It's Raining

It's raining today, a lot.  I find myself listening to rainy-day music, and drawn to two pieces.  The first is "Rainin' In My Heart" by Slim Harpo (1961), not to be confused with a 1959 Buddy Holly song with a similar title.

I first heard Harpo's song on one of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour shows.  The song is easygoing and bluesy; Harpo's singing and harmonica are foreground while percussion is pleasantly muted.

Born James Moore in Louisiana, Harpo's name was an amalgam of his nickname Slim and a reference to the harmonica.  His first song, "I'm A King Bee," was recorded in 1957, then covered by the Rolling Stones on their 1964 debut album.  It was an obvious influence on Mick Jagger.

The second piece I am appreciating is "Rainy Morning," by Tom Kitching and Gren Bartley (2007).  As rainy-day music, this qualifies: a spare, melancholy tune with Kitching playing fiddle and Bartley on guitar.  Kitching and Bartley are English and have two fine albums, my favorite being Rushes (2007).

As can be the case, deeply satisfying music may lie outside popular-culture radar, in part because time marches on.  Slim Harpo is not widely remembered today, although "I'm A King Bee" is in the Grammy Hall of Fame.  (Worth noting is that John Belushi sang it on Saturday Night Live in 1976 while dressed in full bee regalia.)

Time has not marched on for Tom Kitching and Gren Bartley, it just wasn't paying sufficient attention.  Kitching and Bartley are currently listed # 79,714 on the music website Lala.  A bright red arrow sits beside that disheartening number and, as final insult, it points downward.

Traveling to Utah

   If You Want Space, Go To Utah:
   Christine Lavin

Years ago, on a 4th of July weekend, I heard a radio show which played a song for each of the fifty American states.  I remember this was the first time I heard Christine Lavin's "If You Want Space, Go to Utah."  You might like it; it's spare, acoustic, a lone voice joined later by others in a marching, choral affirmation.

The song dates to 1983 and is on The Bellevue Years, a 2000 compilation of 1980's songs, an album so titled because Lavin had been working at Bellevue Hospital at the time.  Lavin is funny, and the album's title presages the theme of fractured relationships that runs through its songs.  The refrain of "If You Want Space, Go to Utah" goes:

     If you want space,  go to Utah
     If you want time –– pal you got the next 50 years
     but if you want love, hey, hey look no further
     Than the woman who's looking at you here

A fine song, but a sidetrack here because I am actually trying to compile my own 50-song version of that old 4th of July playlist.

I will begin alphabetically with a song for Alabama.

"Sweet Home Alabama" (1974) by Lynrd Skynrd comes to mind, and I go to my music library to listen to it. There I notice other songs that begin with the word "sweet,” and still more with "sweet" elsewhere in their titles. This discovery suggests a second potential music topic: song groupings organized around a common descriptor in the title.

Then I notice that among these "sweet" titles are songs with the same title but different lyrics: "Sweet Lorraine" by both Nat King Cole (1940) and Patty Griffin (1996), and "Sweet Thing" by Van Morrison (1969) and Mick Jagger (1993).  This suggests a third potential topic for music exploration: songs which, by title, look the same but that are quite different.

UTAH

I realize I am adrift and that these burgeoning song-topics are distracting me from my original 50-songs-for-50-states project, so I refocus and return to that project. Where I now see that "If You Want Space, Go To Utah" is hardly a sidetrack but a worthy song for Utah, the 44th stop along the main alphabetical track.(Actually, it "remains" an apt Utah-song, since I first heard it designated as such on that long ago 4th of July radio show.)

Now I've just got to work out the other 49 state-songs, 48 if I go with "Sweet Home Alabama."  I'll try not to ramble off again into the Utah of other song-topics.

By the way, Bellevue Hospital was founded in 1736 and is the oldest public Hospital in the United States.  Utah is newer and became the 45th state on January 4, 1896.

Fate and Destiny

In 1967, Albert King recorded the blues classic "Born Under A Bad Sign."  The refrain goes:    

     Born under a bad sign,      
     I been down since I began to crawl.      
     If it wasn't for bad luck,       
     I wouldn't have no luck at all. 

Terse lines, with phrasing in the second couplet so well-turned it has been borrowed by later songs.  The lyrics were written by William Bell, a singer-songwriter for Stax Records in Memphis; the music, by Booker T. Jones of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, house band for Stax Records. 
(Note: "If it wasn't for bad luck/ I wouldn't have no luck at all" may itself have been borrowed from a 1954 Lightnin' Slim song, "Bad Luck Blues.")

"Born Under a Bad Sign" came out the year the Billboard top 100 led off with light-pop fare: "To Sir with Love," by Lulu; "Happy Together," by The Turtles; "Windy," by The Association.  True, other charts listed top songs with more heft: "Respect," by Aretha Franklin; "Brown Eyed Girl," by Van Morrison; "The Letter," by The Box Tops; "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," by Gladys Knight & The Pips.  That said, the mood of "Born Under A Bad Sign" ran counter to most of what one heard in 1967, the year of The Summer of Love. 

Blues songs inherently have more body, less fizz than pop music.  And while there are pop classics as memorable as "Born Under a Bad Sign" –– think of the Beatles' early catalogue –– "To Sir with Love" and "Windy" are not among them. 

Now if the mood of "Born Under A Bad Sign" did run counter to much of 1967's offerings, what mood is that?  That of being fated; meaning, the feeling that forces beyond one's control set the arc of a life.  The game is rigged, not just now but for the duration; at best one endures, but as an object with little navigational control.  

Another fate song, arresting if unremittingly bleak, is Richard Thompson's "The End Of The Rainbow" (1974).  Its refrain is:

     Life seems so rosy in the cradle,      
     But I'll be a friend, I'll tell you what's in store.      
     There's nothing at the end of the rainbow,      
     There's nothing to grow up for anymore. 

This refrain sandwiches verses equally harrowing.  Richard Thompson is ranked #19 on Rolling Stone's The 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time (2003) and his songwriting is of a piece with his guitar playing.  

Certainly, fate songs are cousins to other songs of heartbreak and injustice.  They differ, though, in one respect: whereas the average heartbreak song depicts life's painful moments, fate songs declare these moments to be but typical examples of a lifetime of unalterable misfortune.  It was ever thus and there will be more to come.  This distinguishes "Born Under A Bad Sign" from "I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” 

Does this matter?  Perhaps not –– but for me such songs are a necessary part of a dialectic between fate and destiny.  Let's look at these terms.  Whereas definitions for fate are fairly similar, those for destiny are not.  Here, I borrow from psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas and define destiny as some future point toward which you travel with a sense of agency, lively interest, even enthusiasm ("enthusiasm" having the root meaning in Greek of "the god within").  You are driven by fate, you do the driving when living out your destiny.  The fate-destiny dialectic centers on whether we are passive objects or enlivened subjects of our circumstances.  

Sometimes people overcome initial fateful conditions to forge a destiny, others are fortunate enough to have never been treated as objects in the first place.  They have grown up feeling they mattered –– bearing out the proposition that to become a somebody you have to have been a somebody to somebody.  For these fortunates, agency and a sense of destiny is their default position.  It is what they have come to expect. (See Forces of Destiny [1989], by Christopher Bollas, for a deep treatment of fate versus destiny.) 

One rousing example of a destiny song is "Defying Gravity" (2003) by Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, from the Broadway show Wicked. Another is the positively giddy "Hey, Look Me Over" (1960) by Lucille Ball, from the musical Wildcat.  Both are energized, positive, I-can-make-this-happen songs.  Importantly, the singers are bent on changing a reality that otherwise constrains desire and promotes stagnation.

Here are the first lines of "Hey, Look Me Over”:      

     Hey look me over, lend me an ear      
     Fresh out of clover, mortgage up to here      
     Don't pass the plate folks, don't pass the cup      
     I figure whenever you're down and out, the only way is up      
     And I'll be up like a rosebud high on the vine ... 

The lyrics show indomitable spirit and the tempo is rollicking.  Other destiny songs may be less upbeat in tempo, but lyrics carry the positive load.  Two of these are: "Turning Toward The Morning" (1975), written by Gordon Bok and sung by Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir, and Ed Trickett; and "Rainbow Connection," co-written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher and first sung by Kermit the Frog (Jim Henson) in The Muppet Movie (1979). 

The Gordon Bok song was written in response to a friend's distress. Its refrain goes:      

     Oh, my Joanie, don't you know      
     That the stars are swingin' slow,      
     And the seas are rolling easy      
     As they did so long ago?      
     If I had a thing to give you,      
     I would tell you one more time      
     That the world is always turning      
     Toward the morning. 

Lovely –– and Bok's baritone voice is comforting and believable.  

Then there is the similarly reflective "Rainbow Connection."   Of the many versions of this ballad, I prefer the one by Willie Nelson (2001). Near its end is this verse:      

     Have you been half asleep,      
     And have you heard voices,      
     I've heard them calling my name.      
     Are these the sweet sounds that called      
     The young sailors,      
     I think they're one and the same.      
     I've heard it too many times to ignore it,      
     There's something that I'm supposed to be. 

I hear in this a quiet call to wake up, pay attention, follow something true to yourself –– even while venturing into a realm that is vast, unknown, not solid beneath your keel.  

Common to these destiny songs is the element of choice.  This distinguishes them from otherwise similar songs which speak to happiness or peace of mind.  This distinction sets apart "Hey, Look Me Over" from "To Sir with Love."  And this choice-element also sets these songs apart from fate songs, with their emphasis on the impossibility of agency.  When you are fated, you have no choice.  When you have a destiny, there may be darkness but what you pay attention to is the morning. 

Great Scott

Music is my safe place, and things connected to music –– liner notes, artist biographies, genre histories –– usually share in that safety.  Even when an artist's life shows wounds, the music somehow offsets them. But last week my safe place was violated when unintentionally I wandered into a dark and cruel knowledge.  Here is what happened.

I had been thinking about Jack Scott. At the country end of rock and roll (rockabilly) in the late 50's, there were Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and others.  One of those others was Jack Scott, born Giovanni Dominico Scafone, Jr. in 1936 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.  He had a deep voice, spare arrangements, and he wrote most of his hits.  "What In The World's Come Over You" (1960) was his signature hit, but my favorites are "My True Love" (1958) and especially "Goodbye Baby" (1959).

Everybody knows about Elvis, fewer know about Jack Scott.  Seeking to remedy this neglect, I thought to title this post Great Scott. Innocently enough, I began researching information on that timeworn phrase, "Great Scott."  There are debates about its origin but a good argument can be made that it dates to a real person, the famous and much decorated General Winfield Scott (1786-1866).  (For more on this, click on Great Scott.)

General Scott was a war hero and 1852 Presidential candidate, also commanding general of the United States Army for twenty years until outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.  In 1838, and apparently with misgivings, he followed orders and implemented the forcible relocation of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina to what is now Oklahoma.  To study this Trail of Tears is to be drawn into a repellent and morally vacant corner of history.

Now I had known about The Trail of Tears, but at an abstract and temporal distance.  The fact is, some 15,000 to 17,000 Cherokee were removed from their ancestral homelands (figures vary, and extend to 20,000).  Four thousand died along the way and the details behind the numbers are appalling.  General Scott had been following the directions of President Martin Van Buren, who in turn had been carrying on the policies of President Andrew Jackson.  While those policies were not new then, they had gained impetus following the 1828 discovery of gold in Georgia, largely on Indian land.  (Useful websites on the removal of the Cherokee are: Wikipedia, About North Georgia, U.S. National Parks Service, and PBS (Judgment Day: Indian Removal).  (Do click on Story for a magisterial personal narrative by John Burnett.  Burnett's document is from http://www.learnnc.org, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill educational website.)

General Winfield Scott (1835),
by George Catlin
(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The raw details of The Trail of Tears left me feeling unclean. While innocently noodling with History, I wandered into one of its darker corners.  It took time to return to this post and when I did I considered skipping or muting these dark parts.  Even what is touched on here is but a trace of the foulness of this Indian removal policy.

Some source material notes that General Winfield Scott was an imposing man, 6'5" and 230 pounds in the early part of his career, 300 pounds at the end.  He liked pomp and ceremony and was known as "Old Fuss and Feathers."

Jack Scott seems also to have been a solid presence, although more rough-hewn.  Of the two, it is Jack who is my Great Scott.

Counting

I have been counting songs in my music library.  A rainy weekend, my last post, and sheer obsessiveness prompted a search for multiple versions of the same song.  I found so many I limited the list to songs having at least five versions by separate artists (versus alternate studio or live versions by the same artist).  I came up with 36 songs which fit my guideline, the top three of which form the nucleus of the adjacent playlist.

Charles Deas' The Trapper and his Family (1845) 
depicts a voyageur and his Native American
 wife and children: Public Domain

Atop the list with sixteen separate versions is "Shenandoah."  Dating to the early 1800s, this song is associated with diverse regional and ethnic heritages –– and is arguably best linked to a specific story-song sung by Canadian and American fur-traders ("voyageurs") plying the Missouri River at the turn of the 19th century.  
By mid-century it had migrated from inland waterways to the ocean, becoming a popular sea chantey.  My favorite vocals are by Cowboy Nation (2008), Mustard's Retreat (1979), and Paul Robeson (1936).

My favorite instrumental performances are guitar works by Joel Mabus (1996) and Tony Rice (2000), and a riverine piano piece by David Glen Hatch (2002) that you could float on.

Three songs share the number two position, "All The Things You Are," "When I Fall In Love," and "I Still Miss Someone," each with nine separate versions:

• "All The Things You Are" was written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II for the 1939 musical, Very Warm for May.  I like the jazz versions by The Elmo Hope Trio (1955), Gerry Mulligan & Paul Desmond (1962), and Jim Hall & Ron Carter (1982) –– the Hall & Carter version being a masterpiece of intimate chamber jazz.

• "When I Fall In Love" I first heard as a 1961 song by The Lettermen.  It was initially a popular hit by Doris Day (1952), but I prefer the versions by Carmen McRae (1959), The Bill Evans Trio (1959), and Blue Mitchell (1960).

• Of the many versions of Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss Someone" (1958), I favor the aching rendition by The Wilson Family Band (2006).

Coming in at number three is "My Funny Valentine," with eight separate versions.  It is from a 1937 Rodgers and Hart musical, Babes in Arms, a show that included another fine song: the original "Where Or When,” performed by Ray Heatherton and Mitzi Green.  The first "Where or When" I heard was the 1960 version by Dion & The Belmonts, and only much later did I learn it was one of several covers.  (Both the 1937 original and the 1961 cover are included as bonus tracks in the playlist.)

A classic instrumental version of "My Funny Valentine" is by The Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker (1952), and both Carmen McRae's 1955 and Morgana King's 1978 vocal releases are superb.  Morgana King, born Maria Grazia Morgana Messina, was also an actor.  You may remember her as Carmella Corleone in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974).

What does all this mean, these numbers, dates, lists?  Maybe not much, these are just songs in my music library; your collections will likely reflect different sensibilities.  And regardless of whose library we access, we can't say a song with multiple versions is any worthier than one with none –– though I do think oft-recorded songs have a timeless quality, being part of the ages, not era-bound.

Then again, some things should be left untouched, or at least approached with delicacy.  There are songs that stand sturdily on their own over time –– hard acts to cover, so sufficiently compelling that they speak to different generations while wearing their original outfits.  For example, Bing Crosby's original 1942 version of "White Christmas" has been covered countless times but –– with the certain exception of the Drifters' 1954 R&B version –– to little cultural benefit.

Perhaps a broader perspective will emerge if I return to the numbers and dates.  But not now.  Anyway, who's counting?

Iterations

I am sometimes surprised when what seems new is but a new version of the old.  In January of 1960, when I was 13, Dion & The Belmonts had a hit with "Where or When."  Years later I learned that "Where Or When" had been a 1937 Rodgers and Hart show tune sung by Ray Heatherton.

A number of popular versions of "Where Or When" have existed over the years, and its original 1937 birth-show, Babes in Arms, stands out for having produced two equally durable standards of American popular song, "My Funny Valentine" and "The Lady Is A Tramp."

I imagine a 13 year old can be forgiven his not knowing a song's lineage.  Even so, upon learning that lineage I felt a bit humbled, as if my music had not been as generationally specific as I'd thought, that in fact it belonged to my parents' generation.

When I was young, this happened a lot.  Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill" (1956) turned out to have begun life in 1940 with Sammy Kaye & His Orchestra, sung by Tommy Ryan.

Nino Tempo and April Stevens' "Deep Purple" (1963) first appeared in 1933 as a piano piece.  It later acquired lyrics and was recorded in 1938 by Larry Clinton & His Orchestra, with vocal by Bea Wain.  And "Button Up Your Overcoat," which just seemed to be in the air in the 1950s, was first recorded by Ruth Etting in 1928.  Etting's recording really is first for me –– jaunty and sly, with a 1920s flapper-like bounce.

Finally, I'll mention Bob Keeshan, TV's Captain Kangaroo (1955-1984). Keeshan did a version of “Button Up Your Overcoat" in 1958, backed by The Sandpipers and the Mitch Miller Orchestra.  Prior to becoming Captain Kangaroo, Keeshan was the original Clarabell the Clown on the Howdy Doody show (1948-1952).  Keeshan's version of "Button Up Your Overcoat" is plain, happy, avuncular not sly, and understandably geared to children.

I no longer think of songs as necessarily signaling a generational identity.  In fact, it's satisfying to listen to songs with broad histories and numerous incarnations.  They seem bigger than any one time or place. And they don't die: they're here, they're gone, they're here again.

Sad Songs

I like sad songs and can happily be sad.  The earliest songs that I remember were not sad.  Dean Martin's "Sway'' (1954) and Les Paul and Mary Ford's "Mockin' Bird Hill" (1951) and "How High The Moon" (1951) were catchy, so my foundational musical layer was perky –– or that is how I am imagining the case to have been.

In 1957 the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love” came out.  Listed as #210 in Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time, that great song was catchy and sad.  But it was its somber B-side, "I Wonder If I Care As Much” that gave form to gloomy feelings poorly understood by me at age 10, as if a furtive internal sigh had been both clarified and released.
   

A world of sad songs is out there, and in an earlier draft of this post I had begun a large playlist.  The list grew unwieldy, so I am citing only a few additional songs here.  They happen to make up a trio of father-songs.

The first is "That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine," again by the Everly Brothers (1958).  That song was written by Gene Autry (who had introduced Les Paul and Mary Ford to each other in 1946).  This pairs well with John Prine’s cover of a Steve Goodman song, "My Old Man." Steve Goodman may be best known for having written "The City Of New Orleans," made popular by Arlo Guthrie in 1972.  Goodman died of leukemia in 1984, and the following year a tribute- concert recording was released on which Goodman's friend John Prine sings "My Old Man."

Finally, I am adding John Gorka's "The Mercy Of The Wheels" (1991). John Gorka is moving and epigrammatic, and "The Mercy Of The Wheels" adds to these sad, oddly comforting songs of reminiscence.

Here is that song's refrain:
   
     I'd like to catch a train
     That could go back in time
     That could make a lot of stops along the way
     I would go to see my father
     With the eyes he left behind
     I would go for all the words
     I'd like to say
     And I'd take along a sandwich
     And a picture of my girl
     And show them all
     That I made out OK

I went still when first I heard this song.  "I would go for all the words I'd like to say” ––  this restates a theme that runs through "That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine" and "My Old Man”: one of yearning, not just for a lost father but for an opportunity to say what hasn't been said or couldn't be said when that parent was alive.  These songs speak to a yearning to be more knowable to and known by another, to share oneself with another more fully than was possible at some earlier time.

This certainly doesn't apply to all sad songs.  "I Wonder If I Care As Much" lacks the depth of "My Old Man" and "The Mercy Of The Wheels."  It is simply a fine example of a You're-gone-I'm-blue song. Perhaps most sad songs address loss, but only some capture that yearning to say what hasn't been said.  It is those that resonate with me.

One Note Man

I've been listening repeatedly to
"One Note Man," a song off the Youngbloods' first album (1967).  I love this song but can't pick out all the lyrics, and also can't find them
on the net –– so I thought I'd put the question on this blog.

In the course of looking, I found out that perhaps the Youngbloods' best known song, "Get Together," was once placed on a list of "lyrically questionable songs" by the media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications. After 9/11 Clear Channel sent a list of 166 such songs to over 12,000 radio stations.  The list includes: "Johnny Angel" by Shelley Fabares, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel, "That'll Be The Day" by Buddy Holly and the Crickets, "What A Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong.

For more information, as well as a pretty good time, click on “Clear Channel's list of questionable songs.”  Scroll down to the bottom of the webpage to see the entire song-list.

Note: "Get Together" was written by Chet Powers.  Using the stage name Dino Valenti, Powers was a founding member of Quicksilver Messenger Service in the 60s.  "Get Together" was first recorded by The Kingston Trio in 1964 and thereafter by a number of groups, including the Jefferson Airplane and the We Five.

  10-31-2012 Addendum:  Paul Arnoldi wrote "One Note Man," a
  credit-oversight on my part.  The song first appeared on Arnoldi's
  1966 vinyl album, A One Note Man, and its lyrics are more clearly
  articulated than those in the Youngbloods' cover.  See Paul Arnoldi's
  Comments below for more information, and click on song #2 in the
  blue playlist to hear Arnoldi's version.

1010 WINS

In 1962 I was 15 and living in a place close to but outside the continental United States.  At night, it was possible to tune in AM radio stations originating in American cities.  I had copper-wire antennae strung out my bedroom window and affixed to trees, and above my desk a large map of the United States with push pins marking cities whose radio waves reached me.  Call letters were keys to musical pleasures: KDKA (Pittsburgh, Pa.), WOWO (Fort Wayne, Indiana), WWVA (Wheeling, West Virginia), WBZ (Boston), and several New York City stations.

Of all these New York's 1010 WINS was my favorite.

Sometime in early 1962, I entered the WINS "What Rock And Roll Means To Me" in twenty-five words or less contest.  The winner would get the top hundred 45s of the day, a handsome prize.  I sent in my pithy entry (using, as I recall, a thesaurus) and won.  Months later a large package containing the top hundred 45s arrived at my house.  In the box was a congratulatory letter which ended with: "Remember, you are always a winner when you listen to WINS."

Among my winnings were "I Know (You Don't Love Me No More)" by Barbara George, "Please Mr. Postman" by The Marvelettes, and Marvin Gaye's first hit single, "Stubborn Kind Of Fellow" (on which he is backed up by the Vandellas, with no Martha out front yet).  "I Know" and "Please Mr. Postman" were late 1961 releases, and both had staying power.  "Stubborn Kind Of Fellow" was a 1962 release.  All shared chart positions in the summer of 1962.

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/kitstaton/audioplayer.htmlhttps://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/kitstaton/audioplayer.html

I would like to to tell you what I wrote but I never kept a copy.  I have no explanation for this, at the time it didn't seem to occur to me.  Recently I contacted 1010 WINS, which for many years has been an all-news station.  I was hoping they'd have audio archives dating to 1962.  But they did not, so it seems neither of us documented this experience.

Still I do remember the essence of what I said: rock and roll was that era's way of helping people loosen up and (to borrow from the title of a 1970 Rolling Stones album) get their ya-ya's out.  It was a vehicle, but it had predecessors in other vehicles serving the same function –– swing music, say, in the 30s and 40s, or Charleston music in the 20s.  Although modern, rock and roll was also the latest incarnation of something older.

Beginnings

"One Hand On The Radio" (Bill Caddick & Pete Bond) is a song by Canadian singer, Aengus Finnan, and the name of this blog.  All my life I've had one hand on the radio, in fact or in mind.  And while nowadays it is usually through the computer and not radio, music often soundtracks my days.

My first store-bought record was a 78 by Dean Martin.  My mother bought it for me.  It was 1954 and the record was called "Sway."  The song still holds up but there is better, less "produced" Dean Martin –– my favorite, a 1963 album titled Dream With Dean.

1916 PACKAGING OF SUN-MAID 
RAISINS SHOWING LORRAINE
  COLLETT AS THE SUN-MAID GIRL

In 1954 I was eight years old and "Sway" brought rhythm into my life.  I had known about the song from our kitchen radio, a radio which in memory was cream colored and bakelite.  At some point I came to associate "Sway" with the Sun-Maid box of raisins in our kitchen; in particular, with the Sun-Maid raisin girl, who seemed perky and rhythmic herself.

Years later I came across an obituary about the real model for the Sun-Maid raisin girl, Lorraine Collett.  Here is an excerpt from a Wikipedia entry about her:

LORRAINE COLLETT
IN 1915

   Lorraine Collett was born to George Dexter
   Collett and Martha Elizabeth Falkenstein in 
   Kansas City, Missouri.  In 1915, Collett was 
   attending high school and working part-time
   as a seeder and packer for the Griffin &
   Skelley Fruit Packing Company in Fresno,
   California for $15 a week.  That May she 
   was spotted by Leroy Payne, one of the 
   executives of the raisin cooperative, while
   drying her curly brown hair and wearing her
   mother's red bonnet in the backyard of her 
   family's home.  She was hired to promote 
   the California Associated Raisin Co. by 
   handing out free samples at the Panama-
   Pacific Exposition and participating in an unusual promotion that had her 
   dropping raisins from an airplane flying over San Francisco.

Lorraine Collett was born in 1892 and died in 1983.  Collett, kitchen, radio, music –– all blend together and anchor something for me.