Category Archives: Music

Music

Sam & Dave’s Soul Man (1967)

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In the six­ties, just as Berry Gordy up in Detroit was dri­ving the Motown sound, down in Mem­phis the most influ­en­tial cre­ator and pro­mot­er of that crossover of blues/soul/pop music known as the Mem­phis sound was Stax Records, found­ed in 1957 by Jim Stew­art and Estelle Axton (Stewart/Axton = Stax). Unprece­dent­ed in that time of racial ten­sion and strife in the South, Stax’s staff and artists were eth­ni­cal­ly inte­grat­ed, includ­ing their leg­endary house band Book­er T & the MGs, who played on hun­dreds of record­ings by artists includ­ing Wil­son Pick­ett, Otis Red­ding, and Bill With­ers.

Book­er T & the MGs c. 1967 (L–R): Don­ald “Duck” Dunn, Book­er T. Jones (seat­ed), Steve Crop­per, Al Jack­son Jr.

Anoth­er suc­cess­ful Stax act was Sam & Dave, made up of har­mo­nious­ly-com­pat­i­ble soul singers Samuel Moore and David Prater, and today let’s enjoy their 1967 record­ing, Soul Man, writ­ten by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. Hayes had found the inspi­ra­tion for the song in the tur­moil of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. In July 1967 he had watched a tele­vi­sion news­cast about the after­math of the 12th Street riot in Detroit, Michi­gan, and not­ed that black res­i­dents had daubed the word “soul” onto their build­ings in the hope that the riot­ers would pass them by – anal­o­gous to the bib­li­cal sto­ry of the Passover, it was their way of say­ing “Please don’t wreck my build­ing, I’m one of you” (so to speak). The idea mor­phed in Hayes’ mind into an expres­sion of pride and defi­ance: “I’m a soul man!”.

The MGs were draft­ed in to record the song, with the help of horns from that oth­er reli­able Stax house band, the Mar-Keys, and the result was an instant smash that would enter the Gram­my Hall of Fame. Sam and Dave take it in turns to sing the vers­es, join­ing in togeth­er for the cho­rus­es, and com­ple­ment­ing each oth­er seam­less­ly. One of Steve Cropper’s gui­tar licks is intro­duced by the excla­ma­tion “Play it, Steve”, a nuance that was repeat­ed some years lat­er when Soul Man was includ­ed as one of the soul clas­sics paid trib­ute to by the mak­ers of 1980’s The Blues Broth­ers movie (in which Crop­per makes an appear­ance).

Here’s a TV appear­ance by the duo singing Soul Man (sans Crop­per and thus sans the “Play it Steve” snip­pet but hey…) to an audi­ence that does­n’t quite yet know how to move to the rhythm!

Sam and Dave

 

Music

The Eagles’ Hotel California (1977)

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Decem­ber 1976 saw the release of the Eagles’ Hotel Cal­i­for­nia album, with its epony­mous sin­gle released in the fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary. This was right in the mid­dle of a sem­i­nal time for me in terms of musi­cal flow­er­ing (the release of the records strad­dled my 14th birth­day) and it hit the spot just as sure­ly as songs by the likes of Deep Pur­ple, Led Zep­pelin, Cat Stevens and David Bowie had in the year or two pre­vi­ous­ly. I loved the way the song told a sto­ry (a slight­ly dis­com­fit­ing, odd sto­ry at that) and how it auda­cious­ly includ­ed an exquis­ite and lengthy gui­tar solo (2 min­utes and 12 sec­onds) that would become the bane of radio pro­duc­ers bred to keep musi­cal offer­ings short and sweet (the whole song is six and a half min­utes long).

Hotel Cal­i­for­nia was the Eagles’ fifth album and they were already the biggest band in Amer­i­ca when they embarked on its record­ing. Sad­ly, per­son­al rela­tion­ships in the band had already bro­ken down (a repeat­ing theme in the life of the band, despite which, amaz­ing­ly, the band endured); nonethe­less, per­son­al enmi­ties nev­er stood in the way of the band cre­at­ing ground-break­ing music. Gui­tarist Don Felder came up with the Hotel Cal­i­for­nia riff, which was then devel­oped by Don Hen­ley and Glenn Frey. Frey’s lyrics were inspired by an attempt to “expand our lyri­cal hori­zons and try to take on some­thing in the realm of the bizarre, like Steely Dan had done”.

He cer­tain­ly nailed it: the brood­ing imagery around this fad­ed hotel in the mid­dle of nowhere (the hotel in The Shin­ing about sums it up in my head) is mag­nif­i­cent­ly evoca­tive and the lyrics are pep­pered with killer lines. I can­not con­ceive of a bet­ter line, giv­en the pre­ced­ing lyrics and lead­ing into the icon­ic gui­tar solo, than “you can check out any time you like but you can nev­er leave”. Then again, have there ever been two open­ing lines – “On a dark desert high­way, cool wind in my hair” – so evoca­tive of a place and milieu? I could go on (“some dance to remem­ber, some dance to for­get” et al), but let’s instead just enjoy the whole piece and its won­der­ful duelling gui­tars at this live per­for­mance at Largo, Mary­land, in 1977.

The Eagles
Music

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 Adagietto (1902)

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Although Gus­tav Mahler (1860–1911) is right up there in the pan­theon of com­posers, his music gained its true cur­ren­cy only well after his death. Sure, he was famous in his life­time as a con­duc­tor but his com­po­si­tions were large­ly neglect­ed and indeed banned in Europe dur­ing the Nazi era (Mahler was an Ashke­nazi Jew), and it was only after 1945 that a new gen­er­a­tion of lis­ten­ers redis­cov­ered his music and turned him into one of the most fre­quent­ly per­formed and record­ed com­posers which has sus­tained to the present day.

Mahler com­posed his Sym­pho­ny No. 5 between 1901 and 1902, most­ly dur­ing the sum­mer months at his hol­i­day cot­tage at Maiernigg in Aus­tria (his “com­pos­ing hut” is now a lit­tle muse­um). At near­ly sev­en­ty min­utes long, it’s a musi­cal can­vas with some seri­ous scope, but today we’ll look at the fourth move­ment or Adagi­et­to, a ten­der piece of music that was said to have rep­re­sent­ed his love for Alma Schindler whom he mar­ried in March 1902.

The Adagi­et­to is undoubt­ed­ly the sin­gle most well-known piece of Mahler’s music. Leonard Bern­stein con­duct­ed it dur­ing the funer­al Mass for Robert Kennedy at St Patrick’s Cathe­dral in New York in 1968, but it was its use in Luchi­no Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice that sky­rock­et­ed it to fame.

Death In Venice was Ger­man author Thomas Mann’s 1912 novel­la about a famous and enno­bled writer, Gus­tav von Aschen­bach, who is sojourn­ing in Venice for health rea­sons and becomes increas­ing­ly obsessed with a young hand­some Pol­ish boy, Tadzio, who is stay­ing in the same hotel on the Venet­ian island of Lido.

In the movie, Vis­con­ti turns von Aschen­bach (Dirk Bog­a­rde) from writer to com­pos­er, which allows the musi­cal score (which also includes music by Beethoven and Mus­sorgsky) to rep­re­sent Aschen­bach’s work. The end­ing scene in which the dying com­pos­er watch­es Tadzio strolling and wad­ing through the sea­wa­ter to the enrap­tured tones of Mahler’s Adagi­et­to (before von Aschen­bach prompt­ly keels over dead) is strik­ing. You can go watch the movie (despite the spoil­er!) but for now, lis­ten to the music itself:

Gus­tav Mahler
Music

Miles Davis’s Soundtrack to Elevator To The Gallows (1958)

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Rolling Stone described him as “the most revered jazz trum­peter of all time, not to men­tion one of the most impor­tant musi­cians of the 20th cen­tu­ry” and it’s hard to argue with that appraisal of Miles Davis (1926–1991) the Amer­i­can trum­peter, band­leader, and com­pos­er. Not to everyone’s taste for sure (and cer­tain­ly not to the oth­er adult shar­er of my house­hold, who pret­ty much loathes the entire genre of jazz) and chal­leng­ing at times to even the most will­ing of new lis­ten­ers, but he is one of the most influ­en­tial and acclaimed fig­ures in the his­to­ry of jazz.

Born in Alton, Illi­nois to a well-to-do fam­i­ly (he was born Miles Dewey Davis III), Miles went to study at the cel­e­brat­ed Juil­liard School in New York, but dropped out and sought out, befriend­ed and soon joined sax­o­phon­ist Char­lie “Bird” Park­er’s bebop quin­tet, col­lab­o­rat­ing with him from 1944 to 1948. Short­ly after, he record­ed the ground-break­ing Birth of the Cool ses­sions which would become the defin­ing record­ing of the “cool jazz” genre, and in the ear­ly 1950s he record­ed some of the ear­li­est “hard bop”, the funky off­shoot of bebop music. Ever inno­v­a­tive, he was always push­ing the enve­lope and invent­ing gen­res along the way.

Davis signed a long-term con­tract with Colum­bia Records, and record­ed the album ‘Round About Mid­night in 1955. It was his first work with sax­o­phon­ist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Cham­bers, key mem­bers of the sex­tet he would lead into the ear­ly 1960s and with whom he would rule the jazz world. Dur­ing this peri­od, he alter­nat­ed between orches­tral jazz col­lab­o­ra­tions with arranger Gil Evans, and band record­ings, such as Mile­stones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959), the lat­ter record­ing sell­ing over five mil­lion copies in the US.

The piece I have sin­gled out for our delec­ta­tion today is a piece of cin­e­mat­ic cool, com­bin­ing Miles Davis’s musi­cal sound­scape with some typ­i­cal­ly moody French art-house aes­thet­ic pro­vid­ed by leg­endary screen god­dess Jeanne More­au. This scene is from the 1958 crime thriller movie Ascenseur Pour L’échafaud (Ele­va­tor To The Gal­lows), direct­ed by Louis Malle. The sound­track was record­ed in one night, and impro­vised by Davis and four oth­er musi­cians while they watched the rel­e­vant scenes from the film. Jazz crit­ic Phil John­son described it as “the loneli­est trum­pet sound you will ever hear, and the mod­el for sad-core music ever since”.

Miles Davis
Music

Sir Edward Elgar’s Nimrod Variation (1899)

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Both patri­ot­ic and mov­ing in equal mea­sure, Sir Edward Elgar’s Nim­rod vari­a­tion is a sta­ple of British patri­ot­ic events such as the Last Night of the Proms, the open­ing of the 2012 Olympic Games in Lon­don, and the coro­na­tions of Eliz­a­beth II and Charles III, whilst its som­bre nature lends itself equal­ly well to the Remem­brance Day ser­vice at the Ceno­taph, and funer­als such as those of Princess Diana and Prince Philip. It is the ninth and best-known vari­a­tion in Elgar­’s Enig­ma Vari­a­tions, an orches­tral work of four­teen vari­a­tions on an orig­i­nal theme com­posed between 1898 and 1899.

Each vari­a­tion is also a musi­cal sketch of mem­bers of Elgar­’s fam­i­ly and close cir­cle of friends and con­tains, in Elgar’s words, “a dis­tinct idea found­ed on some par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­i­ty or per­haps on some inci­dent known only to two peo­ple”. Thus, each vari­a­tion con­tains a per­son­al expres­sion from Elgar of an aspect of each subject’s per­son­al­i­ty, or an event they shared, and the sub­jects are iden­ti­fied by either ini­tials or a nick­name: for exam­ple, the first vari­a­tion is “CAE” (Elgar’s wife, Car­o­line Alice); oth­ers include “RBT” (Oxford clas­si­cist Richard Bax­ter-Town­shend), “Troyte” (archi­tect Arthur Troyte Grif­fith) and so on.

Vari­a­tion IX (Ada­gio) “Nim­rod” is a por­trait of Augus­tus J. Jaeger, Elgar’s edi­tor and pub­lish­er, and close friend. Nim­rod is the great hunter of the Old Tes­ta­ment, and the piece is so named through a play on words: Jäger in Ger­man means ‘hunter’. This serene vari­a­tion rep­re­sents the years of advice and encour­age­ment giv­en to Elgar by Jaeger, when Elgar was suf­fer­ing depres­sive episodes and lack of con­fi­dence in his work. Jaeger had remind­ed him that Beethoven had had sim­i­lar anx­i­eties and yet his music had only increased in beau­ty; in trib­ute to this moment, Nim­rod’s open­ing moments evoke sub­tle hints of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8.

The piece builds through long phras­es of swelling dynam­ics and rip­pling melody, and the emo­tion­al cli­max comes slow­ly but sure­ly. Solemn and evoca­tive, Nim­rod has every­one reach­ing for their han­kies. Enjoy this ver­sion fea­tur­ing Gus­ta­vo Dudamel con­duct­ing the Simon Boli­var Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

Sir Edward Elgar
Music

Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune (1894)

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When I was a boy I got some piano lessons from my grand­ma, whose creaky piano had been a fea­ture of her back room for as long as I could remem­ber, and although my progress was lim­it­ed (and per­ma­nent­ly arrest­ed at age thir­teen when I dis­cov­ered the gui­tar), I retain some vivid mem­o­ries: my grand­ma singing the music hall favourite Two Love­ly Black Eyes in her trade­mark falset­to, as well as Edel­weiss from The Sound Of Music and the mil­i­tary march song Men Of Harlech (after which, for a peri­od, she would address me as Dai Bach, or ‘lit­tle David’ in Welsh, as if recall­ing famil­ial roots that nev­er exist­ed). I would faith­ful­ly learn these songs on the piano, whilst leav­ing the unique singing to her.

Anoth­er piece of music I recall prac­tis­ing in those years was Claude Debussy’s Clair De Lune. No doubt every erst­while piano stu­dent does. It’s a haunt­ing and love­ly tune, for sure, and lat­er I was to learn that Debussy was a ver­i­ta­ble mas­ter of the haunt­ing and love­ly tune. He had an aston­ish­ing abil­i­ty to trans­late the nat­ur­al world into sound for orches­tral and solo piano music. Lis­ten to La Mer, for exam­ple, one of many pieces Debussy wrote about water: it’s easy to dis­cern the ‘sound’ of the play of light on water. The evoca­tive musi­cal imagery cap­tured so clev­er­ly in such com­po­si­tions as Rêver­ie, Images, Préludes, Études and Noc­turnes led him to be dubbed the first Impres­sion­ist com­pos­er, the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of Mon­et, Cézanne and Renoir (he was none too hap­py with the term by all accounts, but I’d have tak­en it).

My favourite evo­ca­tion, though, as a fan of the pas­toral and bucol­ic, is Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune. Based on Stéphane Mallarmé’s sym­bol­ist poem of the same name, the Prélude con­jures up a dream-like world of idyl­lic wood­land thick with sum­mer haze, in which sprawls a lethar­gic faun, wak­ing from rever­ie. If you don’t know it from its title, you’ll know it when you hear it from the excerpt below (it’s been used all over the shop). Oh, to be a faun in a mytho­log­i­cal Greek sum­mer land­scape! Beats work­ing…

Claude Debussy
Music

Cole Porter’s You Do Something To Me (1929)

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There’s a scene in the 1972 movie Sleuth, where­in eccen­tric mil­lion­aire crime writer Andrew Wyke (Lau­rence Olivi­er) has invit­ed his wife’s lover, Ital­ian hair­dress­er Milo Tin­dle (Michael Caine), to his man­sion, under false pre­tences, and pro­ceed­ed to shoot him dead in what he believes to be the per­fect mur­der. He struts self-assured­ly around his kitchen, busy­ing him­self in prepa­ra­tion of a cel­e­bra­to­ry cham­pagne-and-caviar sup­per to the strains of Cole Porter’s song You Do Some­thing To Me piped in from a dis­tant gramo­phone. Now, the movie itself deserves a blog all to itself, since it is a grip­ping and bril­liant­ly-writ­ten piece of dra­ma with bravu­ra per­for­mances from the two afore­men­tioned greats of the sil­ver screen, but this is not about the movie but the song.

The song is typ­i­cal of Cole Porter (1891–1964), Amer­i­can com­pos­er and song­writer not­ed for his wit­ty, urbane lyrics and writer of many a song that would find suc­cess on Broad­way in the 1920s and 30s, and become part of what we now call the Great Amer­i­can Song­book. His songs trip off the tongue: You’re The Top; Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love; Any­thing Goes; I Get A Kick Out Of You; Begin The Beguine; I’ve Got You Under My Skin; Let’s Mis­be­have; Ev’ry Time We Say Good­bye; Who Wants To Be A Mil­lion­aire? et al. His songs have of course been cov­ered by, well, everyone…and so I attempt­ed to find out which artist had record­ed the par­tic­u­lar ver­sion that we hear in Sleuth (below)…

Sure­ly a straight­for­ward google-able task? But not so: hav­ing failed to find the iden­ti­ty of the artist from the obvi­ous sources, I was led instead and cir­cuitous­ly to this forum of musi­cal sound­track enthu­si­asts (below). Start­ing in 2006, one “glo­ri­ot­s­ki” kicks off the thread with the same ques­tion that was on my lips, but “coma” sets the ensu­ing tone with “I’ve checked all avail­able sources but nobody real­ly seems to know”.

Oth­er ama­teur musi­cal sleuths, deter­mined to crack the mys­tery, steam in, with the sug­ges­tions rolling in: Fred Astaire, Al John­son, Mel Tor­mé, Al Bowl­ly, Pat O’Malley, Sam Browne (indeed, vir­tu­al­ly every­one except Mar­lene Diet­rich)? But the years tick by, and one by one each con­fi­dent sug­ges­tion has been debunked, right up to 2021 when we seem to have got no fur­ther:

Per­haps we’ll nev­er know…but I can live with that (in fact, I’m rather glad that the mys­tery has endured) because in the course of my research I came across this won­der­ful ver­sion record­ed by Har­ry Reser’s Clic­quot Club Eski­mo Orches­tra, with vocals by Har­ry “Scrap­py” Lam­bert. Enjoy!

Cole Porter
Music

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor (1824)

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Beethoven’s Ninth (Sym­pho­ny No. 9 in D minor) was his last com­plete sym­pho­ny but it also hap­pens to be regard­ed by many musi­col­o­gists as his great­est work and one of the supreme achieve­ments in the his­to­ry of music. Not bad for a last major work, con­sid­er­ing how many artists gen­er­al­ly peak at some point ear­li­er in their careers and tail off some­what towards the end. It was com­posed between 1822 and 1824 and was the first exam­ple of a major com­pos­er using voic­es in a sym­pho­ny. The final move­ment fea­tures four vocal soloists and a cho­rus, with words adapt­ed from the poem by Friedrich Schiller, Ode to Joy (lend­ing the tune its famous com­mon name).

There are a num­ber of anec­dotes about the pre­miere of the Ninth, at the The­ater am Kärnt­ner­tor in Vien­na on the 7th May 1824, based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of some of the par­tic­i­pants. There are sug­ges­tions that it was under-rehearsed and a bit scrap­py, but regard­less it was an enor­mous suc­cess. In any case, Beethoven was not to blame, since he was by now deaf and although he was osten­si­bly con­duct­ing so as to be present for the audi­ence, it was actu­al­ly co-con­duc­tor Louis Duport whose baton was fol­lowed by the musi­cians. Vio­lin­ist Joseph Böhm recalled:

“[Beethoven] stood in front of a con­duc­tor’s stand and threw him­self back and forth like a mad­man. At one moment he stretched to his full height, at the next he crouched down to the floor, he flailed about with his hands and feet as though he want­ed to play all the instru­ments and sing all the cho­rus parts.”

When the audi­ence applaud­ed Beethoven was sev­er­al bars off and still con­duct­ing, so con­tral­to Car­o­line Unger walked over and turned Beethoven around to accept the audi­ence’s applause. Accord­ing to the crit­ic for the The­ater-Zeitung, “the pub­lic received the musi­cal hero with the utmost respect and sym­pa­thy, lis­tened to his won­der­ful, gigan­tic cre­ations with the most absorbed atten­tion and broke out in jubi­lant applause.” The audi­ence gave him five stand­ing ova­tions; there were hand­ker­chiefs and hats in the air, and raised hands, so that Beethoven, who they knew could not hear the applause, could at least see the ova­tions.

Here’s an excerpt from the Ode to Joy played by the Chica­go Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

Lud­wig van Beethoven
Music

Eric Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 (1888)

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Pret­ty much all of the clas­si­cal com­posers I have writ­ten about in this blog so far (let’s see: Brahms, Mozart, Chopin, Mendelssohn, to name but a few) were pro­lif­ic and com­plex and not­ed for being child prodi­gies for whom an upward musi­cal tra­jec­to­ry was clear­ly in the off­ing. Not so this week’s enig­mat­ic com­pos­er, Eric Satie (1866–1925). The son of a French father and a Scot­tish moth­er, Satie stud­ied at the Paris Con­ser­va­toire, but was an undis­tin­guished stu­dent and left with­out even obtain­ing a diplo­ma (one tutor described his piano tech­nique as “insignif­i­cant and worth­less”; they did­n’t hold back in those days), work­ing through­out the 1880s as a pianist in café-cabaret in Mont­martre, Paris. At this time, how­ev­er, he would begin com­pos­ing works, most­ly for solo piano such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossi­ennes, that would pro­pel him to an unan­tic­i­pat­ed renown.

Satie famous­ly employed a min­i­mal­ist, pared back style of music in con­trast to the grand and epic com­po­si­tions of a Wag­n­er, for exam­ple.  In fact, he would influ­ence a whole new gen­er­a­tion of French com­posers away from post-Wag­ner­ian impres­sion­ism and towards a spar­er, ters­er style. Among those influ­enced by him dur­ing his life­time were Mau­rice Rav­el (see his Boléro, for exam­ple) and he is seen as an influ­ence on more recent, min­i­mal­ist com­posers such as John Cage and Arvo Pärt.

Satie was an enig­ma, for sure, and some­thing of a quirky char­ac­ter. He gave some of his lat­er works absurd titles, such as Ver­i­ta­bles Pre­ludes flasques (pour un chien) (“True Flab­by Pre­ludes (for a Dog)”, 1912), and Cro­quis et agac­eries d’un gros bon­homme en bois (“Sketch­es and Exas­per­a­tions of a Big Wood­en Man”, 1913). He nev­er mar­ried, and his home for most of his adult life was a sin­gle small room, first in Mont­martre and lat­er in Arcueil. He adopt­ed var­i­ous images over the years, includ­ing a peri­od in qua­si-priest­ly garb, anoth­er in which he always wore iden­ti­cal­ly coloured vel­vet suits, and anoth­er, per­haps his most endur­ing per­sona, in which he wore a neat bour­geois cos­tume, with bowler hat, wing col­lar, and umbrel­la. He was a life­long heavy drinker, and died of cir­rho­sis of the liv­er at the age of 59.

If you think you don’t know Eric Satie’s music, think again, as you’re sure to recog­nise his Gymnopédie No. 1 that you can hear here against some footage of old Paris (I love these old videos, don’t you, dur­ing the advent of mov­ing pic­tures when passers-by would stare or glance at this strange new-fan­gled giz­mo point­ing at them, and seem­ing to con­nect, albeit briefly, with we the view­er well over a cen­tu­ry lat­er).

Eric Satie

 

 

Music

Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman (1970)

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One of the advan­tages of hav­ing old­er sis­ters in the ear­ly sev­en­ties when I was just start­ing to dis­cov­er music was the inher­i­tance from them of cer­tain clas­sic albums. In ret­ro­spect, I admire their gen­eros­i­ty, because it’s not every­one who relin­quish­es large parts of their music col­lec­tion to younger sib­lings (I’m not sure I would have, had I had any). Nonethe­less, I came to own and appre­ci­ate at a young age such sem­i­nal records as David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders of Mars, the Moody Blues’ In Search of the Lost Chord, and Led Zeppelin’s Led Zep­pelin II. Oh, and also three clas­sic albums by the sub­ject of today’s blog, Cat Stevens, name­ly Mona Bone Jakon, Tea for the Tiller­man, and Teas­er and the Fire­cat.

These three albums sprung out of what was an impres­sive­ly rich peri­od of out­put from Cat: in order, they had been released in April 1970, Novem­ber 1970 and Octo­ber 1971. Not that I knew the order of release back then – I wasn’t yet a geek – they were sim­ply records, but records chock-full of warm, catchy folk-pop, occa­sion­al­ly with a Greek tinge in homage to his part-Hel­lenic her­itage (his father was Cypri­ot, his moth­er Swedish, and Cat him­self – Steven Geor­giou — was born in Maryle­bone, Lon­don).

Songs that res­onat­ed: Kat­man­du from Mona Bone Jakon, a lilt­ing, mys­ti­cal acoustic song awash with flute from a 19-year-old Peter Gabriel, and a paean to all things sim­ple and peace­ful, a metaphor­ic Eden away from West­ern civil­i­sa­tion. Years lat­er I would be rid­ing a bus into the real Kath­man­du in Nepal with this track play­ing mean­ing­ful­ly on my Sony Walk­man.

From Teas­er and the Fire­cat: Peace Train, and its hope­ful, anti-war lyrics (Out on the edge of dark­ness, There rides a peace train, Oh peace train take this coun­try, Come take me home again). Ide­al­is­tic, sure, but it cer­tain­ly struck a chord with me at the time, and if you can’t be ide­al­is­tic as a young teenag­er, when can you be (the gim­let eye of expe­ri­ence hadn’t yet been acquired)?

And from Tea for the Tiller­man, the beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed Father and Son, a poignant exchange between a father fail­ing to under­stand his son’s desire to break away, and the son strug­gling to artic­u­late the dri­ve he feels to seek his own des­tiny. I always had trav­el in my soul, and dreamt of tak­ing off into the wider world, so this spoke to me in vol­umes, even though I didn’t actu­al­ly have to deal with any such cul­tur­al mis­align­ments with my own dad.

After famous­ly con­vert­ing to Islam and chang­ing his name to Yusuf Islam in 1978, and drop­ping out of the spot­light for many years, Cat returned to pop music in 2006 and released an album of new pop songs (for the first time in 28 years), under the name Yusuf. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, and now under the com­bi­na­to­r­i­al name Yusuf/Cat Stevens, he released Tea for the Tiller­man 2, a reboot of the orig­i­nal to cel­e­brate its 50th anniver­sary.

Anoth­er great song from that album was Where Do The Chil­dren Play? and here is Cat play­ing a sim­ple acoustic ver­sion of it and prov­ing that he’s still got a voice like warm molasses. A shout out to my mate Gra­ham for send­ing me this and inspir­ing this week’s blog!

Cat Stevens