This section, which was started April 28, 2007, includes SongFacts which were submitted to the SongFacts database and either edited out of recognition or not published. Also included will be SongFacts which have already been entered into the database by other contributors.
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In 1940, a slightly reworded version of this slow nostalgic 19th Century number was adopted as the Official State Song Of Virginia, but on January 28, 1997, the Virginia Senate decided by 24 votes to 15 to designate it "State Song Emeritus". This was due to unremitting pressure in the age of political correctness. Carry Me Back To Old Virginny is a coon song first published in 1878 and written from the perspective of a slave. This led to its being branded racist, whatever that is supposed to mean. The refutation of this facile assertion is the long list of black artists who have queued up to record it, including Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles.
The real joker in the pack though is the song's writer, who rather than being a white Southerner, bigoted or otherwise, was actually a black Northerner. Few musicologists would disagree with the assessment of Derek Scott in The Singing Bourgeois that James Bland was "the finest minstrel composer of the 1870s and 80s".
Bland, the son of the first Negro US patent examiner, attended the prestigious Howard University, but instead of following his father into the legal profession, he fell in love with music on campus, and carved out an illustrious career for himself which saw "The World's Greatest Minstrel Man" wow audiences in the English music halls. According to The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia, he "drew on his memories of a peaceful plantation on the James River and wrote the nostalgic number about an old slave who wishes to be brought back to the South where he was born".
It may be too that Bland was influenced by an earlier song, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia, which was arranged and sung by E.P. Christy in 1847 (though Christy's song was actually about a boat!)
Bland's composition - his most famous - was introduced by the white artist George Primrose (who performed in blackface), was "a longtime staple in minstrel shows", and remained popular long after minstrelsy was eclipsed by Vaudeville, ragtime and jazz. The earliest recording appears to be by Alma Gluck in 1915, and it was sung by Nelson Eddy in the 1937 film Maytime, among others.
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A sample of the lyrics:
There's all this heat
Out in the street
Telling us to move along
It's gonna be a long hot summer
From now on
This is a song about the Stonewall Rebellion of June 1969. The Stonewall Inn was a bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, which was frequented by homosexuals. At that time – on both sides of the Atlantic – homosexuals were regarded as an easy target by the police, and establishments catering for them were subjected to arbitrary harassment. On this occasion though, a raid allegedly prompted by illegal drinking ended in violence. The patrons revolted, and over the course of the weekend a full scale riot and civil unrest resulted as outsiders joined in. The Encyclopedia Of Homosexuality says the Stonewall Rebellion was "a spontaneous act of resistance" to police harassment.
Happening as it did, at the end of the sixties, the Rebellion became part of the counterculture and folklore of resistance, which included student unrest and anti-Vietnam protests.
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This instrumental was written by session guitarist Bill Parkinson while he was playing with PJ Proby. He told this website he wrote it because the backing orchestra wanted a couple of instrumentals. The music was arranged by one of the band, and was subsequently used by Carlo Little as a drum solo. Little, who died in 2005, was the original drummer for The Rolling Stones; he also played with Screaming Lord Sutch in his band The Savages, where lead guitarist Ritchie Blackmore served timed before becoming a founder member of Deep Purple. It was Blackmore who borrowed - ie stole - the riff from Lost Soul for Mandrake Root, which appeared on the band's debut album, Shades Of Deep Purple, in 1968.
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Although it has words, Mandrake Root is primarily a solo, with a heavy emphasis on drumming. A single sheet of the basic music without the solos, was filed with the British Library (then the British Museum Library) for copyright purposes probably shortly after it was recorded; the manuscript claims Copyright 1968 by B. Feldman & Co trading as HEC MUSIC of London, and the song is credited to Rod Evans, Jon Lord, and Ritchie Blackmore.
However, anyone may claim the copyright or authorship of a song; A.P. Carter put his name to Wildwood Flower, but that doesn't mean he actually wrote it, and the authorship of "Mandrake Root" is every bit as controversial as some of Carter's shenannigans.
In the Jerry Bloom biography of Ritchie Blackmore, drummer Ricky Munro is quoted: "I co-wrote the song I invented all the drumming and the accents and he wrote the riff. It was more of an instrumental than a vocal song." Blackmore had intended to use "Mandrake Root" as the theme song for a band he was putting together, but although Mandrake Root rehearsed, they never actually played a live gig.
While Munro's claim to have co-written the song was made in good faith, he didn't know that Blackmore had ripped it off, or at least the riff, from another guitarist. Nick (Nic) Simper, the original bassist with Deep Purple, is also quoted by Bloom: "Mandrake Root was written by a guy called Bill Parkinson and it was called Lost Soul originally."
Parkinson had written the song as a drum solo for Carlo Little, the original drummer of the Rolling Stones who like Blackmore had played with The Savages, the backing band for Screaming Lord Sutch. Simper said Blackmore learned the melody "note for note" from Little. Bill Parkinson was lead guitarist with the Savages July to September 1966; Blackmore had played with Sutch from May to October 1962, February to May 1965 and December 1966 to April 1967, so their paths had clearly crossed.
Mandrake Root was the first song ever recorded by Deep Purple, and although they ended their first show (in Denmark) with Hey Joe, it would soon become their closing number, and remained so for the next three years. Like the rest of their debut album it was recorded at Pye's Marble Arch studios over a weekend in May 1968, after their Danish tour, and produced by Derek Lawrence.
The original recording ran to 6 minutes 9 seconds, although like the instrumental Wring That Neck from their second album, it was often stretched out to half an hour or more in concert.
In view of the extraordinary success of the fledgeling band, it was not surprising that word soon got back to Parkinson, and just as unsurprisingly he was not happy with regard to (what he saw as) the rip off of Mandrake Root, and turned up on Simper's doorstep to complain. By this time, Simper had left the band, Parkinson threatened court action, he said, and Simper agreed with some reluctance to testify for him, but "...I never saw Bill again. Apparently they paid him off with about £600."
In December 2008, Bill Parkinson confirmed the above facts in a telephone interview, as far as he recalled he'd settled for five hundred pounds. He could have got more, but money was tight in those days. This sort of thing was and still is rife in the music business, he said, citing the case of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. He added that the riff from Lost Soul isn't that different note-wise from the most famous riff in rock, for which Blackmore is also credited, but pursuing a claim for Smoke On The Water would open up a whole new can of worms!
Parkinson said too that when at last he'd run into Blackmore some time later, his fellow axeman had complimented him on Lost Soul and asked "Have you got any more like that?" Needless to say, he was not amused.
Although Blackmore did undoubtedly rip off Mandrake Root from Lost Soul, it remains to be seen to what extent the two tracks can be considered the same piece of music; there are only so many ways an eight note scale can be played, intervals, sharps and flats considered!
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Pilot Of The Airwaves
Released in 1979, this ode to an unnamed DJ was a monster hit for London born singer-songwriter Charlie Dore in 1980 reaching number 13 on the US Billboard chart; unsurprisingly it also received heavy airplay in the UK, although it didn't do nearly as well.
Pilot Of The Airwaves runs to 3 minutes 53 seconds, but a radio edit minus the extended guitar solo and running to 3 minutes 15 seconds was also pressed. The B Side of the radio edit was Sleepless, but the B Side of the extended version was Falling. The song was produced for Island Records by Alan Tarney and former Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch.
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Pretty Golden Hair
This is an unusual song and one which mirrors Stewart's later Old Compton Street Blues. The owner of the pretty golden hair here is surprisingly a young man who moves to the capital where he takes a mundane job of which he soon tires, and although possibly not homosexual he resorts to selling his body to finance a better standard of living. As usual though, it all goes sadly wrong, and as he grows older he moves progressively downmarket and ends up soliciting in public toilets. The song ends with his suicide.
It may be that unlike Old Compton Street Blues, Stewart based this on someone he actually knew, though probably not personally. In the song, the boy with golden hair is sent away to boarding school. Stewart was sent to boarding school by his widowed mother, and it may be that he heard this sad tale of an old boy from his contemporaries.
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Rock ’N Roll Widow
Rock ’N Roll Widow is the last track on the 1973 album Wishbone Four; the song was inspired by a shocking incident at an early Wishbone Ash gig.
On September 5, 1971, while the band was onstage at an open air concert in Austin, Texas, a hot dog vendor on the edge of the crowd was shot dead by an irate customer. The story is related in the band’s official biography, Blowin’ Free.
According to Ben Grillot of the Austin Public Library, the murder was reported in the September 7, 1971 issue of the Austin Statesman in a story Vendor Shot For Sandwich? The victim was named as 32 year old Francisco Carrasco, a Cuban student; he was shot in the upper abdomen with a .38 calibre revolver. The gunman appears to have got away.
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(Sing If You’re) Glad To Be Gay (Sing If You’re) Glad To Be Gay by the Tom Robinson Band (TRB) was recorded as part of a live EP in November 1977 and appears on Robinson’s critically acclaimed debut album Power In The Darkness. As might be expected, this song calls on homosexuals to "come out" and declare their sexuality with pride. Robinson was an out – though not effeminate – homosexual at the time, although in later life he married and raised a family. The song contains the interesting couplet: "There’s no nudes in Gay News, our one magazine
Those familiar with the story behind this sentence might beg to differ. In June 1996, Gay News published a poem by the academic James Kirkup, The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name (a pun on Oscar Wilde). This "poem" described a centurion performing sexual acts on the dead body of Christ, and caused grave offence to many people, especially Christians. As a result of this, the Christian activist Mrs Mary Whitehouse brought a prosecution for blasphemous libel – the first in Britain since 1921 - against the paper and its editor, Denis Lemon. The trial, in July 1977, resulted in their conviction, a fine for both defendants, and a suspended sentence for Lemon; Kirkup was not prosecuted. The same issue of the journal contained an article by an anonymous paedophile in defence of his perversion.
******************** In Philip Norman's book Sir Elton: The Definitive Biography, this early Elton John/Bernie Taupin
composition is described as "the wistful song of a captive bird turned loose by a prisoner".
Skyline Pigeon sounds as though it may have been inspired by the 1962
film Birdman Of Alcatraz, which is a sanitized biopic of double killer Robert Stroud.
Elton recorded the song for his debut album Empty Sky, through which the theme of
imprisonment - unjust or otherwise - runs. It was first released in August 1968 though, by Roger Cook, and
later that same month by Guy Darrell. Darrell had a minor hit in 1973
with I've Been Hurt, but never lived up to the hype. When Elton first recorded it, he
used a harpsichord, and in the style of the album the song was light on production, but in 1973 it
was re-released as the B-Side of Daniel with a full arrangement. It was also recorded by Geoff Long, a
blind musician and occasional songwriter from Sydenham, London for his 2004 CD After The Party.
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Storm In A Tea Cup The phrase "a storm in a tea cup" means a problem that is not as big as it appears; a song with this title,
credited to Rubin-Roker, was first recorded by The Fortunes. Shortly after, it
was recorded by Lynsey de Paul as the B Side of her first single, Sugar Me." Rubin was
Lynsey's birth name; her collaborator Ron Roker started out as a song plugger
before moving into songwriting.
Storm In A Tea Cup sold an impressive three million copies but netted Lynsey a mere six thousand pounds in
royalties. "It was impossible not to get ripped off in the Seventies," she told
OK magazine in a 1996 interview.
But they still found excuses to call it obscene"