The 500 - #87 - The Wall - Pink Floyd

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album #: 87

Album Title: The Wall

Artist: Pink Floyd

Genre:  Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Rock

Recorded: Six Studios - London, Nice, New York, Los Angeles, Correns, Hollywood

Released: November, 1979

My age at release: 14

How familiar was I with it before this week: Very Well

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #129 - dropping 42 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Comfortably Numb

It was a cold Thursday evening in late November, 1979. I was a student at Kingsville District High School in Southern Ontario and a big part of my teen-age life revolved around music. I played saxophone in the school band, and our conductor was Mr. Buchanan, the school's music teacher. Conveniently, he also happened to live just four houses down from my family on a country lane lined with orchard and pepper fields along the northern shore of Lake Erie.

My first high school - recently demolished.

Mr. Buchanan had agreed to give me rides to band practice on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Looking back, that arrangement feels almost impossible to imagine today. A teacher travelling with a student alone in his car would likely trigger a lengthy chain of policies, permissions, and concerns. In 1979, however, nobody thought twice about it. We lived less than 200 metres apart and were heading to the same place. It was a practical arrangement, it was convenient, and it was simply how things worked. The 1970s feel like the Wild West compared to the carefully supervised world we live in now.

My family home and Mr. Buchanan's. Gone are the orchards.

Most Thursdays, I was grateful for the ride. On this particular evening, though, I found myself hoping Mr. Buchanan would be late…maybe, if I was lucky, he would be sick and cancel band practice altogether.

For several days, the radio station WRIF 101 out of Detroit had been building anticipation for the release of a massive new album. In those pre-internet days, radio stations were masters of suspense. There were no music websites, no social media leaks, no YouTube preview videos, and certainly no AI assistants ready to tell you everything you wanted to know. If a major album was about to drop, radio stations became the gatekeepers of information, and they knew exactly how to keep listeners hooked.

Every few hours, WRIF would drop another clue…A huge band…their first album in years…a double album…containing more than 80 minutes of new music…an epic work unlike anything you have heard!

WRIF DJ Arthur Penhallow (1970s and 80s)

The station promised that on Thursday night they would play the entire first side of the album. For a music-obsessed teenager, this was a Super Bowl-level event. I was glued to the radio, relishing every detail the DJ delivered leading up to the big reveal.

Truth be told, the identity of the mystery band wasn't really a secret. Around Kingsville District High School’s cigarette senate, older, cooler rockers who convened in the smoking pit and on the school bus had already confidently predicted what was coming: A new record from Pink Floyd. The band’s new single, Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), was already in heavy rotation on the rock stations. The rebellious chorus of "We don't need no education" was blasting from car stereos, portable radios and the voices of students all over Essex County. The song had worked its way so deeply into teen-age culture that I had scribbled those words across the front of my “Trapper Keeper” binder while a math teacher was trying, unsuccessfully, to provide exactly the education the song was protesting. (After more than 30 years of trying to engage students in lessons, I owe Mr. Lee an apology…it really was my fault I struggled in his math class).

Trapper Keeper Binder - a high school staple in the late 70s/early 80s

As 6.30 approached, I stood by the front window, stealing glances out to the road while the radio continued humming in the background. The DJ's voice rose with excitement as airtime for Side One drew closer. The anticipation was riveting and every commercial felt like a red light on an abandoned road.

I knew this would be the talk of the school on Friday morning and that every teenager from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Leamington, Ontario, was tuned in…Then I saw headlights. Reliable Mr. Buchanan was stupidly on time.

I grabbed my saxophone case, pulled on my coat, and headed out into the cold November night. The DJ’s voice disappeared as I slammed the front door and aimed for the passenger seat. On most nights, I was delighted to go and make music. That night, however, it felt like I was driving away from history. It was the first night the public would hear Pink Floyd's eleventh studio record, The Wall.

Pink Floyd (Wall Era) (l-r) Richard Wright, David Gilmore, Nick 
Mason and Roger Waters.

I would hear The Wall in its entirety within a few days. A couple of my friends (or their older brothers) bought copies as soon as the record hit the stores, and I spent more than one weekend afternoon sitting cross-legged on someone’s bedroom floor as the album slowly turned on a stereo system that also occupied a place near the top of my teen-age wish list.

Gatefold interior of The Wall album.

We would study Gerald Scarfe's unsettling artwork on the inner gatefold, pore over the lyric sheets tucked inside the sleeves, and try to make sense of a story that felt far more complicated and mysterious than the disco hits and straightforward rock and roll bangers that dominated the charts that autumn. The Wall wasn't the sort of album you simply played. It was a conceptual journey ripe for exploring.

The record eventually found its way into my own collection, although not until a year later when the family moved to London, Ontario, and I finally had my first turntable…an inexpensive Candle 590X which I purchased from the now-defunct Consumers Distributing Catalogue store in the autumn of 1980.

Candle 590X Turntable - inexpensive and sounded it.

Forty dollars of babysitting money vanished in a single transaction, but for the first time I had a turntable of my own. To a teenager who measured wealth in albums rather than dollars, it felt like a sound financial decision. In fact, I was chuffed at how far I had advanced in my musical acquisitions.

Consumers Distributing Catalogue Store - A Canadian fixture 
frm 1957 - 1996

Pink Floyd’s The Wall appeared under the Christmas tree that year (1980) courtesy of my mom. At the time, she was working part-time at an Eaton’s department store demonstrating the latest miracle of modern technology: microwave ovens.

Hotpoint Microwaves - along with Toshiba, 
these were the models my mother was promoting.

In the weeks leading up to Santa’s arrival, she asked "the young men" in the record department to help with my gift selection. Rather than trying to guess what a teen-age music fanatic might want, she trusted the experts behind the counter. (Pro move mom)

To their credit, they assembled a remarkably strong starter kit for a 15-year-old with expanding musical tastes:

• Eagles Live

• Zenyatta Mondatta by The Police

• Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy by The Who

• The Wall by Pink Floyd

Looking back, I have to admire their work. They spanned American country rock, new wave, British rock royalty, and one of the most ambitious concept albums ever recorded. Forty-five years later, I'd still call that a pretty good haul for one Christmas morning. Every artist “mom selected” became featured multiple times on 2012’s The 500 list. (Thank you, unknown Eaton’s Department Store Dudes!!)

One of the Eaton;s stores in London featured in a 1960s postcard. 

By 1983, I had begun treating "We don't need no education" less as a song lyric and more as a rough draft for my academic future. A year earlier, the movie version of The Wall was released in theatres and it had an even greater impact on my education than the album itself. I was in Grade 13, (later called O.A.C. for Ontario Academic Credits) -- a uniquely Ontario fifth year of high school that existed until 2003. For many students, Grade 13 provided an extra year to prepare for university. For me, it briefly became an opportunity to perfect the art of napping, movie watching and Pop Tart & Tea consumption.

Vintage 1980s Pop Tart package.

A high school friend once described his Grade 11 as "the best two years of my life." At the time I laughed at the joke. Then I proceeded to spend roughly two and a half years in Grade 13, accumulating enough credits to graduate and, much to my parents’ relief, qualify for university.
My extended learning curve was my own fault. However, I did have friends who were willing accomplices…in particular, my chum Steve Mackison.

Steve was my roommate, a decade later, in 1993, pictured here
with my future wife, Angela.

Steve was the first person I knew who owned a VCR. That may not sound especially impressive today, but in the early 1980s owning a video cassette player instantly transformed your home into a destination. Through an uncle whose sources remained somewhat mysterious, Steve also had access to an impressive and ever-changing collection of movies. Titles like Body Heat, Death Wish II, and Scarface circulated through his living room long before many of us were old enough to watch them legitimately.

Movie poster for Body Heat.

More importantly for this story, he also acquired a copy of Pink Floyd: The Wall movie Released on video that year and starring Bob Geldof as the troubled rock star Pink, the film transformed Roger Waters' sprawling concept album into a surreal visual experience filled with Gerald Scarfe's nightmarish animation, powerful symbolism, and imagery that could be interpreted, debated, and over-analyzed for hours…and we sure did, as Steve's house soon became the campus for an unofficial educational institution we dubbed Mackison 101.

Bob Geldof as Pink in the film version of The Wall.

The schedule was flexible, but I do remember the autumn of 1984 when I attended first-period English because the teacher, Ms. Howse, was an extraordinary educator who redirected my rebellious and often unfocused teen-age self with patience, enthusiasm and a genuine passion for literature. However, after English, I would wander over to Steve's place during a second period spare. His parents, the kind and loving Babs and Wally, left for work early and returned late. The house was quiet, unsupervised, and home to one of the most comfortable pieces of furniture in my universe: a gigantic white sectional couch that could induce unconsciousness within minutes.

White, sectional sofa, similar in style to the Mackison's.

Many mornings I would arrive intending to stay for an hour. Instead, I would wake up sometime near lunch, enjoy tea, eat a couple of Pop-Tarts, and settle in for whatever movie Steve was screening that day. Class schedules gradually lost their grip under such conditions.

The Wall became a particular favourite and to say I watched the film, at least in part, a hundred times is probably an understatement. I knew it the way I knew Monty Python sketches as a pre-teen and the Ontario Grade 7 math curriculum now.

The Wall, movie poster.

Looking back, repeated viewings probably taught me quite a bit. I absorbed lessons about symbolism, metaphor, visual storytelling, alienation, grief, and the dangers of building psychological walls between ourselves and other people. I even learned about the perils of fascism and the defense of the Anzio Beachhead, which was part of the Allied Forces Italian Campaign in World War II. It was during this battle that principal songwriter for The Wall, Roger Waters, had lost his father…an event he wrote for the only song in the movie that is not on the original album, When The Tigers Broke Free.

Single for When The Tigers Broke Free - Pink Floyd.

However, what I did not absorb, unfortunately, were the lessons being taught in the classes I was missing. University entrance applications, regrettably, weren’t asking prospective students to interpret the symbolism of "marching hammers" or the satirical sentiment intended in showing robotic British school children falling like lemmings into meat grinders in the film. That’s too bad…I would have earned a scholarship.

Screen capture from an animated sequence in The Wall film.

Eventually, I made one of the smarter decisions of my teen years and transferred to another London high school, H.B Beal. The move wasn't motivated by academics alone, but it put some distance between me and the daily temptations of friends, including sessions of Mackison 101. By the time I began making friends at Beal, I had already developed better habits and found myself focused on something that had seemed optional for a while: passing courses.

H.B. Beal Secondary School in London, Ontario.

The result was a string of strong marks and successful completion of the remaining credits I needed for university admission. In the end, I escaped Grade 13 with both an education and a diploma. Whether The Wall helped or hindered that process probably depends on how I frame it. I still believe I am a better thinker and writer because of that record.

In retrospect, this Ontario teen “did need an education”. Thankfully, I found teachers willing to provide one (Tip of the hat to Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Lee, Ms. Howse and many others). I also owe a debt of thanks to Roger Waters, Pink Floyd and Mackison 101. Those experiences made me who I am today and I love the memories I created at a time in my life when I needed the friends I had and the music we listened to, including The Wall.

Things worked out fine for Steve too. He also graduated from Mackison 101, got into University and is currently The Venerable Steven Mackison, incumbent of the Church of the Redeemer in Toronto.

The 500 - #88 - At Folsom Prison - Johnny Cash

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album #: 88

Album Title: At Folsom Prison

Artist: Johnny Cash

Genre:  Country, Rock

Recorded: Folsom State Prison, Folsom, California

Released: May, 1968

My age at release: 2

How familiar was I with it before this week: Somewhat

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #164 - dropping 66 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Cocaine Blues

I thought I knew this record. I certainly knew a lot of the songs. Folsom Prison Blues has been part of the Johnny Cash mythology for as long as I can remember, and Cocaine Blues wasn't unfamiliar territory either. The late Reverend Freddie and the Distillers, whom I wrote about in my Hank Williams post, used to perform both songs regularly. So when At Folsom Prison came up on my journey through The 500 Greatest Albums list, I figured this would be one of those records where I would be thinking all week about an angle to write about. Then, I fell into a research rabbit hole.

The more I read about At Folsom Prison, the more I realized how little I actually knew about it, even getting the title wrong for years. To me, it was "Live at Folsom Prison", which seems perfectly reasonable since it is, after all, a live album recorded at Folsom Prison. Except it isn't called that. The title is simply At Folsom Prison. No “Live.”

Folsom Prison, Folsom. California.

My mistake is an example of the tiny musical corrections this project keeps handing me – such as learning I've spent decades adding “The” to Eagles, Ramones and Pixies. None of those bands includes the definite article in their moniker.

I also had this image in my head of Johnny Cash essentially arriving at Folsom with his band and playing a concert for the inmates one evening. In reality, it was much more of a travelling country show. Carl Perkins, the man who wrote and first recorded Blue Suede Shoes, was there, as were The Statler Brothers; Cash's band; The Tennessee Three; and June Carter. In fact, those artists performed two concerts at Folsom on January 13, 1968, one in the morning and another a few hours later. Most of the performances from the first show appeared on the original album. Not bad for a morning shift.

Cash performing at Folsom Prison.

I knew June Carter was there because you can hear her voice on Jackson, her duet with Cash. However, I hadn't really thought about where the pair were in their lives at that particular time. We tend to look back at their story, knowing how it ends. They became “Johnny and June”-- one of those couples whose names seem naturally attached to one another. By the time I knew who Johnny was, June seemed inseparable from the image of the man himself. Indeed, they married -- but that wasn't the situation when they walked into Folsom that January morning 58 years ago.

Johnny and June.

Johnny had married his first wife, Vivian Liberto, 14 years earlier in 1954, and they had four daughters together. As Johnny's career took off, however, life on the road, his escalating drug use and his growing relationship with June helped tear the marriage apart. Walk the Line, the 2005 biopic with Joaquin Phoenix as Cash, Reese Witherspoon as June and Ginnifer Goodwin as Vivian, makes that troubled triangle one of the central stories of the film. By the Folsom period, Johnny and Vivian's marriage was over in everything but the legal formalities, while his relationship with June had become the central focus in his life.

Movie poster for Walk The Line.

In fact, James Mangold’s film Walk the Line begins with the Folson Prison concert. We see Cash backstage at Folsom before the movie moves backwards through his childhood, his first marriage, his early recording career, his drug problems, and his complicated relationship with June.

Joaquin Phoenix as Cash in Walk The Line's Folsom Prison.

Eventually the story swings back to Folsom, and we see Phoenix's Cash performing for the prisoners. The film, therefore, treats the concert almost as the destination. But it didn’t mean Cash’s turbulent life had come to an end. Just that events continued to unfold – but without Vivian.

Cash with his first wife, Vivian Liberto.

The movie covers Cash’s famous proposal to Carter on a concert stage in London, Ontario – interestingly only a few kilometers from where I wrote this post.

Mural depicting Cash's proposal on the exterior of
Canada Life Place in London, Ontario. 

Another fascinating aspect of the Folsom shin dig was the emergence of Glen Sherley, a musician who became part of the Cash legend.

He didn't come through the Folsom gates with Cash, Carter or Perkins. He was already on the other side a resident serving time for armed robbery. By 1968 he had spent considerable portions of his life as an inmate in the California prison system where he honed his skill as a songwriter.

One of Sherley's compositions was called Greystone Chapel, a song inspired by the chapel inside Folsom itself. He managed to have the song recorded, and a cassette tape found its way to Reverend Floyd Gressett, a minister who worked with prisoners and also happened to know Cash.

Greystone Chapel inside Folsom Prison.

On January 12, 1968, the night before the concerts, Cash listened to it, loved what he heard and decided he wanted to perform the song the following morning. He stayed up late that night learning it.

The best part of the story is that Glen Sherley apparently knew none of this as he took his place among the inmates to watch Cash perform, completely unaware that during the previous night one of the biggest stars in country music had been sitting in a motel room learning his song.

Sherley in attendance at Folsom Prison show.

Sherley watched as Cash tore through songs about prisons, trains, murder, loneliness and bad decisions, many of them describing lives that the men sitting in front of him understood well.

Near the end of the concert, Cash introduced another song and explained that it had been written by someone right there inside Folsom Prison. Then he said the man's name: Glen Sherley.

Cash shaking hands with Sherley.

Cash's bass player, Marshall Grant, later recalled Sherley essentially melting into his seat as the prisoners around him erupted. Suddenly, the guy sitting among them wasn't simply another inmate. Johnny Cash was standing onstage about to sing something he had written.

Because Columbia was recording the concert, Sherley's moment didn't stay inside Folsom. Greystone Chapel became the closing song on At Folsom Prison, meaning that this unknown prisoner's composition travelled beyond those gates even while its writer couldn't.

You'd think that would be the wonderful little piece of trivia at the end of Glen Sherley's story, but it wasn't. Sherley kept writing behind bars, and in 1971 another of his songs, Portrait of My Woman, was recorded by country star Eddy Arnold. Arnold didn't bury it on an album either. The song became a single and the title track of his Portrait of My Woman album. Sherley also got the extraordinary opportunity to record an album of his own while incarcerated at Vacaville, Prison. The Folsom prisoner whose song Cash had unexpectedly performed was slowly becoming a legitimate country songwriter without having built anything resembling a normal life outside prison.

There seemed to be a remarkable redemption story forming, and Cash tried to help make it happen. When Sherley was paroled in 1971, Cash didn't simply congratulate him and move on. Sherley became associated with Cash's House of Cash publishing operation and eventually joined Cash's touring organization.

For a while, the story must have seemed almost too perfect: an imprisoned songwriter has one of his songs unknowingly passed onto Johnny Cash; he hears Cash perform it inside a prison; has another song recorded by Eddy Arnold; gets released and finds himself welcomed into the professional country-music world.

Unfortunately, real life refused to provide a Hollywood ending. Sherley struggled badly outside prison. Years of incarceration hadn't prepared him for the schedules, expectations and pressures of life on the road. His behaviour became increasingly unpredictable, his relationship with members of Cash's organization deteriorated, and eventually that extraordinary second chance fell apart. His music career faded, his personal life deteriorated and, in 1978, Glen Sherley died by suicide at the age of 42.

Sherley's story changes At Folsom Prison for me. The mythology of the record naturally revolves around Johnny Cash walking into that prison dressed in black, facing a room filled with inmates and delivering that famous introduction, “Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.” That's the image that survived, and Walk the Line helped introduce it to another generation. But what I hadn't appreciated before digging into this album was how many other stories were unfolding in that room.

The 500 - #89 - Dusty In Memphis - Dusty Springfield

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album #: 89

Album Title: Dusty In Memphis

Artist: Dusty Springfield

Genre:  Pop, R&B,  Blue Eyed Soul

Recorded: American Sound, Memphis, Tennessee

Released: March, 1969

My age at release: 3

How familiar was I with it before this week: One Song

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #83 - rising 6 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Son of a Preacher Man

Like some people of from my generation (perhaps many), my introduction to Dusty Springfield came in 1994 when I saw Quentin Tarantino’s modern masterpiece, Pulp Fiction. Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man plays as a very stoned Vincent Vega, John Travolta’s effortlessly cool hitman. Vega is assigned by his boss, Marsellus Wallace, to take Mrs. Wallace, out for dinner while he is away. But this is Pulp Fiction, and Vega, and the audience, know there is nothing simple about spending an evening alone with the boss’s wife, Mia.

A heroin-buzzed Vega (Travolta) arrives at the home of his
boss, Marsellus Wallace, in Pulp Fiction.

The movie is classic Tarantino who has always expertly woven perfectly matching songs into his films. From Dick Dale’s frantic surf guitar Misirlou blasting over the opening credits of Pulp Fiction to David Bowie’s haunting Cat People that accompanies one of the many suspenseful sequences in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino doesn’t only use songs as background music. He uses them almost like characters, forever attaching them to the scenes in which we hear them. I will certainly never hear Stealers Wheel’s Stuck in the Middle with You the same way after seeing Reservoir Dogs in 1992. What had been an impossibly catchy piece of early ’70s pop suddenly became the soundtrack to one of the most disturbing scenes in cinema.

Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) menaces a bound police
officer (Freddie Newandyke) in Reservoir Dogs.

Tarantino is famously obsessive about music, but Martin Scorsese has been doing something similar for even longer -- loading movies with songs that forever become identified with particular scenes. I started thinking about all the music I had discovered, or rediscovered, through the two movie giants and remembered a hypothetical question I once saw posted on social media.

Imagine you’ve been given the chance to inherit one of two record collections. There’s just one catch: you have to choose. Do you take Quentin Tarantino’s collection or Martin Scorsese’s?

Tarantino’s collection would be the more unpredictable of the two. I imagine crates filled with ’60s and ’70s soul and R&B, surf rock, garage rock, funk, psychedelia, country, rockabilly and forgotten pop singles, alongside shelves of old movie soundtracks and strange curiosities picked up in record stores over the years. There would be plenty of recognizable names, but the real fun would be digging through the records with unfamiliar titles. Tarantino is clearly drawn to songs that have slipped out of the cultural conversation, only to give them a remarkable second life by dropping them into exactly the right scene. His collection wouldn’t simply be a history of popular music. It would be a history of the weird corners and forgotten side roads of music history.

Scorsese’s collection, on the other hand, would be enormous and deeply rooted in the history of American music. I also imagine it meticulously sorted and on display on well-built shelving units in a large, dust-free room. There would be shelves of blues, early rock and roll, doo-wop, R&B, soul, jazz, folk and country, followed by seemingly endless stretches of the rock music that has populated his films.

Certainly, he would have most of the records on The 500 list, including those by The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Cream and Frank Sinatra. He would even have some Kanye, having used the song Black Skinhead in The Wolf Of Wall Street. But I suspect his collection would extend well beyond rock and roll into classical music, opera, traditional Italian music and old standards. Where Tarantino’s shelves might reward you with some forgotten 45 you never knew existed, digging through Scorsese’s would feel like opening a musical history book, one in which blues leads to rock and roll, rock leads to Dylan and The Stones.

A quick check with artificial intelligence gives Scorsese a convincing lead. Across his 26-film directorial catalogue, he has used music by 32 artists who have at least one album on The 500. Several, including Dylan, The Stones, Beatles and Cream, appear on the list multiple times. Tarantino’s movies feature only 17 such artists, although that comparison demands an asterisk. Scorsese has simply made more movies and filled them with far more music. Put together a playlist of songs from Scorsese films and you would sail past 300 tracks; do the same for Tarantino and you would land somewhere around 127. This isn't counting Scorsese's documentaries or The Last Temptation of Christ, which includes an additional 21 tracks by 500 alumni Peter Gabriel.

My friend Jeff was visiting us at the cottage this weekend and, during a post-dinner walk, he and I arrived at the same conclusion. We would much prefer Tarantino's collection. As Jeff put it:

"Quentin's collection would be so eclectic and filled with obscure records I have never heard of. Sure, Scorsese's would have all the classics, and because he knows the artists he would have some cool rarities and live albums. But, other than those, I have most classic records in my collection already. I would love to dig through Tarantino's crates."

Among them would certainly be Dusty in Memphis. It is exactly the kind of record Jeff and I were talking about, one I probably would never have thought to seek out had Tarantino not introduced me to Dusty Springfield through Pulp Fiction more than 30 years ago. Son of a Preacher Man is a gem, but Dusty in Memphis delivered far more than that signature song.

Dusty in Memphis was the result of Ms. Springfield crossing the Atlantic in search of the music she loved. Already one of Britain’s most successful singers, Springfield travelled to Memphis in September, 1968, to work with legendary Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler and the musicians at American Sound Studio. Memphis was one of the beating hearts of American soul, and Springfield wanted to step inside that world rather than simply imitate it from England. What emerged was a remarkable collision of British pop sophistication and Southern soul.

International cover for Dusty In Memphis.

The record was not a big hit when it was released but over time, its popularity grew. This was especially true in the early ‘90s when Tarantino put Son of a Preacher Man on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. It was a delightful listen while preparing for this blog. How much more frequently I would have played it had I actually inherited Tarantino's record collection? Probably not much more often. After all, QT would have gifted me so much to explore, I would likely be overwhelmed (and delighted) for months.

How about you?

Whose collection would you want, and why?

The 500 - #90 - Talking Book - Stevie Wonder

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #90

Album Title: Talking Book

Artist: Stevie Wonder

Genre: Progressive Soul, Funk, Soul, Jazz

Recorded: 4 Studios - New York, Hollywood, Los Angeles, London

Released: October, 1972

My age at release: 7

How familiar was I with it before this week: Fairly

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #112 - dropping 21 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Superstition

There are times when sticking to your principles can be a real pain. Case in point, Stevie Wonder recently announced that he and his band are going on tour, and not just any Stevie Wonder tour. He is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life, with dates in New York, Chicago, and Detroit, a city a mere 200 km from my home. As of now, though, there is no Toronto date. No Montreal date. In fact, no Canadian date at all.

Detroit is tantalizingly close and, under normal circumstances, my friend Terry and I would be checking the calendar and figuring out dinner options in Motown. But these are not normal circumstances.

I've decided that until relations between Canada and the United States improve I'm going to avoid travelling to the U.S. and spending my money there. I don't pretend that missing a Stevie Wonder concert will register as the faintest blip on the American economy. My principled boycott won’t make anybody in Washington lose sleep. It's simply something I feel I need to do.

Let me be really clear: This isn't about Americans generally but their current federal government. Over the decades, I have met many wonderful Americans, some of whom I’m honoured to call friends. Additionally, I love visiting the United States where my godmother has lived for many years. I've crossed the border hundreds of times, attending concerts and sporting events, or just sightseeing and shopping. The accumulated memories of these visits have found their way into more than a few of these blog posts. Heck, my wife and I got married in New York City in 2006 and more than 40 members of our family and friends joined us, some extending their visit for a whole week.

Me and my lovely bride - August 18, 2006 in Battery Park, NYC.

My frustration is with the current American administration and, in particular, the way it has insulted and inflicted economic damage on my country, let alone the harm it has wreaked upon its own population.

Donald Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state and mockingly referred to our former prime minister, Justin Trudeau, as a "governor." He has also transferred the slight to our current prime minister, Mark Carney.

More recently, he signed an executive order instructing the American government to refer to Lake Ontario as "Lake America." That one strikes particularly close to home. Ontario isn't merely the name of the province where I live. The name has Indigenous roots and was being used centuries before either Canada or the United States existed.

Lake Ontario Map from 1774, two years before U.S independence.

Then there's the ongoing argument over trade. Trump decided not to renew the USMCA in its current form and has criticized what it sees as shortcomings in the treaty.. How ironic considering the USMCA was negotiated during Trump's first administration and he hailed it as "the best agreement we've ever made."

Trump, flanked by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto
and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, signing
the USMCA agreement in 2018.

Our current prime minister, Mark Carney, recently summed up the problem rather neatly when he said: "We've recognized from the start that America has changed. We recognized that sometimes its signature was written in pencil." When a deal negotiated and celebrated by the same president can suddenly become a deal his administration no longer wants to stand behind, Carney's pencil metaphor seems particularly apt.

So, for now, I'm staying on my side of Lake Ontario and remain hopeful about two things. The first is that relations between our countries thaw, that the anger and insults stop, and that good neighbourly relations are restored to the way they have been for centuries.

At the moment, I'm not terribly optimistic. Yet I wonder whether Stevie’s touring team may look at his schedule and think: “You know what? we haven't scheduled Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal.” Odds are Terry and his wife, Heather, would happily join Angela and me on a road trip if seeing Stevie was in the mix.

And with that, I’ll climb off my political soapbox to reflect on Stevie Wonder’s second record of 1972, Talking Book. The first was Music Of My Mind, which was released earlier that same year.

A second hit record in one calendar year sounds impressive enough. Then I realized that these were his 14th and 15th releases by an artist who was just 22 years old.

Twenty-Two!

When I was 22, I was still living in my parent’s basement. Sure, I was going to University and had a couple part-time jobs, but no one is talking about my creative output and groundbreaking innovations 50 years later…and I have the benefit of sight.

Me at 22, lifeguard by day, Pizza delivery driver by night.

We have actually been here before. Back in December, 2022, when I was still pushing my way through #285 on this decade-long journey through the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, I wrote about Music of My Mind. In that post, I spent some time on Stevie’s remarkable childhood and his emergence as the extravagantly talented “Little Stevie Wonder.” More importantly for what was coming next, I wrote about his discovery of the enormous TONTO synthesizer, created by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff. Stevie had become fascinated by synthesizers, and Cecil and Margouleff would work with him through some of the most creative years of his career.

Side Note: Margouleff is the guest on the accompanying episode of The 500 Podcast and, while promoting his autobiography, shares his experiences working with Stevie as well as a comprehensive look at that revolutionary technology. For music engineering or synthesizer nerds, it is a rewarding deep dive.

Another mind-blowing realization comes when one remembers that Wonder is not just a singer and piano player. On both of these 1972 records, he wrote the songs, produced the albums and played virtually every instrument himself. The music, the lyrics, the arrangements, the keyboards, the drums, the harmonica and ideas to create those strange new synthesizer sounds were pouring out of a kid.

Wonder in studio recording Talking Book.

There is something almost Mozart-like about him. Not because their processes were necessarily the same, but because I find the idea of all that music existing inside one person's head fascinating. Stevie couldn't sit at a piano with a blank piece of manuscript paper in front of him and casually scribble down an idea in the conventional way. He had to hear it, remember it, build it, play it and communicate it. Melody, harmony, rhythm, words and arrangement could all exist in his imagination before the rest of us ever got to hear them. Thus, the album before Talking Book was aptly named Music Of My Mind.

And, incredibly, Stevie was just getting warmed up.

Music of My Mind and Talking Book kicked off what is now widely referred to as Stevie Wonder's classic period, five critically acclaimed albums released in less than five years.

• Music of My Mind (1972) (#285 on The 500)
• Talking Book (1972) (#90 on The 500)
• Innervisions (1973) (#24 on The 500)
• Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) (Grammy Award for Album of the year
• Songs in the Key of Life (1976) (#57 on The 500) and Grammy Award for Album of the year
  

That's not merely a good stretch. That's an athlete entering the zone and then somehow staying there for five seasons. Imagine a ballplayer hitting .350, winning the batting title, coming back the next year and doing it again, then looking around and deciding he might as well steal some bases, hit a bunch of home runs and win the league MVP a few times while he's at it. Stevie was on one of those runs, like Gretzky, Woods, Jordan, Williams, Ali or Brady, whose greatness literally became the expectation.

Originally, this was going to be my angle for this blog. I was going to investigate other artists who had enjoyed an incredible run of consecutive releases. In fact, I’ve been researching and mulling it over for a few weeks. Then Stevie announced his tour, without a Canadian date, and my frustration sent me in a different direction. Oh well. I’ll save that topic for either Songs In The Key Of Life or Innervisions, in 2027, which should coincide nicely with the start of the next U.S. presidential primary season. By then, perhaps I’ll have two things to look forward to: Another great Stevie Wonder album to write about and the possibility of a rapprochement in Canada-U.S. relations. And renewed trips across the border.

Help me out if you can?

What is your favourite four- or five-album consecutive run by a musician or band?
It doesn’t need to be critically acclaimed, just your own personal list.