Rolling Stones “Let It Bleed”

I’ve got this beat up, old copy of this record, cover falling apart, scratchy, and I’ve heard every song at least one too many times, and my stereo is messed up, cutting out, channels not playing equally—but I’ve been listening to only digital music lately, from my computer (doesn’t help that I have crappy computer speakers) so when I put this on, despite the rough shape of everything, it felt like I was hearing music for the first time. Also, you forget how kind of low-key, relaxed, a little sloppy this era of Rolling Stones were, and also, just something in the recording, and mix, lately—it just sounds so warm and organic and present. It still sounds a dangerous to me. I so much wish I could go in a time machine right now to the week this record came out. At one time the song, “Let It Bleed” was my favorite song. I know it’s ridiculous to have a favorite—but why not. What is your favorite song? If you had to pick one. Leave your comments below. It’s not my favorite now, because I’ve heard it one too many times, but I have to say, it’s got to have my favorite drum sound of any recording I’ve ever heard—not so much the splashy cymbals later on, but just the drums toward the beginning of the song—very subtle, or maybe not so subtle—but hard to explain it—just the feeling, it’s like just total bad-ass-ness, or bad-attitude or just the essence of bad (when bad meant cool, fucked up, excellent, unreachable). If you ever want an illustration of why Charlie Watts was as important to the Rolling Stones as Mick and Keith, the drums on this song—that explains it.

The cover I have looks like it’s been in thrift store for 100 years—I don’t know if when this came out it had a sleeve with credits, or what, but this cover has like no information other than the band name, title, record company, and songs (in the wrong order). So maybe you had to wait until you read about it somewhere to know the cover art is a sculpture by Robert Brownjohn. I always loved this album cover, even if I never thought about it too much (kind of took it for granted, I guess). It’s funny how the back cover is the same thing, but partially eaten/destroyed. I guess it always struck me as a little disturbing, just because it kind of makes no sense—why is it floating in space? What’s the record sitting on? The weird thing though, is that I just went several decades without actually looking at it, and now I just noticed for the first time that there’s a pizza there! You might not notice the pizza on the front, but on back, there’s a slice with a bite taken out of it. I also never noticed the nails in the tire on back. I guess I forgot there was a clock there, too, and a big, metal film can, closed with red tape, on which is written: “Stones – Let It Bleed” (which kind of makes the band name and title a bit overkill). I wonder if there were discussions. Also odd: the five members of the band at that time (which still included Brian Jones, though this was the end of the line for him) are depicted as little wedding cake figures, stuck in the frosting, and on back, they have all been knocked over except for the one that’s Keith Richards. I wonder if there were discussions about that. I’m sure it didn’t mean anything.

Dave Dudley “Dave Dudley Sings: ‘Listen Betty, I’m Singing Your Song’”

Dave Dudley specialized in country and western truck driving songs—I had another album by him, at one time, seemed to have lost it. This one’s got funny liner notes by Tom T. Hall, as well as a couple of songs by him (including, “Listen Betty…”). Half the songs are by Dave Dudley, and overall there’s a nice mix of drinking songs, sad songs, and driving songs. My favorite is “For the Good Times”—it’s a sad, romantic one by Kris Kristofferson—that guy’s a good songwriter. Though I do like some of the honky-tonk, truck-drivin’ numbers, as well. The album cover is one of the better ones I’ve ever seen, period—it’s just a nostalgic photo of the inside of a diner with a waitress in the foreground picking up dirty plates, Dave Dudley at the counter trying to get her attention, and a jukebox in the background. Dudley’s got a yellow mug of coffee in front of him. We see the waitress in profile, but her expression looks a lot more like, “Give it a rest, buddy,” than “Oh! You’ve got songs on the jukebox!” Though, in this photo, Dudley is presumably acting the part of truck driver. That waitress, though, she looks like a real waitress, and those dishes look like real dirty dishes, and that counter looks like a real diner counter. She’s holding a cleaning rag in her left hand. I wonder if anyone can name another album cover in history with a picture of a woman holding a cleaning rag?

Skeeter Davis “The Best of Skeeter Davis” (1978)

I’m not sure how many “Best of Skeeter Davis” records there are out there—I’m not even going to try to figure it out—some are re-releases of previous ones. If you see one in your price range, buy it—you can’t go wrong—it’s Skeeter Davis. This one from 1978 is on the cheapie Pickwick label, has a 98 cent cover—no picture of SD anywhere on the record! There are only nine songs on the record, which means the total playing time is around a half hour. The songs don’t have anything to do with each other, and the sound quality isn’t even consistent. For all those drawbacks, this is still a great record—in part because Skeeter Davis didn’t do anything but make great music. As far as I’m concerned she could have covered breaking glass and it’d be great. Anyway, this record has its share of cornball old-time love songs, like “Love Takes a Lot of My Time,” and one of those with a lot of speaking parts, “Set Him Free.” There’s a cover of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” which is song I’ve always found beautiful, even though I’ve heard it more times than my stomach growling—and even though there’s an out-of-control fiddler threatening to set a shit-fire, Skeeter Davis’ voice extinguishes it and saves us all. There are more pop songs, too, a King/Goffin, and John D. Loudermilk’s “Sunglasses,” which is dumb, but no more dumb than the beach, which is where I wish I was right now.

Lani Hall “Sun Down Lady”

This may be one of the strangest album cover photos I’ve ever seen—it’s simply a color profile photo of (presumably) Lani Hall, blown up to billboard size—so large that the full-size album cover can only contain the area between her eyebrow and bottom lip. On top of that, it’s pretty color-saturated. Had she a zit on her right cheek, you’d have had to name the record “Mount Vesuvius.” But she looks nice—not many of us could stand up to such enlargement scrutiny. I wonder what she thought about the cover? Anyway, once I saw it, in the used record store, there was no way I wasn’t going to buy it. I had no idea who Lani Hall was—I didn’t remember that she sang with Brazil ’66—and I didn’t know that she was married to Herb Alpert—maybe still is—or that she sang a James Bond theme song. This record, from 1972, is her first solo record—and she recorded a bunch more.

I like this one a lot, actually, and it’s going in my regular listening pile (I actually have an old end table with a thing that holds either magazines or record albums—that’s where I put my regular listening stack.) Herb Alpert is the producer, and naturally there’s some first-rate session players on it, and a pretty interesting collection of songs, including “Tiny Dancer” and another by Elton John, “Come Down In Time”—this is a really nice version of it. There’s also songs by Cat Stevens, Paul Simon, Paul Williams, and more. One Lani Hall composition—a pretty intense love song. The Lesley Duncan song, “Love Song” is a standout, probably my favorite on the record. “Sun Down” is a very familiar sounding song (it’s written by Willis Alan Ramsey, who wrote “Muskrat Love”)—could this song have been playing on the AM radio in the morning while I ate my Cap’n Crunch before another horrific day of 7^th Grade? I like it, now, though—it pretty much puts me on a beach, looking out over the Pacific as the light fades, with a beautiful woman and a rum drink. You know, pretty much my life.