Reporter's Notebook

What kind of songwriter was John D. Loudermilk? Genre labels aren’t much help in describing him. Musicians who took up his tunes had hits playing genres as disparate as country, bubblegum pop, and garage rock. The Jefferson Airplane recorded his songs, and so did the Flying Burrito Brothers, David Lee Roth, Glenn Campbell, and Marianne Faithfull. Jazz singers from Mose Allison to Norah Jones recorded his work, too. (Jones’s rendition of “Turn Me On,” from her debut record, is particularly beautiful.)

Maybe it’s better to describe Loudermilk’s songs in type: Concise, pithy, evocative, and emotional. Loudermilk, who died this week at 82, seldom wasted a word and never wasted verse. Many of his tunes clock in at a terse two minutes or two, with only a pair of verses. If brevity is the soul of wit, he also found it to be the path to songwriting success.

Listening to Loudermilk’s hits now, many of them come across as a bit dated. They’re bobbysoxer confections—George Hamilton IV’s “A Rose and a Baby Ruth” or Eddie Cochran’s “Sittin’ in the Balcony.” There’s Sue Thompson’s execrable “Norman,” and delightfully maudlin ballads like “Ebony Eyes,” recorded by the Everly Brothers. (See how long it takes you to guess the plot twist.) These songs haven’t aged as well as the ones written by Loudermilk’s cousins Charlie and Ira, who changed their name from Loudermilk to Louvin and became country stars and alt-country patron saints.

But John Loudermilk’s best work hasn’t lost a thing. In particular, that means “Tobacco Road,” a song he wrote in 1960 but that hit the charts in 1964 when the Nashville Teens recorded it. It was a semi-autobiographical song—Loudermilk was born in 1934 in Durham, North Carolina, an industrial town full of millhouses built to handle the influx of people from the country who came to work in the city’s textile mills and tobacco factories. Loudermilk’s song begins:

I was born in a funk
Mama died and my daddy got drunk
Left me here to die or grow
In the middle of
Tobacco Road

Grew up in a rusty shack
All I had was hangin’ on my back
Only you know how I loathe
This place called
Tobacco Road

That wasn’t quite all true—his father, though illiterate, was an industrious carpenter who made John a ukelele at age 7. The song’s narrator promises to go away and make it big:

Gonna leave, get a job
With the help and the grace from above
Save some money, get rich and old
Bring it back to
Tobacco Road

Bring dynamite and a crane
Blow it up, start all over again
Build a town, be proud to show
Give the name
Tobacco Road.

That part was only partly true, too. Loudermilk did indeed move away and make it big. The home where he was born doesn’t stand anymore, either—if you ask the right person in Durham, he might show you where it was located—though it wasn’t because Loudermilk dynamited it. Some of the old millhouses have been rehabbed and repainted, and it’s a sought-after neighborhood now.

The song focuses on the squalor, but it’s really more about the love-hate relationship so many people feel with their hometowns and the desire to be seen as a success by the folks back home. It’s heavy stuff, and the Nashville Teens’ take feels a bit callow. In the right hands, though, the song is a punch to the gut. Take it away, Lou Rawls:

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Tonight marks the season-three debut of Amazon’s tremendous series Transparent. If you haven’t been watching, you have made a grievous life error—though happily one that is quite easy to rectify. (Be sensible, though: Start with season one.)

For those unfamiliar, the show follows the Pfeffermans: Maura, née Mort, a former Los Angeles pater familias (the great Jeffrey Tambor, who just picked up his second consecutive Emmy for the role) who, after 20 years of secrecy, has decided to openly live her life as a woman; Maura’s ex-wife; and her three adult children, who are all working through their own sex-, gender-, and identity-related questions as well.

What is perhaps most remarkable about Transparent is that the Pfeffermans are a decidedly dysfunctional and self-absorbed clan—the show is a bit like Arrested Development with gender complications added—yet they are portrayed with astonishing empathy and affection. And utterly crucial to this tricky tonal balance is the title theme by Dustin O’Halloran.

A wistful piano waltz, O’Halloran’s melody is the perfect mood-setter, at once melancholy and reassuring. Yes, it seems to say, we’re all deeply screwed up and likely to make many terrible life decisions. But somehow—somehow—it will probably all work out. With every Transparent episode, I can literally feel the music easing me into precisely the right state of mind to appreciate the show’s emotionally complicated charms. For fans and future fans alike, here is an extended version of O’Halloran’s theme. Happy viewing:

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Reader Tim recommends a country reboot of a late ’70s rock classic—though it didn’t even chart in the U.S. when it was first released as a single:

Man, I feel like the covers project needs some hemoglobin. Lenny Kravitz? My arteries run blue.

Here’s Dwight Yoakam covering Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me.” In addition to being awesome, it’s one of those rare covers that would have worked on its own, without the frisson of association.

And it’s a cheap out, but Postmodern Jukebox’s jazzy covers of pop hits are reliably great, if best in individual doses. I think you posted on the Dish via me their cover of Wham’s “Careless Whisper.” Their “All About That (Upright) Bass” is even better.

Update from reader Mike Kludt:

Since Dwight Yoakam is the subject, how about his cover of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”? He does a nice job, but to me it highlights the versatility of Queen, a group that produced songs ranging from that one to “Stone Cold Crazy” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Speaking of versatility, Yoakam gave a surprisingly stellar acting performance in Sling Blade, the movie that gave Billy Bob Thornton his big breakout. Yoakam played the sadistic stepfather figure to the boy protagonist and could have inspired a sequel called Lawnmower Blade.

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Reader Doug digs deeper into his collection:

“Skylight” by Gramatik. The title of this album, Beatz & Pieces, Vol. 1, pretty much sums up my taste in “working music”—heavy beat, probably some mixing / sampling or something that sounds like it, brought together by great composition.

“Imagination” by CFCF. A little less electronic, slightly more jazzy than some of the other stuff on this list, but still has that solid underlying rhythm layered with the more complex melodic stuff on top.

“Ce matin-la” by Air. Just relaxing, easy instrumentals. Nice changes of pace, combination of a bunch of different instruments ... working gold.

That song from Air is off their album Moon Safari, available on YouTube, and one of their others, Talkie Walkie—available here—was a favorite during my senior year of college, so highly recommended.

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Reader Scott serves up a superb in-concert cover (but the version above is a bit better quality):

Keeping with the theme of alt-country/bluegrass covers in your series, one of the finest acts of the last decade is Nickel Creek. Here you will find them doing a fine cover version of “Toxic” by Britney Spears.

Jen Hance covered the cover eight years ago:

[It] was originally written for Britney Spears, and even won a Grammy in 2005 for Best Dance Recording. With the immense success of the song, there is no wonder why it has been covered numerous times by bands such as Local H, The BossHoss, The Zoo, and even Kevin Federline’s ex, Shar Jackson. [CB: We recently featured another cover by the group Joseph.] However, none of these versions has been quite as impressive as the one done by bluegrass group Nickel Creek.

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Reader Max calls my attention to a classic I hadn’t yet read—or heard:

What of Iron Maiden’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 626-line tale of a cursed sailor’s sin and redemption is a lot to take in, I soon discovered, if you haven’t read it before. Luckily, bass player Steve Harris’s lyrics provide a pretty straightforward summary, and the music—shifting from shouted lyrics and frantic guitars as Death descends on the mariner’s ship, to a spooky, atmospheric section that recalls a glassy sea—helps to dramatize the mariner’s story. Heavy metal and Romantic poetry might seem like an unlikely combination, but the noise, the drama, and the driving beat of Iron Maiden’s interpretation feel right for Coleridge’s horror story—most of all because they capture the urgency of a curse that forces the mariner to tell his tale, as the song repeatedly puts it, “on and on and on.” Update from Max:

I would have written something about how the track led me to Coleridge, culminating in a hard slog of a course on 17th-century British literature; about how Iron Maiden always managed to throw a bit of history or literature on the albums back in the ’70s and ’80s, and how it led to greater discovery; or how my friends always thought that “Rime” was kind of the worst Iron Maiden song, but it was my favorite. But, it’s fiscal year closeout here at my office, and so really nuts.

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

A reader pivots from yesterday’s TotD pick, “Proud Mary”:

Speaking of Ike and Tina’s cover of a CCR tune, I nominate the CCR cover of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” It is one of the few covers where the cover is better than the original. Marvin’s version is more tortured and “whiny.” CCR took that and made it menacing by doing it in a minor key. The “oooohh” to begin the song is telling the guy who messed with his woman to better watch out.

Our reader then highlights “several other favorite covers, where I think the covers are better than the original”:

Clapton’s version of “I Shot the Sheriff.” The Wailers make the part of the original Marley version sucky; them coming in with the “but I did not kill the deputy” just kills the song.

SRV’s version of “Superstition,” where he does all the Synthesizer parts of Stevie Wonder’s original on a guitar.

Hendrix’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower.” Even crotchety old Bob agrees with this.

Aretha’s version of “Respect.” I love, love, love Otis Redding, but Ms. Franklin just kills it. She takes a whiny ass song and makes it a feminist anthem.

Just my 3 cents.

To toss in your own, email [email protected].

(Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Mike Kludt, a reader who’s already served up two great covers, makes it a hat trick:

I came across the movie What’s Love Got to Do With It the other day and slapped my forehead: How could I not have thought of Ike and Tina Turner’s cover of “Proud Mary” for this cover song series? It’s one of the all-time greats, especially live. This video is all you need to get the essence of Tina Turner as a performer.

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

A reader, Malcolm Morris, writes:

Hello, and greetings from Hong Kong. You asked about a piece of “music that transforms, or emulates, or sheds new light on a different work of art.” One such is David Gilmour (vocalist and guitarist in Pink Floyd) singing Shakespeare’s sonnet number 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.” Everything about the recording is sublime, from the lyrics to Gilmour’s voice to the simple piano arrangement to the location. It was recorded on a century-old houseboat on the River Thames at Hampton, which Gilmour transformed into a fantastic recording studio.

I first heard the song a few years ago and listened to it so often that to this day I can recite the entire sonnet while mentally humming along with the song in my head. It also reintroduced to me to Shakespeare’s poetry, which I had largely ignored in the 30 years since I was required to read it when I was a teenager.

I wish I’d known about this song when I, too, was studying Shakespeare’s sonnets as a teenager. On top of the sheer beauty of Gilmour’s recording, the melody helps reveal some of the sonnet’s structural elements. That moment when he pitches his voice up on “But thy eternal summer”? That’s the volta, or turn, at which the sonnet begins to shift from its initial argument toward a final conclusion. In this case, the conclusion is that the sonnet itself, unlike a brief summer day, will live on forever—and in giving the poem a new life through music, Gilmour has certainly helped.

Update: Malcolm also flags an album, When Love Speaks, that includes dramatic readings and some musical recordings of more than 50 of Shakespeare’s sonnets. You can find it here.

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Coming off a two-week vacation, traveling through several airports, I especially need our “songs to work to” series to help transition back to office mode. Sarah is the latest reader to lend a hand:

Since I spend a lot of my days reading and deciphering complex scientific papers and work in a noisy office, music is often the only way to get anything done. Like many people, I listen to a lot of classical music to focus, especially the Karajan recordings of Beethoven’s symphonies that I’ve loved since I was little, as well as Bach’s B minor mass and “St. Matthew Passion”—because nothing soothes the soul like Bach (and that opening of the Passion gets me every. single. time.). Josquin Des Prez’s “Ave Maria” and “Missa L’Homme Arme” have also been favourites since I heard them in my first year of music school.

When I stray away from classical, Brian Eno’s Music for Airports [first part embedded above] or Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven are longtime favourites—waves of lovely, lovely sound.

And when I’m doing work that doesn’t require intense focus, like answering emails, it’s Beyoncé of course. I often think of it as a little treat to myself for getting through a complicated math or physics paper. Yes I’m lame.

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Last week, I premiered “Chicago,” a new track from David Nagler’s new album of poems using Carl Sandburg’s poetry as lyrics. A reader, James Parsons, wrote me about another band, which took not just a name but also some song titles from the famous opening lines of the same poem Nagler used, which deem the city

Hog Butcher for the World
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.

Here’s James:

Your entry immediately brought to mind one of my favorite-ever bargain-bin cassette finds, the album Big Shoulders by Chicago blues-rock-polka outfit Big Shoulders. Instrumental tracks end each side of the album (this is how old I am, albums … and sides!), side one with “Big Shoulders” (they really, really milked that moniker for all it was worth) and side two with “Shoulder Suite” [embedded below], which I think I like a little better, but that’s today.

Obviously their whole thematic existence is heavily informed by Sandburg’s poem, and I’ve always run the opening stanza through my head whenever listening to either track. They’re also equally excellent to play on the car stereo as you take any expressway into the city or tool down Lake Shore Drive.

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

A reader writes:

I love watching the Kennedy Center Honors for artists I like. In 2010 Bruce Springsteen was honored. John Mellencamp covered “Born In The U.S.A.” Not until I watched and listened to the complete video of his performance did I really understand what this song was saying: not the triumphal rock of a performance by Bruce, but how stark and gritty life could be, especially at that time for young men facing the draft and fighting in Vietnam.

Readers have written before in this series about the complicated patriotism of “Born in the U.S.A.” and other sad, proud-sounding songs. But this song, particularly in Mellencamp’s mournful rendering, felt right to feature on Sunday—15 years after the attacks that have so profoundly shaped, and deeply complicated, what it means to be American now.

I was 8 years old on September 11, 2001. I grew up in a political climate in which the phrase “9/11” has come to sound at times like a cliché, divorced from its meaning, ubiquitous and tacky as a pair of flag-print shorts on the Fourth of July. I knew only vaguely what the Patriot Act was and what the Iraq War meant, and so I understood them in terms of the symbols that gathered around them: flag pins and bumper stickers, shouted slogans of American pride. In the heat of the 2004 election, at the height of our preteen cynicism, my friends and I considered Springsteen and “Born in the U.S.A.” and classic rock in general of a piece with this noisy patriotism, until my mom caught us mocking some guitar-heavy track from The Rising and scolded us to think about what we were making fun of: an album responding to a tragedy in which thousands of people had died. “It’s fine if you don’t like the music,” she said. “But you listen to what he’s singing about.”

So I listened. The Rising, released in 2002, is an album of mourning and resilience, with songs of lost loved ones and empty skies and also resurrection. Its gospel-influenced refrains sound like prayers, or chanted affirmations: It’s all right, it’s all right. May your strength give us strength. Come on, rise up!

In one track, “Nothing Man,” Springsteen comes back to a character similar to the Vietnam vet of “Born in the U.S.A.”—disillusioned, struggling back to everyday life in a small town where he’s alienated by what he’s been through. It’s a song about first responders, coping with the aftermath of the attacks and the guilt of surviving as heroes. But in the years since its 2002 release, it’s come to apply as well to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose experience, as James Fallows has documented, is a kind of inverse of Vietnam veterans’—surface-level veneration for their sacrifice, but little substantive support for soldiers returning from a pair of widely unpopular wars. “You want courage?” the nothing man asks. “I’ll show you courage you can’t understand.”

(The video embedded below contains images that may be upsetting; you can also listen to the song here.)

What stands out to me in both of these songs is their sense of disconnection—the lostness shared by a “nothing man” and a “long-gone daddy” with nowhere to run. There’s an echo of that disconnect in the way the flag seemed to lose its meaning when I was growing up. Tragedy cuts us off from ourselves, from our symbols, from the touchstones we feel certain of. And that’s where Springsteen’s refrain, “I was born in the U.S.A.,” comes in—a cry of anger, maybe, but an affirmation of identity, too.