Seldom Scene -- "Rider" (1973)

I know you, Rider

Gonna miss me when I'm gone

Rarely does a day go by that I don't encounter music that makes me say to myself, "That song would be perfect for 2 or 3 lines."

Most of the times that happens, I'm talking a walk or riding my bike or driving in my car, and I forget the song because I don't write myself a note reminding myself not to forget it.

That happened with today's featured song, which I meant to write about a long time ago.  I don't recall quaffing a dram of Nepenthe any time recently, but something buried all thoughts of "Rider" deep within the flotsam and jetsam that inhabits my brain.  And there it might have stayed forever but for the fact that the previous 2 or 3 lines featured the Go Home Productions mashup of Blondie and the Doors titled "Rapture Riders."

In 1934, famed folklorists John and Alan Lomax included a song titled "Woman Blue" in their book American Ballads and Folk Songs.  

Their lyrics to "Woman Blue" -- ten verses' worth -- are prefaced with this comment:  "An eighteen-year-old black girl, in prison for murder, sang the tune and first stanza of these blues."  I have no idea where they got the other nine verses.

A folksinger named Bob Coltman arranged the song -- which he renamed "I Know You Rider" -- and began to perform it regularly in the late 1950s.  

Just about every folksinger worth worth his or her salt recorded it in the 1960s -- Joan Baez, Judy Henske, the Kingston Trio, Vince Martin and Fred Neil, Gale Garnett, and Judy Roderick among them.  

The Byrds, Hot Tuna, and even Janis Joplin recorded the song as well, and it was a staple in the Grateful Dead's live shows for years.  

There are many live recordings of the Dead performing the song.  All are pretty much equally lethargic and sloppy.  Here's an example:  

(Ugh.)

I think the Seldom Scene's 1973 recording of the song is BY FAR the best one out there . . . even though it doesn't include my favorite Lomax verse:

I'm goin' to de river, set down on a log

I'm goin' to de river, set down on a log

Ef I can'[t] be yo' woman, sho gonna be yo' dog

Bob Coltman altered that verse:

I'm goin' down to the river, set down on a log

I'm goin' down to the river, set down on a log

If I can't be your man, honey, sure won't be your dog

Sorry, Bob, but you've missed the point.  The singer isn't proud or defiant in the face of his (or her) rejection -- he (or she) is disappointed and bitter.  

The singer in the original version of the song is willing to be his (or her) lover's dog if he (or she) can't be her or (his) man (or woman), which is much more consistent with the rest of the lyrics.

(Geez.  2 or 3 lines is beginning to question its strict policy of gender-neutral writing.)

The Seldom Scene is an acclaimed bluegrass band that was founded in 1971 in . . . Bethesda, Maryland?

Hold your horses, Mr. 2 or 3 lines.  Are you trying to tell me that one of the greatest bluegrass groups ever doesn't hail from a hardscrabble Appalachian holler in western Virginia or Kentucky, but rather from a very affluent and tony suburb of Washington, DC?

That's exactly what I am telling you, boys and girls!

The Seldom Scene's original members included a medical student, a mathematician, and a National Geographic cartographer.  The band's mandolin virtuoso, the late John Duffey, was the son of an opera singer and a graduate of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, which has been ranked among the best public high schools in the United States for decades.  (The school has an orchestra, a concert band, a jazz band, and a number of chamber music groups.  I don't think it's ever had a bluegrass ensemble, or offered instruction in mandolin, bluegrass fiddle, or resonator guitar.) 

John Duffey (1934-1996)

It's a bit of a mystery to me how a bunch of kids from Bethesda became a great bluegrass band.

After all, environment usually has a lot to say about how what kind of music you get from a musician.  For example, "gangsta" rap was the product of the mean streets of Compton, California.  (Straight Outta Pasadena?  Straight Outta Anaheim?  I don't think so.)

That's why it's impossible to imagine a hardcore punk band from a place like Bethesda, where the kids are mostly spoiled little country-club types whose parents are deeply embedded in the federal government, military-industrial complex, and mainstream media.

What in the world did the sons and daughters of privilege who grew up in Bethesda have to rebel against?  Soccer practice on a really hot and humid day?  Too much homework in AP English class?  

Here's "Rider":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Jonathan Edwards -- "Sunshine" (1972)

He can't even run his own life

I'll be damned if he'll run mine!

And the winner is . . . Jonathan Edwards!

If you missed the previous 2 or 3 lines, it featured America's "Sister Golden Hair," which has second-most unconvincing use of the word "damn" in a pop song.  The song that beat it out for the top spot is Jonathan Edwards' 1972 hit single, "Sunshine."

The singer of "Sunshine" is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it any more!

What it is that's making him mad ain't exactly clear.  But it was 1971, so we can make a pretty good guess.

"It was just at the time of the Vietnam War and Nixon," Edwards later recalled.  "It was looking bad out there."

"The song meant a lot to a lot of people during that time -- especially me!" he went on to say.  I'll be damned if it meant anything to me.  

"Sunshine" talks a good game, which is a trait it shares with a lot of songs of the same vintage (not to mention a lot of people who came of age around that time).

Here are a few more lines from "Sunshine":

Working starts to make me wonder where

The fruits of what I do are going

He says in love and war all is fair

But he's got cards he ain't showing

None of that really means doodly squat, does it?  It sounds kind of tough and rebellious, but sounding tough and rebellious doesn't make you tough and rebellious.

Jonathan Edwards today

Jonathan Edwards is about as convincing a rebel as I was.  (The closest I came was a picture from my senior year of charge, when my hair was at its longest and my Fu Manchu mustache was at its Fu Manchuiest.  A female friend of mine saw it several years later -- after I had cleaned up my act a bit -- and told me that I looked "dangerous" in the photo.  You have no idea how happy that made me.)

"Sunshine" is purportedly a song that's all about getting lazy, intoxicated, and/or stoned college kids (which was about 98.6% of the college population in 1972) off their asses and into the streets.  "I'll be DAMNED if I'm going to get in line because some guy who's trying to run my life tell me to do so," Edwards is saying.  To which the rest of the world replies, "Spare me!"

After initially breaking out on a Boston radio station (figures, doesn't it?) "Sunshine" became a national hit, making it all the way to #4 on the Billboard pop singles chart.

The song only got released because a recording engineer screwed up.  Edwards wasn't planning to include "Sunshine" on his eponymous debut album until the engineer accidentally erased another track that was intended to go on that album.  Edwards plugged the hole by inserting "Sunshine."  (It's better to be lucky than good.)

"Sunshine" was by far the biggest hit Edwards ever recorded, but his subsequent lack of success wasn't from lack of effort.  He released six more albums in the 1970s alone, and has recorded a total of 16 albums (the most recent of which was released in 2011) -- including a children's album, a bluegrass album (with the Seldom Scene), a country album, and an album titled "Cruising America's Waterways," which got its title from a PBS series that Edwards narrated and performed in.  I'll be damned if I know why -- I can't imagine that any of them are still selling worth a . . . (You can fill in the blank.)

  

Here's a live performance of "Sunshine" by Edwards and the Seldom Scene:

Edwards has a pretty interesting life.  He was the lead in a touring production of the Broadway musical, Pumpboys and Dinettes, and appeared in the 2008 film, The Golden Boys, a period movie starring Mariel Hemingway, David Carradine, Bruce Dern, and the inimitable Rip Torn that was filmed on Cape Cod a few years ago.  

The Golden Boys cost an estimated $8 million to produce and grossed exactly $184,149 in the U.S.  I doubt that there will be a sequel.

Here's "Sunshine":

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