Got you Covered
Today I'd like to feature an old favourite, Early Morning Rain, written by Gordon Lightfoot.
In the early morning rain
With a dollar in my hand
With an achin in my heart
And my pockets full of sand
Im a long way from home
And I miss my loved ones so
In the early morning rain
With no place to go
Out on runway number nine
Big seven-o-seven set to go
But Im stuck here in the grass
Where the cold wind blows
Now the liquor tasted good
And the women all were fast
Well there she goes my friend
Well shes rollin down at last
Hear the mighty engines roar
See the silver bird on high
Shes away and westward bound
Far above the clouds shell fly
Where the mornin rain dont fall
And the sun always shines
Shell be flyin oer my home
In about three hours time
This old airports got me down
Its no earthly good to me
cause Im stuck here on the ground
As cold and drunk as I can be
You cant jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
So Id best be on my way
In the early morning rain
You cant jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
So Id best be on my way
In the early morning rain
Here's Ian And Sylvia, from their 1986 reunion concert, joined partway through by the song's composer, Mr. Lightfoot.
How about Billy Bragg, singing this tune at a record store re-opening in Toronto?
Yes, Elvis covered it too
And finally, here's Paul Weller
5 comments:
The Paul Weller version's good!
Yes, with Karlo. I had tears listening to Paul Weller's version. I almost fell over when I saw you had posted a musician from a time period since the 80-'s! I've seen Paul Weller a couple times, when he was with the legendary The Jam...and some of my favourite songs ever are by his other band The Style Council. His voice is absolutely wonderful on this version.
Did you know Uncle Greg collects cover songs? I used to make him tapes of strange covers. I'll get him to come take a look here if I can.
Here is Paul Weller's website which I thought had a beautiful opening page:
http://www.paulweller.com/
And then this is on a completely different topic...but a bookclub I hang out in is discussing "TheWWind Up Bird Cronicles" and I thought you might like to peek in...here:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/27284.Constant_Reader
(I hope that link works...)
What, no Peter, Paul, and Mary? ;)
That's still a really good song, many years on.
The Paul Weller version is excellent for sure. When I heard it, I thought it was one of the best interpretations of this tune around. My favourite version of this song, though, the one that could wrestle tears from my eyes, was actually recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis, during his second career as a country singer.
Candy: I may from time to time post versions of tunes even from this decade, so I hope you don't injure yourself when you hear them. The thing is that for me, the time which passed since this song was written, back in the mid-60s to the day Mr. Weller recorded his version is a blink of an eye. I don't really buy into the Modern fetish for the new, and I see pretty much all music recorded since we had the ability to record as being the music of our times. If I don't concentrate my listening on the music recorded in the 2000's, for instance, it is in part because there is just so much really fine music recorded in earlier decades which I haven't even begun to explore yet.
Even in painting, though, I don't look to my peers for inspiration. I do look back to my fathers and my grandfathers though, for their wisdom. That seems to be an unusual approach in this day and age. I have met a number of painters 15 or 20 years younger than me, who have no idea about what came before them. What happened to that sense of history? I blinked and it was gone.
Tshsmom, I didn't post a Peter, Paul and Mary version, because, to be drop dead honest, I didn't like them. I will admit that I don't much like anything they recorded, though. They make pretty enough recordings, but to me, there's no soul there.
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