“Let’s Get Together” is one of the 1960s’ most recognizable songs, particularly the version done by the Youngbloods. We should also recognize the name Dino Valenti since it was he who penned the song.
Valenti may or may not have written another staple of the era, “Hey Joe.” There seems to be some fuzziness surrounding that. It may be a reworked traditional song or a song written by Billy Roberts and Len Partridge who “gave” the song to Valenti while Valenti was in jail (marijuana charges) to help Valenti financially.
To add to a bit of the confusion that can surround Valenti, one should also know that he was born Chester William “Chet” Powers, Jr. on October 7, 1937 and was also known as a songwriter as Jesse Oris Farrow.
It was on this date, June 1, 1964 that the Kingston Trio released “Let’s Get Together” on theirBack to Town album. If you were a Kingston Trio fan and bought the album, then you would have become familiar with the song.
The album reached #22 on Billboard Pop Album charts.
Kingston Trio singing “Let’s Get Together” from their Back in Town album.
Dino Valenti Gets Together
Dino Valenti
Here is Dino Valenti singing the song himself:
Dino Valenti Gets Together
We Five
The We Five (of “You Were On My Mind” fame) covered the song in 1965, but it still didn’t catch on.
Dino Valenti Gets Together
Youngbloods
Even in 1967 when Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods did what became the definitive version, it did not do that well commercially– reaching #62 on the charts.
Fortuitously for the song and them, the song became part of a Public Service Announcement and re-energized their version which was re-released in 1969 and finally established deep roots in American music.
The realization that an album did not have to be a collection of singles had allowed artists to present a set of songs as pieces of a whole. In fact, Sgt Pepper’s didn’t even have a “single” on it.
For we late-teen Boomers, Bookends opened with the worrisome lines:
Time it was
And what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence
A time of confidences
Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you.
Simon Garfunkel Bookends
Youthful nostalgia
As the emerging adults in a society teeming with counter-cultural prospects, we “thought” we understood the lyrics’ nostalgia.
Of course in 1968 we had no idea how intense nostalgia could actually be decades later. How was 28-year-old Paul Simon so perspicacious?
Simon Garfunkel Bookends
Pieced together
Simon and Garfunkel did not record the album as a unified whole. Some of side two’s songs evolved out of their work for the film The Graduate. That soundtrack album, released January 21, 1968, had reached Billboard’s #1 album spot on April 6, 1968 and stayed there for six weeks. The Bookends album followed it for three weeks followed by The Graduate again for two weeks followed again by Bookends for four weeks. Simon and Garfunkel were trending!
Despite the recording schedule’s discontinuity, the album smoothly runs along its side one and again along side two. How many of us who first knew the album as a vinyl record know long before side one ends that we have to get up to flip the record?
Simon Garfunkel Bookends
Hooks and salients
And there are so many wonderful hooks and salients along the way. That soft 33-second acoustic opening pierced by the sharp beginning of “Save the Life of My Child.” Hand-clapping. Background chorus. Conversational talk. A flashback to “Sounds of Silence.”
Simon Garfunkel Bookends
America > exhale > Voices
Following the lesson of segueing songs, “America” softly enters. Images we still hold close. Cigarettes. Magazines. Rising moon. The New Jersey Turnpike. And not a rhyme. We’ve gone from childhood to hitting the road.
A match lights a cigarette. Exhale. The game is over. We’ve heard rumblings of a Beatle-break up. Is this other Paul hinting? In any case, we’ve learned about love from the other side. “Overs.”
Simon Garfunkel Bookends
Old Friends
Upon your first listen, did “Voices” confuse you? Who are these people? Not a song, no lyrics, but a sad short story. “And I maintain, I maintain strongly to this minute, I don’t think it’s an ordinary cold.” And if that wasn’t enough, we “Old Friends” end side one sitting on a park bench, newspapers blowing, lost in our overcoats.
Simon Garfunkel Bookends
Flip the record. Please!
Side two opens with music that sounds like the end of something. “Fakin’ It.” If side one was from cradle to grave, Side two talks about hypocrisy and struggling to get by. Playing roles and wondering why. “I’m not really makin’ it” sound like the end of “I Am the Walrus.”
“Wish I was a Kellogg’s corn flake” is “Punky’s Dilemma.” That and being a “Citizen of boysenberry jam fan.” The struggle continues and includes falling down the basement stairs.
Simon Garfunkel Bookends
Mrs Robinson
We all know “Mrs Robinson.” We’ve all seen Mrs Robinson and maybe, like Dustin Hoffman, falling a bit in lust with her. When opportunity knocks, eh? “We’d like to know a little about you for our files.” Are those eyes really sympathetic? And where did you go, Joltin’ Joe? In 1969, “Mrs Robinson” became the first rock song to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.
The worried pessimism continues as we skip into a “Hazy Shade of Winter” with its leaves of brown and the sound of the Salvation band. Ha!
Simon Garfunkel Bookends
Oh those animals!
Paul Simon, the New York kid, the only living boy in New York, closes with “At the Zoo.” We didn’t know those animals felt that way. Now we do and wonder about the others.
Thom Jureck’s All Music review closed this way: In just over 29 minutes, Bookends is stunning in its vision of a bewildered America in search of itself.
One of the interesting things about writing a blog that often involves hits of the mid-20th century is that a bit of research turns up facts that few if anyone knew at the time.
Roaring Lion Jimmy Soul
James Louis McClease
James Louis McCleese was born on August 24, 1942 in Weldon, NC. He was preaching by age 7 and performing as a teenager.
Frank Guida, the man who helped bring Gary US Bonds to fame, decided that Jimmy Soul, the name his congregation knew him as, could do as well.
He gave Jimmy the song “If You Want To Be Happy.” It had been a song Guida offered to Bonds, but Bonds declined.
On May 18, 1963 Jimmy Soul’s “If You Want To Be Happy” hit Billboard’s #1 spot.
Oh 1963! That pre-Beatle year. A year that began with “Telstar” at #1 (the Tornadoes were from the UK) and ended with “Dominique” (The Singing Nun was from Belgium) [Jeanine Deckers].
Roaring Lion Jimmy Soul
Soul Fame
It brought Soul fame.
The interesting piece that turns up is that Frank Guida’s song is a take-off (copy?) of a much earlier song: “Ugly Woman.”
Roaring Lion Jimmy Soul
Rafael de Leon
Roaring Lion Jimmy Soul, Roaring Lion Jimmy Soul
Rafael de Leon (“Roaring Lion”) was born on Trinidad, the same place that Guida was stationed during an Army stint and absorbing a style of music he came to love.
In 1934 de Leon released “Ugly Woman.” (Lion is also the singer of “Mary Ann.” (You KNOW this song…”All day all night Mary Ann, Down by the seaside sifting sand.”).
If you want to be happy and live a king’s life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
If you want to be happy and live a king’s life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
All you gotta do is just as I say
And then you would be jolly, merry and gay
That’s from a logical point of view
Always love a woman uglier than you.
Roaring Lion Jimmy Soul
Long and short
Roaring Lion had a long successful career and died in 1999 at the age of 91. (Best of Trinidad article)
Jimmy Soul’s song may have been like Roaring Lion’s, but Soul’s career and life was not.
After the success of “If You Want To Be Happy” Soul had no more. He eventually joined the Army. Soul died on June 15, 1988 at the age of 45. (Apparently, there is some confusion surrounding that date…see 45 cat Forum article.)
Surprisingly to me, the song has managed to stay afloat despite its irrational criticism of women. Perhaps our racism regarding “their” Calypso music and that it’s all fun for “them” persuades us that it’s a harmless song.
Roaring Lion Jimmy Soul
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
