Print This PostMy first and last love are songs. I was all over the place. Late at night, my dad would listen either to country music or the BBC (guess he was all over the place, too). He and my mom would go to sleep with the radio on. I remember lying in bed and hearing the young Dolly Parton sing “Jolene,” and thinking I had never heard a voice or song like that except when someone would sing a snippet of an Irish ballad (not the tin pan alley Irish songs). Even then, to hear Parton without all the hair and make up was to hear a great singer/song writer. I thought she had raven hair down to her butt, and looked like the actress Barbara Hershey, so I was shocked when I first saw her. I heard her long before I saw her, and I would put faces to all the songs. Anyway, here goes.
Allison Krauss does justice by this great song. Mindy Smith ain’t bad either, but you can tell Allison and Dolly have that same high quivering thing goin on that makes for a great country voice.
“All the Things You Are” is a great song, and here it is performed by one of the greatest artists in history–Thelonius Monk. Monk, to me, was vital . I heard “Jolene” at 15, and Monk a little later, but when I heard him, I played him over and over–and he was in my head when I walked to the store. He made me weird in the all the best ways.
I had ADHD real bad as a kid and no one diagnosed it. I was weird and was mocked out a lot for being so. Monk was one of the places I could go where I didn’t have to put up with people’s snide bullshit–one of the best places.
I first saw Arlo Guthrie perform on PBS. I was maybe the only kid in my neighborhood who watched PBS. Glad I did. I didn’t know his father’s work, then I read “Bound For Glory”–amazing book.
The folk songs jived with what I heard from Jesus every Sunday at Mass. I could never be on the side of success after that. It’s a lie that hurts millions and in the name of what?
I love this song. It always chills me to the bone. This is a beautiful version.
Took a long time to find her. Glad I did.
Elizabeth Cotten was in her 90s when she picked like this. Amazing.
It’s not how pretty the voice is, but how real, and how much it wants to help the song be the song it was meant to be. Elizabeth Cotten did this. Her pickin’ was ragtime style. She was born in 1892. This was done in the 70s.
My dad would sing this to me when I was a kid.
He got typed by Hee Haw, but Buck Owens was one of the inventors of the Bakersfield sound– a la Merle Haggard.
Another song I knew well as a little kid.
