Got a famous Christmas number stuck in my head. I replace it with something else but it keeps coming back.
Is it a gorgeous hymn like "O Holy Night" or "Hark, the Herald Angeles Sing"? Is it a beautiful poem set to music like "O Little Town of Bethlehem"? Is it a hopping number like "Boogie Woogie Santa Claus" or "Little St. Nick" or even "Christmas in Killarney"?
Actually it's the Mellencamp version that I heard in the supermarket, so it could be worse. It wasn't the original or the Spike Jones version or anything with soggy child singers; it wasn't the Jackson 5 version either. Nor was it Kip Addotta's "I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus," so I guess I ought to be grateful.
Still, Christmas time is about the only time you can hear music in public that isn't less than fifteen years old, so I kind of hate when a lousy song wheedles its way in.
Well, thanks to Dr. Stiiv, I know the cure for earworms. It may not be particularly festive, but the theme from Danger!! Death Ray (courtesy of MST3K) is known to drive other music out of active memory.
One of my best friends growing up had an unusual criterion that any album had to pass to be considered first-rate. It had to have "no bad songs." It was often the first thing he would tell you about an album -- not that it was terrific or featured this or that number, but that it had no weak links. And you know, he had something.
He amassed a large record collection, most of which had at least one song he considered unlistenable and required skipping. Such albums could be otherwise boffo music, but they could never be really top-tier records.
Still, even if a record had a stinkburger or two, you had to consider it to be doing well if it got radio play at all. Generally speaking, a record that had two songs on the radio was a big deal, three was a hit, and four or more? Absolute killer. When radio was king of music, you could tell which records were the killers, because (at least for young people) radio was just in the air, coming out of cars, from boom boxes, the kids in the backyard, the girls on the beach blankets. Off the top of my head, here are some records that were notable for multiple song radio play:
Van Halen: 1984
Guns 'n Roses: Appetite for Destruction
Fleetwood Mac: Rumors
The Who: Who's Next
Huey Lewis and the News: Sports
R.E.M.: Out of Time
B-52s: Cosmic Thing
You notice that the records I've listed all came out before the mid-90s, and that's not a coincidence. Almost as soon as the Internet was launched, radio started to weaken as the responder to and arbiter of taste. Popular music got split into smaller and smaller sub-genres, and music was not played aloud in public places as often when everyone his own lightweight device that held tons of music.
So it's unlikely that even Taylor Swift can ever top the biggest killer record of them all:
Look, I never even liked Michael or any of the other Jacksons. Not my kind of sound. But I could appreciate the skill that went into the songs on Thriller. I had to. It was everywhere. Youngsters today may think they know what it's like when a popular song is everywhere, but they only get a taste of what it is like. Songs from Thriller could be heard anywhere at any time. Since it spent more than a year (!) at or near #1, from February 26, 1983, to April 14, 1984 (and has remained on the charts ever since, getting close to 630 weeks as I write), it was unavoidable. The album had seven singles, which is to say, the whole album not only sold far better than any before or since, but millions bought slices and then bought the whole pie.
Reportedly Jackson challenged himself to better those numbers with his follow-up album, Bad, but he couldn't do it. Nobody could do it. And now that radio is less of a unifying force, it's doubtful anyone ever will. It's not a once-in-a-lifetime thing; it's a once-in-an-industry thing.
My question to you is: What albums would you count as absolute killers, records that had many hits and near-hits that didn't just make the charts but powered into them? I'm sure you all know a lot more than the few that occurred to me on brief reflection.
Or, what album is otherwise perfect but had that one crap song that you can't stand?
Sometimes I wonder how humanity survived the eighties and the nineties. Not because of nuclear war or novel diseases or alien invasion or even Madonna. Rather, because men reached an apogee of confusion with women.
A small sampling of pop songs of the era:
Michael Penn: "No Myth"
Stone Temple Pilots: "Sour Girl"
Marshall Crenshaw: "Mary Jean"
Mark Oliver Everett (A Man Called E): "Looking Out the Window with a Blue Hat On"
Deep Blue Something: "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
All these songs show a man in confusion about a woman, unable to understand what she wants, except she doesn't seem to want him. I'm sure you can add many more to this list, some by the same artists.
The more I thought about it, the more it appeared to be a running theme. These are not just breakup songs; those have been around forever. They aren't even angry songs; there are plenty of those. These are songs where the male is in love, but baffled about the disaster befalling him.
Traditionally popular love songs fell into the categories of Desire, Devotion, or Desolation: I want you, I love you, I lost you. The songs I'm thinking of are a subset of the last. Torch songs can be found anywhere, but usually the torch bearer knows what's happened: she fell for someone new, she had enough of my garbage, she decided to trade up, whatever. But beginning in the eighties, and especially in the coffee-shop nineties, men were getting utterly gobsmacked by these women. She's leaving and I have no idea why this is happening.
I think there are some reasons these kinds of cris de coeur arose when they did. For one thing, after women's lib (as it was called in the seventies), men started to wonder what women actually wanted from them. Kind and sensitive? Witty and adventurous? Gentle and loving? Or was the old strong and silent still what they liked the most? Confused men trying to be what their women wanted made for cases where no one could behave like themselves, so the guys couldn't grasp why nothing ever clicked and everything just fell apart one day.
Another possibility is that couples moved much faster into intimacy than they had in the past, giving the illusion of solidity without the actuality of it. Not surprising that one person in the relationship might be much more committed than the other, thinking that, having made it to home plate, the couple had achieved something solid.
Traditionally the subsequent broken heart in such situations would be the basis of female torch songs, but by the eighties we heard it from the boys, who had a sense they had screwed up but more of a fear that they were screwed up.
Anyway, that's my theory of this subset of the breakup song -- the What Did She Want? song -- that arose in the eighties. I know there are more than I listed above, and maybe examples that preceded the era mentioned. I'd be happy to hear your additions to or even rebuttals to this theory. It won't break my heart.
It's an odd fact of life that sometimes funerals come in bunches. In 2015 I went to so many that my suits were getting tired of being dragged out of the closet. Then, 2016 was quiet. But this year is not starting off well. It's not like I live in the Villages or work for a funeral home, but I fear there may be a more funerals in my near future. I hope not my own.
One common feature of the two funerals I have attended thus far in 2024 is the bagpipes. Now, in both cases, the deceased was of Irish descent, straight up the potato tree. Prominent Catholics, too. Also, they were affiliated with either the Ancient Order or the police or firemen, and those fellows always keep the pipes close at hand for such occasions.
I have nothing against the bagpipes, as long as I'm not standing directly in front of them. But I'd rather not have them played when my time comes. I'm only a fraction Irish personally, a fraction that would balloon up considerably on St. Patrick's Day of course, but no one in my family ever got all weepy over "Danny Boy" or anything. So I think I'm not deserving of the bagpipe treatment.
No, there are other instruments that I think would be better suited for my funeral. If I don't get them written down in my will, please remember these and instruct the funeral home and church accordingly. Any of them will do.
1) Slide Whistle
Putting the fun in funeral comes the slide whistle, and the cheaper the better. Bonus money for the musicians if they can do a long "beeeeewooooop" sound as the coffin is lowered.
2) Kazoo
Similar to #1, but as anyone can play the kazoo, they will be distributed to the crowd. Imagine a whole bunch of mourners on the sidewalk outside the church playing "Amazing Grace" on the kazoo. It would be appropriate for my level of sanctity.
3) String Quartet Marching Band
To reenact the Woody Allen Cello in a Marching Band moment from Take the Money and Run, but with a standing-bass player as well. Cheer up the bereaved!
4) Mouth Harp
You know, the goinkitty goink thing you put in your mouth to bang along with the tune and wreck your bridgework. It's not that loud, so for ceremonial purposes we might have to find someone who plays an electric mouth harp. Hey, I might be the proximate cause of someone inventing a musical instrument! The electrical mouth harp. It'd be like Dylan at Newport, only dumb.
5) Ukulele
This only applies if we go with the Hawaiian Shirt Themed funeral, which would require me surviving my wife. I recently gave her a gift -- I put my ugly Hawaiian shirt into the charity clothes drive. She'd never put up with a Hawaiian Shirt funeral unless she was already dead, and even then I'm not certain.
6) Sjøfløyte
I'm actually more Scandinavian than I am Irish, so it would be more appropriate to play something from the frozen north like the sjøfløyte. What is that, you wonder? It's a Norwegian version of the recorder. Everyone makes fun of learning the recorder in school -- Why didn't they teach me how to fill out a tax return instead? Wah wah wah! (Like third graders could grasp tax law. Adults can't.) But no one would make fun of the sjøfløyte. They wouldn't be able to even pronounce it. The word looks like the sound of a stifled sneeze. I'm sure the instrument is more melodious.
7) Big White Piano
Why? Well, I like the piano all right. The main thing is, Elton John famously hates white pianos. That'd keep him from trying to muscle in and do a Fred-themed version of "Candle in the Wind." There's only room for one star at my funeral, Reg, and that's going to be me.
8) Flugelhorn
No particular reason except I think flugelhorn players need the work.
9) Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ
Okay, maybe you won't be able to get the grieving millions to agree to a small musical accompaniment. In that case, rent the Midmer-Losh organ in Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall, the world's largest pipe organ. This thing is so huge that they don't even know for sure how many pipes it has -- somewhere around 33,113, but no one knows for certain. The stops on the organ rate their own Wikipedia page, which I never will. Just see if they'll lend it out for the day. Probably not a lot of call for it. Maybe get a discounted rate.
10) Saxophone
"But Fred! You hate the sax! You say it sounds like a flatulent duck!" That's true, and the only reason the saxophone is on this list is if "Yakkity Sax" is played. The coffin must be carried in a complex path at running speed to the graveyard, while the mourners chase after it, and dropped in the hole. Somewhere up there, Benny Hill would be smiling.
In November, as the Christmas season nears, the memes begin of Mariah Carey being unfrozen/reanimated/set loose among the populace to let the world know that "All [She Wants] for Christmas Is Yooooou." They poke fun at her like she never had any other hit songs.
But it is true that her pop music Christmas song is popular and played frequently in public places and at gatherings. One reason for this is that most modern Christmas songs are lousy, so with a few exceptions like this one we play the old favorites. It's really the only time we hear songs older than the Baby Boomers anywhere in public. When else are you going to have Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, or Andy Williams on the store PA system?
Plenty of people complain about Carey's song. I would hazard a guess that most of them work in retail. For the rest of us, we ought to remember that it really is a pretty good number, and for that I have no less an expert on the American Songbook than Mark Steyn to back me up.
I miss Steyn's Song of the Week feature from when he could devote more time to his site. About "All I Want for Christmas Is You," he is as always intelligent in his praise. In 2014 he called it "the biggest addition to the seasonal songbook in decades," and that hasn't changed.
The song, by Carey and Walter Afanasieff, expresses a Christmas wish more directly than other seasonal love songs like "Baby, It's Cold Outside" or "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" or the Carpenters' "Merry Christmas, Darling." It goes right to the heart of the matter: It's Christmas, I want one thing for a present, and that thing is you. Not a lot of beating about the bush. The melody is fun to listen to because it moves all up and down the scale. It starts with a slow, dramatic setup, then bursts into a galloping 150 beats per minute, the heartbeat of someone in the heat of passion. The words bang out on quarter notes in 4/4 as it goes, so you never lose the rhythm from the rhyme. It's no wonder that, as Steyn says, almost everyone who's covered the song has done it the same up-tempo way Carey did. It works.
So I will defend this song against the doubters, especially snobs who dismiss all pop music as being dumb and artless simply because it's popular.
My only problem with Carey is that she tried to parlay her fame into trademarking herself as the Queen of Christmas. It seems to have been kind of a jerk move against a relative unknown, but frankly, we all know who the real Christmas Queen is.
No, Lucy -- Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, the one who actually went to the trouble of giving birth on Christmas.
Anyway, while I'm not a fan of Ms. Carey, I can certainly say I respect her, and I enjoy her Christmas song. As I noted, most modern Christmas songs are pretty bad, and that's including County and Western ones -- maybe especially including those. The cheese factor is usually through the roof.
Wham!'s "Last Christmas," as I believe Steyn pointed out elsewhere, is a meh song, and barely has anything to do with Christmas; the lyrics could just as easily have been "Last Tuesday, I gave you my heart..."
I'm a passive player in Whamaggedon, in which one tries to go the 24 days leading up to Christmas without hearing that 1984 song. A guy I know crashes and burns out of Whamageddon early every year, but he goes to the gym a lot, and he's always out with his young kids. That's just asking for it. This year I made it all the way until December 18, when I walked into the post office. I wanted to tell the clerk "You ruined my Whamageddon!" But I'm sure he's had to listen to "Last Christmas" a thousand times since last Halloween, so why bother him about it?
Not too long ago I applied for a job in the greater Nashville area. I know you think of me as a dazzling cosmopolitan New Yorker, and indeed for most of my life I was loyal to New York, and would have preferred to stay in the Empire State, despite the lousy winters and swampy summers and awful crowds and a government run by socialist morons (but I repeat myself) for whom I would never vote. Alas, New York has surpassed stupid and proceeded to brain-dead, so like most of us who are not brain-dead, we want to escape.
But where to settle? Well, I had a line on a good job in Tennessee. I figured it had to be an improvement. My initial application was greeted warmly, and I had an online call to move the process on.
What was my fatal mistake, the flaw that led to the latest in my long string of failures? Ah, me. It may have been an error to demonstrate my enthusiasm for a possible move with this:
This is a souvenir plate I bought when I visited the great city of Nashville with my family years ago. It's one of three tourist-trap items I purchased on that trip. Another was a Music City coffee mug, long busted.
We had a great time on that trip, even though most of us were not fans of country music. We did the touristy stuff -- show at the Opry and a look through the amazing Opryland Hotel, and yes, I was almost within touching distance of Elvis's gold 1960 Cadillac. I was completely sincere when I told the interviewer that we enjoyed the town.
But this plate? Well, I didn't mention that I bought it as a gag gift for my then-girlfriend (now wife) who had asked me to buy her the cheesiest, hokiest, tackiest country-type souvenir I could find. She thought I'd exceeded the request. When we got married I got the plate back, and it hangs proudly on the wall of the cellar in what I laughingly call my workshop.
The interviewer may have sensed that the plate, while a memory of a great trip, was not a sincere purchase made for the quality of the item.
I meant no harm by showing this off. I have cheesy souvenirs of New York City, and I lived and worked there most of my life. But I wouldn't be surprised if the plate sank my employment chances. I can find a way to sabotage pretty much anything in some new and unexpected manner. Everyone has a special gift, I guess, and that seems to be mine.
Still, I suppose it could have gone even worse -- if I'd shown him my third souvenir, the bolo tie:
Made lovingly with the fine Nashville craftsmanship one finds in... Taiwan.
It may be a sad commentary on the human condition that our words for aiding and for creation are not as plentiful as our words for beating and for destroying. Furthermore, the words for creation tend to be specific to the task (assemble, sculpt, carve, concoct, cook) while those for destruction tend to be interchangeable (ruin, crush, crunch, pulverize).
All that said, we do have some pretty great works for wrecking things. Wallop, pound, smash, annihilate, shatter, ravage, and raze are all fun. Also, we do understand that there are implied differences in the severity and methodology of these verbs.
One of the coolest words is banjax, which has that great ax at the end. It's thought to be of Irish origin, and Merriam-Webster dates it to 1939, but no one knows for sure where it came from. That stressed B-syllable at the beginning is reminiscent of beat or batter, and X is always good for destructive purposes, as a sound or as a mark to indicate things that must go. You get the idea of being hit and broken in two. It also sounds like getting hit with a banjo, and even the sound the banjo might make when you get hit.
No disrespect to El Kabong, but an acoustic guitar weighs about five pounds, while a banjo can weigh as much as fourteen. Plus, the guitar has more air resistance. I think I'd rather be kabonged with a guitar than banjaxed with a banjo.
As we head toward football and hockey seasons, where the verbs for destroying each other will be flying in the sports coverage, I would to remind everyone that banjax is a fine word for beating the snot out of an opponent.
One important side note: Remember, the word is whup, not whoop.Whup, generally combined these days with ass and often available in a can, is a variation of whip that dates back to 1852. Whoop means to cheer (as a verb) and goes back to the 14th century. One does not whoop one's opponent -- unless one is cheering for him, I guess. You'd be surprised how often I see this mistake from professional writers -- and, it must be said, female ones, because they've never watched pro wrestling.
Above all, do not whoop ass, because that sounds like some strange butt-related fetish, and I don't think we need to know any more about one another's sex lives these days.
When I was looking up some information for the D.B. Cooper item I posted a couple of weeks ago, I came across the curious note that Cooper's skyjacking case and (apparent) escape had inspired a couple of instant records, quick 45s to cash in on the news of the day. This, kids, is what people used to do before throwing together music videos on YouTube for the same purpose.
While there have been many songs dedicated to the poor parachutist Cooper in the decades since, and even a band named for the felon, at the time one example of the D.B. Cooper genre that popped up on vinyl was by Judy Sword: "D.B. Cooper, Where Are You?" The B side was "Skyjack '71," which is the only one of the two songs I could find on YouTube.
I don't know what became of Ms. Sword, but I do know that her best remembered song was "Please Don't Squeeze My Jimmy" in a piano-hammering blues rock style. But I think the song that should have really put her on the map, the song with one of the best titles I've ever heard, was the B-side of that single, "Take My Love and Shuv It Up Your Heart."
The label left off the "It"
That song was written by one Danny Vest, who recorded it with the Simmons Family. Ms. Sword knew a classic when she heard it, obviously, and covered that sucker. I cannot find her recording, but here's the original, released in 1967, properly spelled:
This could be the love song that the world needs now, with everyone so angry all the time. What better way to say I Love You But Go Away than "Take My Love and Shuv It Up Your Heart"? None, my friends; there is none. Unlike the peculiar case of a lone hijacker, there is a timeless appeal to this poetic phrase. And I think we're all a little wiser now.
I know private jets are expensive, but at their age I hope Sir Paul and Sir Ringo are not so in need of money that they had to extrude a new Beatles song, using a Lennon demo tape and a failed Harrison guitar track.
McCartney recently had to defend the project against allegations that artificial intelligence was being used to re-create the talents of the deceased Beatles, saying that "nothing has been artificially or synthetically created". The story goes that the reason this song was not released in 1995, along with "Real Love" and "Free as a Bird," is that John's vocal track was messed up, but AI has now solved that problem.
A demo recording is a way for an artist to explore his ideas for a song, and/or to give to his backing musicians to learn a song’s riff or chord progression. On a demo, often he’s not singing with as much effort as he would give a polished recording designed for wide commercial release.
Ed also quotes Ian MacDonald on the 1995 project:
Unimpressed with the quality of these two ‘reunion’ tracks, Harrison declined to have anything to do with Lennon’s third demo, which consequently remains in its original state and was not included on Anthology 3, as originally planned.
But Harrison did try to noodle around with the cut and was unhappy with the results. Nevertheless, whatever he did is going to be on the new record.
As an application of artificial intelligence, making a badly recorded vocal performance “pure” is fairly benign — equivalent in some sense to cleaning dirty tapes, remixing a recording for stereo, or remastering it for new media. But AI does not — and it will not — end there. For both audio and video, AI can be used as a simulation tool, which an operator can use to sample a given voice or physical appearance and then create something entirely novel from the results. If we are not there already, we are getting close to the point at which a director could make a movie with a deceased actor in the lead role and at which a record producer could generate a full album’s worth of material “by” an artist who is now unable to record a note.
You may recall how in 1997 Fred Astaire's moving image was used in a series of Dirt Devil commercials, showing him dancing with the brand's vacuum cleaner. There was outcry against that at the time, and that's nothing compared to what's on the horizon.
For the Beatles project, Sir Paul says there's nothing fake about the AI used on Lennon's voice -- but he could say that honestly even if the AI used a pile of Lennon recordings, stealing a morpheme here and there and combining them to make Lennon sing the Malaysian National Anthem or whatever else you want. It's John's voice, just "remixed." Deepfakes are showing us how it's done, using existing images of famous people and merging them to make videos. A voice may be that much easier to fake with the actual sound of a person's voice, given a large enough dataset.
So, in effect, the upcoming song required unheard-of amounts of electronic fooling, was rejected the first time around by the now-deceased George, was something Lennon made three years before he was killed and apparently didn't think it met his own standards for publication, and will be mixed not as a Beatles song would have been done but as a McCartney (and I guess Starr) song.
I'm not terribly excited.
And look, if we're going to start screwing about with Beatles stuff using artificial intelligence, how about correcting some past problems? For example:
🎵 "Within You Without You" -- Did anyone not stoned ever enjoy this five-minute brick in the middle of Sgt. Pepper? I much preferred Big Daddy's take, doing it as a beatnik bongo number. It was still boring, but it was less than two minutes long.
🎵 "She's Leaving Home" -- Always wanted a more realistic take on the last verse, like:
Sheeeeee... is lying... in a diiiiiiiiiitch...
🎵 "Revolution 9" -- Could be replaced by something more interesting. Like, a blank soundtrack, or an apology.
🎵 "Sun King" -- Maybe we could speed it up a bunch? Might be a passable song played at 45.
🎵 "Boys" -- It has never been clear to me why Ringo sang this song by the Shirelles on the Please Please Me album. Maybe we could dub in the Shirelles singing. Or just dub in their whole song.
You laugh -- ha! ha! -- but it seems that AI is destined to be used to exploit the past -- and to "correct" errors of the past, the way censorship is being used to "correct" undesirable things in old movies and books nowadays. If our barbarous overloads are determined to destroy the past, maybe we could at least make it sound more pleasant first.
Continuing the theme of clarity in writing we began yesterday, I thought I would pass along some advice on business writing in the modern era. There are two key things you should bear in mind at all times whenever you are engaged in business communications. People are taught these in school, but we could always use a refresher.
The first is: Clarity is king. The e-mail, cover letter, formal request, summary report -- none of these is an appropriate place to go into a Song of Myself. You may use some style, a little razzle-dazzle if it highlights the message, but stick to the point and leave personalities out of it. If clarity is king, brevity is his viceroy. Don't give your audience time to get bored.
As an example, I would like to use the clear and brief instructions in the chorus of that seminal hit by Jim Stafford, "Don't Pet the Dog."
Don't pet the dog, don't pet him whatever you do
'Cause he ain't been fixed, he knows some tricks
That'll sure make a fool out of you
Don't pet the dog, he gets it confused with romance
Don't tickle his sides or look deep in his eyes
Or he'll be taking your leg to the dance
Six simple lines that convey clear, crucial information. The first line is a simple declarative statement, repeated and emphasized to impress its importance:
Don't pet the dog, don't pet him whatever you do
The next sentences outline the source of the issue, and hints at the consequences of ignoring same:
'Cause he ain't been fixed, he knows some tricks
That'll sure make a fool out of you
The fourth line explains the problem in a little more detail, explaining the current state of the problem:
Don't pet the dog, he gets it confused with romance
And finally, the last two lines add more detail of the range of the warning and the depth of trouble for those failing to heed it:
Don't tickle his sides or look deep in his eyes
Or he'll be taking your leg to the dance
You can see how effective this short message is. The verses go into greater detail, but you can think of that as the full report; the chorus is like the executive summary.
The second piece of advice is: Be careful.
Another reason to be brief, if not terse, in writing for work is that you probably would like to leave your job on your own terms rather than be defenestrated. Do not give in to the temptation to spice things up with a little levity or gossip. Companies are so terrified about being sued by their oversensitive and high-strung workers that they want us all to spy on one another like the Stasi and report the slightest infraction to human resources. Written communications can and will be presented at your drumming-out.
That e-mail you sent your best work buddy Bob, the one with the blonde joke? Someone looking over Bob's shoulder is going to report you for it, and maybe him as well for laughing at it. There is no freedom of speech. There will be no right to confront your accuser. The only question will be how big a box you will need for your desk tchotchkes, and whether you'll be escorted out by security. It really is like penny-ante East Berlin out there.
It's funny that companies are so terrified of the reputation risk that comes with these kinds of lawsuits, and yet are so often run by idiots who will send the company down in flames to follow DEI and other PC nonsense at the expense of their customers and shareholders. That kind of foolishness seems like a much bigger reputational risk to me. But this is the world in which we live now.
So, in brief: Be brief. Don't make eye contact with the crazy people. For job security, have no personality at work. And if the dog ain't been fixed, don't pet him. Whatever you do.
Contrary to some people's reminiscences, our culture in the 1970s was not all America hating post-Vietnam Watergate-obsessed conspiracy theories.
In fact, almost 50 years ago a musical hit the Broadway boards, based on a Civil War story and starring Southerners. It was called Shenandoah.
The musical was based on a 1965 Jimmy Stewart film, and written by Peter Udell, Philip Rose, and James Lee Barrett (who wrote the movie), with music by Gary Geld. It ran for more than a thousand performances. It told the story of a family of yeoman farmers in the Shanandoah valley, a large non-slave-owning family who wanted nothing to do with the burgeoning war but were caught up in the horror of it anyway. These were the kind of people who in real life caused West Virginia to split from the eastern side and join the Union.
Shenandoah starred John Cullum -- familiar to many people today from his appearances on Law & Order. He had been blowing the doors off the 46th Street Theater as South Carolina's John Rutledge in 1776 a few years earlier -- a role he repeated in the 1972 film version -- and played a scheming playwright in Ira Levin's Deathtrap a few years later. A very versatile actor, who would win the Tony for Shenandoah. (It did not win Best Musical; that was the year of The Wiz. The book got Best Book of a Musical, though.) It was promoted heavily on local TV, something that didn't happen only at Christmastime in those days.
Shenandoah was typical of the Americana that was in the air leading up to the Bicentennial. People who think of seventies culture as nothing but disco and pet rocks and cheesy sitcoms might be surprised how reflective the nation was in that era, and yet celebratory. This musical entered that spirit. The story is tough -- the large family suffers at the hands of Union soldiers and Confederate deserters, a dramatic example of Trotsky's line that “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Moreover, the patriarch, Charlie, is a man whose faith in God has been wrecked before the play begins by the loss of his wife, and his is a spiritual journey as tragedy unfolds. I can't imagine a current musical even taking religion seriously enough to make it the dramatic center of the story. Audiences now would be yelling, like Job's wife, "Curse God and die!"
And it's hard to imagine that a play about sympathetic Southerners, even those opposed to slavery and the War Between the States, would be a hit on Broadway. It would be panned as being a musical about "nice Nazis." Because people are stupid and know nothing and just want to shout.
Shenandoah was revived in 2019, although not on Broadway. I'm not certain it could run on the Great White Way at all, not just because it takes place in the Confederacy. Broadway musicals are ridiculously expensive to produce, far more so than in 1974, and these days there has to be a built-in audience before the thing even opens or investors won't touch it. So a musical has to be constructed like a commodity around well-known pop songs (Jersey Boys, Smokey Joe's Café, MJ, Beautiful, and on and on)(and even then it can be a disaster) or be built around a movie that has a strong following (Elf, Legally Blonde, Back to the Future, all thatDisney crap, and oh so much more). Foreign performance rights are also crucial to recouping investment, and a play based on a time in American history does not sound like a layup for audiences in Europe and Asia. While revivals of past hits are a good bet, Shenandoah never reached the rarified atmosphere of a few megahits like Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, The Wiz, or Gypsy. Investors may take a flyer on something new, if it's woke enough, and take a bath on it, patting themselves on the back all the way to the tax write-off.
As we gear up for our Semiquincentennial in 2026, I see no sign in the current culture of reflection or celebration. They revived 1776 with stunt casting -- an "All-Female, Transgender, and Non-Binary Broadway Revival," although the internal contradictions of that casting requirement will make your head spin. It makes one wonder if the John and Abigail Adams numbers are based on hot girl-on-girl action, because that's where our culture is now. Ahistorical, childish, and stupid.
I doubt we're going to make it to the Tricentennial at this rate.
Tom Lehrer made an astute observation lo these 64 years ago: "the reason that most folk songs are so atrocious is that they are written by the people." This was in the late 1950s, when the scourge of folk music was sickening the might of this great nation. Since then we're had a lot of other things to sicken us.
But if there's one folk group I have a soft spot for, it's Britain's Steeleye Span. Their nation being much older than ours, they have a better excuse to sing folk songs, because Brits were around long before professional songwriters got into the business. Also, Span went electric in 1971 like Bob Dylan did at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, which probably offended the most annoying folk-loving people. And third, they had the angel-voiced Maddy Prior, who would have elevated any group of singers.
Maddy did not sing lead vocals on the song I draw your attention to today, however, which I bring up on account of this being the Kentucky Derby day, the first leg of the Triple Crown. That song is "Skewball," a folk song of long and confusing lineage.
According to Dr. Wikipedia, "Skewball" was the name of a racehorse of the 1700s, and the song is about the animal's greatest challenge. Now of course, being a folk song, every damn thing about the story is completely folked up. "His name has been recorded as 'Squball', 'Sku-ball', or 'Stewball'" says Wiki, and I sure hope it was not Stewball, which sounds like a dish made with the leftover parts of a gelding. So the song is sometimes called "Stewball," which remains unappetizing. A skewbald horse is patchy white on a nonblack coat, so that name makes more sense.
Like so.
Also, the name sounds like screwball, a more recent Americanism but one that sets our hero up as a zany character, and helps put the race in a kind of Seabiscuit vs. War Admiral, David vs. Goliath frame.
You gallant sportsmen all, come listen to my story It's of the bold Skewball, that noble racing pony
In the song, performed with gusto and tension by Steeleye Span (the late Tim Hart on lead vocals), Skewball has been brought to Ireland from England to race, and is the underdog against the great mare Griselda, whose very name is fearsome. Our hero has one advantage -- a delightful owner, a sportsman of a type vanishing today:
Arthur Marvel was the man that brought bold Skewball over He's the diamond of the land and he rolls about in clover
A popular and lucky man, in other words, wealthy and cheerful, the kind to take losing and winning with the same grace, and nowadays you'd know he's the murderer in the first ten minutes of the movie. But back then, they knew even a rich white guy could be a decent sort. Was that the real name of the owner at that time? It hardly seems possible, Arthur being such an important English name and Marvel coming into the English language in the 14th century meaning something that causes astonishment. Seems very appropriate, certainly.
Soon heavy bets are placed and the race is on. Skewball quickly demonstrates another interesting and dare I say zany quality, by chatting with the jockey:
Then halfway 'round the course up spoke the noble rider "I fear we must fall back for she's going like a tiger!"
Up spoke the noble horse, "Ride on my noble master! For we're halfway round the course and now we'll see who's faster."
Well (spoiler alert!), Skewball wins the day, overtaking the mighty Griselda. Then he and the jockey order booze and toast their worthy opponent:
Past the winning post, bold Skewball proved quite handy And horse and rider both ordered sherry, wine, and brandy And then they drank a health unto Miss Griselda And all that lost their money on the sporting plains of Kildare
And that's the story, and it's a neat little song. If more folk songs were like this, there'd be more to love about them. But no, they were always about tools and jails and fights and sung by lily-handed middle-class communists, at least back when Tom Lehrer was turning his gimlet eye toward them.
Just remember, kids, that hard liquor is not good for horses. If you actually have a talking horse, however, then he might be different. Just make sure you haven't been drinking before he starts talking, or the cause of his loquaciousness might be suspect.
When I get up in the morning and I feel a little ancient, I remind myself -- well, no, I'm too busy schlepping to the bathroom and wondering what time it is to remind myself of anything. But if it is a morning where I feel the aches and pains that begin in middle age and end five hours after death, I remind myself that age is only a number. An enormous number, but a number.
Of course, when applied to various things, ancient is a relative term. Here's a little list I drew up to show how the word ancient, when commonly applied, changes depending on the subject:
Actors - Richard Burbage
Actors to Americans - Edwin Booth
Actors to Millennials - Robert Downey Jr.
Religions - Hinduism
Rocks - Bedrock, Hudson Bay, Canada (4.28 billion years old a week from Friday)
Colleges - Oxford
Buildings -
Duh.
Authors - Aristophanes
Novelists - Cervantes
Novelists to Millennials - Stephen King
Stars - Methuselah (age: 16 billion; looks not a day over 15 billion)
Music - “Seikilos Epitaph,” 1st century AD
Pop Music - Britney Spears
Medicine - Belladonna
Topical Medicine - Coal Tar
Medical Treatment - Leeches
Nations - Iceland
Automobiles - Model T
Bloggers - Instapundit
Websites - Amazon
Computer - ENIAC
Modern Computer - iMac
Telephone - Candlestick
Telephone to Millennials - Flip Phone
TV Sitcom - Father Knows Best
TV Sitcom to Millennials - Full House
👴👴👴
So you see, it's all relative. And speaking of relatives, I have some who are older than I am, so as long as they're still kicking I am not going to consider myself ancient.
It's hard for kids today to appreciate the disco menace. It came on suddenly, and when it had done its damage, it went away. But even though I was a kid, I can never forget.
The word disco was alien when I first heard it, and it seemed like a nonsense word. But it came from the French discotheque, which itself came from "disque disk, record + -o- + -thèque (as in bibliothèque library)" according to Merriam-Webster. In other words, disco is short for record library. A discotheque was a place where people would dance to music played on vinyl records rather than music played by a live band. Any little town could have a dance club even if they had no musicians. The word disco dates to 1957, but disco didn't conquer the world for a while after that.
Disco music was defined by a particular beat, as classic rock is, and as the waltz is. Whereas rock used the backbeat (the emphasis on every even beat -- one TWO three FOUR etc.) and the waltz's emphasis is on the second and third beats (one TWO THREE one TWO THREE), the disco bass drum is hit on all four beats of the measure. Thus the four-on-the-floor, thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa. It's harder to play than you'd think, but it had the advantage of letting songs run one after another with the exact same rhythm and speed, so dancers never had to stop unless it was time to re-up the cocaine.
The thing is, during the height of the vogue, any music could be put through the discoizing machine and come out disco. Any. Music.
They dusted off a 1926 hit ("Baby Face"), put it through the discoizer, and it got to number two on the disco charts. They took the theme from the TV show I Love Lucy and discoized that, and "Disco Lucy" got to number 9 on the Easy Listening chart. The music from May 1977's unexpected smash film Star Wars managed to get a whole disco album out of it before the end of the year (Meco's Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk), which is not to be confused with the mashed-up film music set to a disco beat by a studio band called the Force, released as a single before the end of the year. (The B side was the timeless classic "Funky Hat.") Even Ludwig van Beethoven became discofied in 1975, his breathtaking Fifth Symphony shrunken and beat to "A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band. Disney discofied itself, doing a takeoff of the Village People's "Macho Man" ("Macho Duck"), certainly the most famous track on the immortal 1979 album Micky Mouse Disco. If you stood still long enough, you might get discoized, too -- finding yourself with a whitefro and a leisure suit, gold Italian horn chain, shirt open to the waist.
It seems to have seized the nation and the world like a kind of mania, but ebbed within a short period. "The Hustle" was a disco landmark, released in 1975, but by 1980, when Studio 54 closed, the whole thing seemed to be old (if still funky) hat. The Who had declared disco dead in 1978. The infamous Disco Demolition Night in Chicago took place the next year. But it took a while for the rest of the culture to catch up.
Say what you will about disco, at least it finally got out of the center ring. If only all our manias would have the good sense to ebb as quickly. I can name quite a few that I wish would go away already, or at least go on vacation.
Okay, everyone settle down. You'll recall that we talked about this back in July. The new organizational chart is being released today, and I think you'll agree that this prevents a lot of the confusion we've had in years past.
As you can see, we've broken the staff into three major groups -- avians, humans, and inanimate objects. That was our initial task. It was suggested that we instead group music-makers together, but there was too much gray area about which avians sing and which don't. Also, whether dancing and leaping constituted music. So, this was the basic breakdown decided upon.
Now, right off the bat you can tell there's going to be some major changes. The avians are no longer grouped around the golden rings; the partridge and the pear tree have been separated. We think this will help clarify the purpose for each member, and make management more focused on their needs.
Will this change the numbers of each? Yes, to be frank, some will be changed. Most interior groups will not be affected; in fact, the human groups will remain as is. And for the avians, there will be a net gain of four new hires, so I think you ought to be happy with that. Here is the new overall arrangement:
12 Drummers (drumming)
11 Pipers (piping)
10 Lords (a-leaping)
9 Ladies (dancing)
8 Maids (a-milking)
7 Swans (a-swimming)
6 Geese (a-laying)
5 Calling Birds (a-calling)
4 French Hens (a-Frenching)
3 Turtle Doves (a-doving)
2 Partridges (doing whatever they do)
1 Golden Ring (just lying there)
Pear Tree
So, you -- oh, okay, I see some hands and wings up out there. Yes, Partridge? Right... right... No, we appreciate that you've always worked alone, but maybe you ought to consider the advantages of sharing the limelight. Not that we don't love your solo act! But why should everything fall on you all the time? Just think about it for a while. This is to benefit you!
Yes, Maids? Oh, you did? Well, I'm not sure where you got that idea, but if we did increase the maid workforce that would just require an increase in the cow workforce, you see? I know you work very hard, but the contract calls for one cow per maid, even if the cows don't particularly get a mention. These are implied cows, yes.
No, Ladies, I'm sorry, this is not the time or place to take up your grievances with the Lords. Please call my office after the holidays and we'll try to work out a meeting. Meanwhile, Lords, please stop taking things from the Ladies' dressing room. If you need makeup or undergarments to perform your duties, you should be discussing it with your manager.
Okay! So let's... What's that? Gold Rings? Well, I'm sorry, Rings, but as inanimate objects, you really have no standing to complain. The layoffs will be done by seniority. Last in, first out. Yes, yes, that does mean Ollie will be the ring staying on. I didn't want to discuss it this way, but those are your union rules. Remember, though, you're at all-time high value and are a great hedge against inflation -- all the radio ads say so. You'll get snapped up quick.
Uh -- what was that, Hens? Oh, I'm glad you asked. Yes, this will apply in languages throughout our territory. In Canada, that means you'll be the Four French Hens as well as Quatre Poules Françaises. Naturally in France you'll just be Quatre Poules. In China it will be right to left and vertical, while in Israel it's backward. Those aren't big markets for us, though.
Thanks everybody! I think we have everything squared away. Let's go make this the best 12 Days ever!
Oh, and Pear Tree? May I see you in my office for a moment...?
On Thanksgiving I took Izzy for a long walk around the neighborhood early in the morning. I was clearing off some room for calories, and I wanted to make sure he had enough exercise so he'd not be jumpy later. We didn't see a soul -- which can be good; at least no one threatened to sic the cops on us. But I was surprised to see that a lot of people had already started decorating for Christmas. And not just the Italians! (Sorry, people of Italian extraction, but you're always first up with the lights and you know it.)
I mean, sure, the stores have been full of lights.
Uh... not this kind. Think we'd be seeing these in Lowe's if New York hadn't caved to the cannabis lobby? (I call it Soma Lite.)
But why were Christmas lights coming out this early?
It surprises me because it's been pretty chilly lately. If November had been warm, I could understand people getting the outdoor décor up early to avoid doing it in frigid temps, but that's not been the case. I think it may be warmer next week than it has been. So what's the secret?
"We Need a Little Christmas" -- undoubtedly the most famous song from the 1966 Jerry Herman musical Mame, based on the 1958 film and before that the 1954 novel Auntie Mame -- is often heard as a Christmas song, and I guess it has to be. But the point of the song is that it is too early to actually have Christmas Day (complete with gift-giving), because it's just a week past Thanksgiving. And yet we must, because everything is wrong and we're in the dumps. The wealthy Mame Dennis has lost her fortune in the Wall Street Crash of '29 and has to go to work -- something she's not accustomed to, to say the least -- and gets sacked promptly. She goes home to her nephew, who will be taken from her if she can't support him, and her loyal household staff, whom she can't pay, and she herself is staring penury in the face. So they decide that whether it's too early or not, they're going to celebrate Christmas, because what better way to find joy in the depth of darkness? Mame was a YOLO / Live in the Day type before it was popular.
It's a great moment in the show. But behind it is the genuine threat of loss, pennilessness, and separation. (Everything turns out fine -- spoiler alert! -- because a wealthy customer from the store she got fired from shows up and marries her almost immediately after the number. Because it's a Broadway comedy, not Tolstoy.)
Anyway, my point is, maybe the people in my area feel the need to get that garland up. Our taxes and living expenses have skyrocketed; our salaries, not so much. Our part of New York mostly voted to change the political and economic direction in the state, but the places where they have tons of money or live off the government think things are just dandy and they outvoted us. The news talks about idiocy and corruption at all levels of society, about violence and killers running free, about social breakdown, even about war.
So, maybe we need a little Christmas.
Sounds good to me. I plan on getting some decorations up during the week, if I have time. I may even get the tree started today, which I never do before December. Christmas is all about light in the darkness, and I'm sick of darkness.
And . . . yeah. It's hard to argue with it, actually. For such a popular holiday as Thanksgiving we ought to have some popular songs to celebrate it. Instead, what do we have? What comes to mind for you?
"Over the River and Through the Woods" -- I think this old wheezer got its second legs by being sung at the end of A Charlie Brown Thanksgivingby the gang riding -- in what now would be ILLEGALLY! -- in the back of the Browns' station wagon. And what is that song all about? Going to Grandma's house for a celebration in a snowy season. Sounds more like Christmas than Thanksgiving to me, unless you live in Buffalo, God help you. But indeed the poem was published under the title "The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day" in 1844, according to Dr. Wikipedia. No one knows who set it to music.
So that's one, but I guess it doesn't count as a "banger." Neither do a lot of our popular Christmas songs, though, and I'm not sure I'd like to see a lot of them done in a modern style, let alone as Thanksgiving songs. "All I Want Stuffed for Thanksgiving Is You" may seem to have a kind of charm, but -- nah.
It's easy to say that Thanksgiving's theme of gratitude is too solemn for ribaldry, but come on. It certainly can't top the night of the birth of Christ for solemnity, and we've been celebrating that in every degree from contemplation to drunken spree for two thousand years. So let's try digging a little harder in the hit holiday mine shall we?
I have to say, it doesn't get much easier. Even Mark Steyn, the radio deejay turned political commenter, wrestled with it in his book A Song for the Season. For Thanksgiving, he chose the utterly unexpected song "Jingle Bells" -- unexpected, that is, unless you'd read his essay about it when it originally appeared on his blog.
Just in time for Thanksgiving, here comes, er, "Jingle Bells" - which was written not for the Yuletide season but, allegedly, for Thanksgiving. In Boston, in the fall of 1857, the city's leading music publisher, Oliver Ditson, introduced the world to a new song called "The One-Horse Open Sleigh".
Steyn notes that racing about fast as possible in unprotected sleighs pulled by speedy nags -- and maybe with speedy nags, IFYKWIM(AITYD) -- was quite the pre-Civil War craze. New England certainly can get cold enough by Thanksgiving to let loose the horses. (It's 36 degrees in New York City as I write this, and you can usually subtract a few degrees and add a couple of inches of ice and snow to estimate the weather in Boston.) Steyn writes:
...what I find oddest are the claims of Christmas Songs Made In America and many similar books that the song was written for "his father's Sunday School class on Thanksgiving 1857". I'm willing to believe that at Thanksgiving a young man's fancy turns to snow, at least in those distant days before Al Gore's global warming project sent the mercury rising. But no Massachusetts Sunday School is going to teach its charges a song whose lyrical preoccupations are racing, gambling and courting:
A day or two ago I thought I'd take a ride And soon Miss Fannie Bright Was seated by my side... Now the ground is white Go it while you're young Take the girls tonight...
Hmm. He's got a point.
But it's no good; all songs about snow activities are eventually sucked into the Christmas oeuvre, and "Jingle Bells" got there a long time ago.
What are the other choices, then? "Turkey Lurkey Time" from the 1969 Broadway show Promises, Promises sounds promising, but it's A) all about Christmas and B) got a title that makes me want to Hurly Wurly. Adam Sandler did a comedy song on Thanksgiving almost 30 years ago, but we're not looking for parodies here, and if we were, we'd look for better ones. (It's no "Chanukah Song," is what I'm saying.) I applaud Ben Rector for giving it 100% on a country song:
It's fine -- it's got the usual country song lists -- goin' home, my town, families, football, love -- and maybe it's made it to the PA in your local supermarket, but it hasn't cut any ice here in the northeast as far as I can tell. It has some real heart, so thumbs-up on that, Ben.
A couple of years ago I noted that Irving Berlin took a crack at Thanksgiving for the film Holiday Inn, in which all the songs are pegged to different holidays with mixed results. The number "I've Got Plenty to Be Thankful For," is one of the better ones, but it's never become a standard -- maybe because Christmas does shove aside all Thanksgiving numbers, or maybe because it's a love song, and in the movie Bing does a rueful duet with his own recording, having a lonely Thanksgiving after his girlfriend has been stolen by Fred Astaire. As far as I can tell the song has never had a successful cover version.
Surely the old-timers 100+ years ago in Tin Pan Alley coughed up a Thanksgiving song or two, right? Well, probably -- God knows they churned out songs on all kinds of topics, all day, every day, hoping one or two would stick in the public consciousness. I note there was a number called "A Thanksgiving Song" in a book of Tin Pan Alley tunes, but I can't track down whose it was and who may have recorded it.
I admit I'm no musicologist, though.
A search through the AllMusic site brings us many songs with Thanksgiving in the title, and I hope you'll enlighten me if any others have really made it to the big time.
However, I do have a suggestion for an older number that really does suit the day. It's from a Broadway show, almost as old as Promises, Promises, but like that show also had a breakout hit (in the case of the former, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again"; in the latter, "Day By Day"). I'm referring to Godspell's "All Good Gifts," which hits every note in the purpose of the holiday of Thanksgiving. Yes, it's hippie music, but it's grateful hippie music.
And there it is -- we thank you, Lord, for all good gifts. Sounds like Thanksgiving to me.
Got my hands on one of these old beauties while collecting money for a cause last week. You certainly don't see a lot of $2 bills in circulation anymore.
The United States originally issued two-dollar bills along with the other paper currency after the Legal Tender Act in 1862, and continued to do so until 1966. They always featured Thomas Jefferson, so were sometimes called Toms. The bill never seemed to be as popular as ones, fives, and tens, though, and were thus not printed in as high quantities. In the time the $2 was first printed, it went from being a good deal of money (two days' pay for an unskilled laborer) to a lot less (two hours' pay for unskilled farm work), but neither time nor inflation raised the profile of ol' Tom.
In 1976 the bill was revived, but the ten-year hiatus had not made it more popular, and it went out of print in 1981. Now they're as seldom seen as the Ike or Susan B. Anthony dollar coins. The Sacagawea coin went out of mint in 2008, so you still see some of them around, but not a lot. I seldom see the newer presidential dollar coins and none of the new "innovation" series, so I think the casinos are hoarding them.
We just don't like dollar coins in America. I think all coins have an association with cheapness here. The Canadians loved their dollar coin so much they gave it a cute nickname (the Loonie, from the loon on the back). The same goes for their two-dollar coin, which also has a nickname (the Toonie). So even the money in Canada is looney toons. (rim shot)
But coins always got looked down on in the US. I'm not sure when the expression "folding money" (rather than the jingling kind) came into the lingo, as cash worthy of interest, but the oldest reference I know of came from a wartime Fats Waller song, "Cash for Your Trash." The listener is enticed to bring her household trash (old pots and pans and such) to the scrap drive for war use, and receive some money for it, and then canoodle with ol' Fats:
In between we'll do some lovin'
Wide handsome turtle dovin'
Will you listen to me honey
Get plenty of the foldin' money
Yeah, don't settle for that nickel-and-dime stuff; get some actual bills!
As for the two-dollar bill itself, I'd often heard that it was unlucky, but didn't know why. According to Mary Piles, CNB St. Louis Bank Historian (who knew that job existed?), the bad luck tag came from the two being called a deuce, which is also a nickname for the devil. But that's not all! She adds:
One of the reasons the $2 bill was never widely circulated is thought to be due to its negative reputation.
An urban legend claims that at one time, election rigging was common and the reward for a favorable vote was $2. There was a belief that politicians would purchase votes for $2 therefore, having a $2 bill could be seen as evidence that you had sold your vote. While most likely an urban legend, the myth still gave the bill a sinister reputation.
In the early 1920s, Prostitution was $2.00 a trick, leading some to refer to the bill as a “whore note.”
The gambling tracks have a $2.00 window, and if you won, many times you were paid in $2.00 bills. If you were caught with $2’s in your wallet it could lead people to assume you were a gambler.
The $2 bill was often thought to be bad luck, as “deuce” was a name for the devil. Recipients would tear off one corner, believing it would negate the bad luck of the bill. This caused many of the bills to be taken out of circulation as mutilated currency.
I worked as a teller for a while when I was in school, and I used to buy up $2 bills from other tellers when we cashed out on Friday. That way when I went out drinking with my buddies I would have weird money to draw attention to myself. And I can tell you for a fact that, whether the $2 was lucky or unlucky, I never was. And no, that was not so long ago that (even were I so inclined) I could hire a lady of the evening (ahem) for two bucks.
There is just one song I know of that mentions a two-dollar bill, by the way (I'd be interested if you know of others). That's Hank Williams's "Hey, Good Lookin'" from 1951. I suspect Hank liked the way it sounded, like money but not a lot of money -- the federal minimum wage in 1951 was 75 cents:
I got a hot rod Ford and a two-dollar bill
And I know a spot right over the hill
There's soda pop and the dancin's free
So if you wanna have fun, come along with me
Less than two years later, Hank was dead, dying on New Year's Day 1953. Was it the mention of the unlucky two that did him in? One has to wonder.
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