby Emmons sputtering organ solo (like something traditionally out of a baseball park or ‘70s game show), which sounds a little dated, yet cool considering there’s nothing like it on the radio today. The solo gives the song a special spice. The song has the buoyancy of Diamond’s early hits and the line, “honey, it’s natural, I love you” is a classic Diamond-like lyric of that era. Diamond’s best line in any of the songs is “I’m a ten dollar dreamer” from the song, “Memphis Streets.” With fun lyrics about working the day shift and driving a ’59 Ford, this song – like many on the album -- reflect a young adult sense of freedom and abandon. In no less than three songs, he talks about going barefoot. Girls..God..himself…barefoot by the stream.

"You're So Sweet, Horseflies Keep Hangin' Round Your Face" is a fun parody of a corny country song. The lyrics invoking Kentucky moonshine, front teeth missing, county rodoes..would make this a fun one to sing verbatim from the dance floor of a bar as a band plays. "Long Gone" sounds more like country with accoustic rock guitar, absent parody.

Much of the album’s songs show restlessness, a longing to drift along the roads of America, aimless, carrying a few worldly possessions, while opening up to fresh love and life experience. While the world approaching 1970 was growing rapidly more urban and polluted, there seemed – in Diamond and other artists of the time – a reaching out for that something pure and authentic from the country.

In the ballad “Juliet,” Diamond signs of “wandering around a grown man, no more than a small boy.” The dichotomy is evident in lyrics throughout the album. There’s the youthful frivolity and desire for the road, alongside an underscoring knowledge that it’s not all it promises and the game is almost up. It’s like he sings in “Glory Road” – And I know glory road’s waiting for me, rest my load, now I know glory road won’t set me free. The song, with its Kerouackian references to Colorado, Wyoming, LA, Louisiana…hints at the loneliness Diamond would later explore in “I Am, I Said.”

“And the Grass Won’t Pay You No Mind” is the purest portrait of Diamond’s pop-rock lyricism and maturing song writing talents. An acoustic, country-folk-styled ballad, the song is earthy and poetic, capturing a still moment that had to resonate with young people coming of age in a world of noise and confusion. More than romantic love, the song was downright spiritual. Elvis Presley would cover “And the Grass Won’t Pay You No Mind” a few months later and I’m guessing it’s because he couldn’t resist the opening line, “Listen easy, you can hear God calling.”

Of course, Elvis would be all over Diamond’s smash hit of the year – “Sweet Caroline” – adding the pop-rock smash to his Vegas shows. Originally, not part of the album, its popularity prompted MCA to tack it at the end of side two. Good call. “Sweet Caroline” is a serendipitous work of pop transcendence, an enveloping arch over the waters of human kindness. Sung with confidence, it’s become Diamond’s signature song. Could we imagine Boston’s Fenway Park without it now?

Diamond wrote the song after seeing a picture in Life magazine of Caroline Kennedy riding a horse. Is that not appropriate? Was not the entire era a musical Camelot?

Absolutely, it was. A road pulsating with hope and creativity, a kingdom Diamond and his contemporaries had their hands in creating.


Gateway Music

Elvis in Memphis -- After completing Diamond’s album at American Sound Studios, Chips Moman and the house rhythm section recorded this album with Presley and the result was artistic, commercial sophistication – “In the Ghetto,” “Suspicious Minds”... Soulful, poignant and muscular, this album – with the right mix of professionals – brought Presley back to his roots and rescued his career and talents from Hollywood kitschdom. Just as Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show prompts us to see Neil Diamond beyond the Desiree-like Vegas sequins, this album shows Elvis beyond ersatz soundtracks and Liberace bombast.

Dusty in Memphis – A must for any record collection. Like the aforementioned Presley and Diamond, Dusty Springfield’s career was lagging when she recorded in Memphis’s American Sound Studios. And like those guys, her career and talents were injected with new vigor. A British pop diva, she traveled across the pond to work with musicians who would fuel her work with a soulfulness they had lent to Ray Charles, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin. Tommy Cogbill, who helped produce and contribute bass lines on Diamond’s album played the classic, sexy bass intro we all know from “Son of a Preacher Man.” Without this white English girl’s homage to black soul music, we would have no Amy Winehouse or Adele.

Just look for music everywhere from these Memphis musicians and producers. Their handiwork crossed genres and decades – Gene Vincent, Carla Thomas, the Box Tops, Sly and the Family Stone, Tammy Wynette, B.J. Thomas…Chips Moman wrote “Luckenbauch, Texas" for Waylon and Willie. The list goes on and the hunt can only be a thrill.

Outside the box gateway
As a young man, Neil Diamond received a scholarship to be on New York University’s fencing team. No way, I can resist recommending one of my favorite books by one of my favorite all-time authors -- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Holden Caulfield was manager of his prep school’s fencing team. Everyone in the world knows that, I’m sure.

"The Dream" review

Drew D. Hansen’s book, The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation is a fascinating examination of King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. Hansen presents the human story behind MLK’s spectacular address, rescuing the speech -- as King -- from their mythic pedestal.

King famously disregarded his notes that August day in 1963 when he came to the “I have a dream” portion of his speech, spoken spontaneously. Hansen shows, however, that King’s poetic words had been in his creative arsenal for some time. They were the products of references he had gathered over the years, variations of which he had already used in sermons before black church audiences in the South.

The most interesting aspect of Hansen’s book is the detective work he did in tracing the origins of King’s references. King’s writing and oratorical style was influenced by other theologians and poetry, but most of all, by the King James Bible.

Hansen lists several Bible verses, from which King drew allusions, in his famous speech. Psalm, Isaiah, Matthew…the speech drew from a rich array of scriptural sources. Hansen juxtaposes King’s metaphors with their Biblical sources. King quoted directly from Amos 5:24, with the words “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

The “I have a dream” phrase could have been derived from several Biblical passages to a “dream” or “vision” in the Old Testament. But it also could have been lifted from things he had heard from people in his congregation, as well as from a religious vision King described having around the time of the Montgomery, Ala. Bus boycott in 1956.

“’I had a vision’ could easily have become ‘I had a dream,” Hansen writes.

The image of King delivering an emotional plea for interracial brotherhood upon the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is the defining moment of the Civil Rights Era. However, as Hansen shows, the iconography of the moment has led to a watered-down version of the Civil Rights Movement.

Today on MLK Day, politicians can point to the federal legislation that ended Jim Crow in the South and say King’s dream has come true. Mission accomplished. The mythology surrounding the “I have a dream” King glosses over his final years and the battles he didn’t win. Hansen reminds us that the full history isn’t so neat and tidy.

“Remembering King through the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech allowed the nation to tell itself a comforting, but inaccurate story about King’s legacy,” Hansen writes.

The Black Power moment sprang from growing discontentment with King’s philosophy of non-violence and interracial brotherhood. King’s successes in the South had not carried over into solving the more subtle effects of racism found in the inner city slums of cities like Chicago and Detroit. A new crop of African-American leaders mocked King for having a “dream,” while they were living a nightmare.

By the late ‘60s, King had broadened his mission, speaking out against poverty and the Vietnam War. Today, King’s vision of an age free of income inequality and imperialism remain the part of his dream that has been deferred.

Hansen places King’s dream in context. He acknowledges that in ways it remains unfulfilled, yet reminds us of the gratitude we should feel for the miracles that MLK and thousands of Civil Rights workers have helped accomplish.

“In just under a decade, the civil rights movement brought down a system that had stood essentially unaltered since Reconstruction,” Hansen writes. “King’s dreams of an America free from racial discrimination are still some distance away, but it is astounding how far the nation has come since that hot August day in 1963.”

Hopefully, this history will provide hope in the work still before us.

jguyreview: "Make Way for Ducklings" review

jguyreview: "Make Way for Ducklings" review

"Make Way for Ducklings" review

Writer’s note: I recently heard a story on NPR about how 2011 marks the 70th anniversary of Robert McCloskey’s Caldecott Award winning children’s classic, Make Way for Ducklings. So I'm submitting a review of the book that I wrote for a Children’s Literature class I took a few years ago. From time to time, I’ll submit other children’s book reviews I handed in for the class. As readers of this blog know, I have my own style of review writing, but I was required to write in a certain style and I’m going to post what I turned in.

Also, I’m too lazy to change them.

McCloskey, Robert. Make Way for Ducklings. New York: The Viking Press, 1941.

Audience: Ages 3 to 8

Genre: Traditional Fantasy

Summary: A duck couple, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, look for a place to live and raise a family. They settle in a pond at Boston’s Public Gardens, but decide the place is too wild and crowded for babies so they search for a new home. They settle along the Charles River where Mrs. Mallard hatches eight ducklings. She prepares the children to live in the city, while Mr. Mallard flies out to explore the river. Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings have to dodge the bustling traffic as they walk back to the Public Gardens. A kindly policeman halts traffic and calls for police back-up so the family can safely make their way home where they are reunited with their husband and father.

Themes: There is the idea of searching for and finding a home, a place where a family can feel safe and secure. The theme of family stability is demonstrated in the care Mr. and Mrs. Mallard give to finding a home to start their family and in the way Mrs. Mallard nurtures her ducklings. The police officer’s assistance to the duck family illustrates the theme of helping others in need, particularly those who are different from us and tend to get overlooked. McCloskey suggests stepping back from our busy pace and considering the needs of others.

Curriculum Connections: I see this as a story that would be read to kids in around the first grade so I would make the curriculum simple. Ask the children if this is a fiction or non-fiction book. After establishing that the book is fiction, ask the kids if anything about Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their ducklings reminds them of their own family. Take a few suggestions from the children. Then model for the children a picture a picture you drew of your own family and tell how it is similar to Make Way for Ducklings. For example, it could be a picture illustrating a mother (or father) taking care of the children by reading them a story or tucking them in bed at night. After students make their own drawings, give each child an opportunity to show his or her drawing to the class and talk about it.

Reader Response: I found Make Way for Ducklings to be a charming, endearing story, the kind that never grows old. The brown charcoaled pencil drawings evoke autumn on the East Coast during the 1940s. These images often have a comical flair, the best picture being the one in which the police officer stops traffic while the duck family crosses the street. This was a fun book to read to my kids.

Technology Connection: The following link provides an activity guide that includes lesson plan ideas for building cognition by putting story events in sequence and emphasizing vocabulary words in the story. There are also ideas on integrative curriculum, connecting the story with music, art and science. http://www.liveoakmedia.com/client/guides/27319.pdfThis web link contains a brief art lesson plan for “egg carton ducks.” Other ideas integrate art with social studies by having students draw places named in the story and identifying them on a map of Boston. A similar idea is for children to make a chart showing the differences between a city, suburban and rural area. http://www.teachervision.fen.com/fiction/activity/1733.html?detoured=1

Gateway Reading: After Make Way for Ducklings, you have to read McCloskey’s Blueberries for Sal. It’s a beautiful story and an even better book. Both children’s books are classics and Caldecott Award winners – Ducklings winning the prize in 1942 and Blueberries in 1948.