Music of the Day, 2 November 2024

i can't get off so i'm here to stay

Well, this is awkward. A song snippet from my childhood popped up on the radio station in my mind, along with a great piano riff. It seemed a positive tune, so I started thinking about how to compose today’s MotD.

Then I found a great video on YouTube, listened to the song all the way through, and realized its emotional timbre is rather different than what I thought. Turns out I’d misunderstood the second line of the chorus for all these years, and the title is a question, not a statement.

Grokking the song better has brought my mood down a bit, but the vid balances it out pretty well, so I’m sticking with it.

I don’t know why I don’t think of Joe Cocker more often, because every time I do, it lifts my mood. He isn’t a mere performer: he feels every aspect of the music and expresses it through his voice and body. That’s how I experience his powerful singing, at least. I just discovered that I have his 1977 compilation, Joe Cocker’s Greatest Hits, so my evening music is sorted. Huzzah!

“Feelin’ Alright?” was written by Dave Mason for Traffic. I probably heard their rendition, but Cocker’s is what always comes to my mind. When he covered it, Cocker dropped the question mark from the title, and that’s how it’s styled now.

It’s possible that I saw this performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, but I don’t remember. Today, the groovy clothes and dance moves are giving me life. Those hip-huggers¹ take me back to a more innocent time. I know the late ‘60s had plenty of unrest and upheaval, but I was young enough for much of it to not really permeate my mind.

As was discussed here in a MotD featuring Three Dog Night, the fact that Joe Cocker’s success came from covering others’ great songs is a regular explanation for his absence in the rock & roll hall of fame. If accurate, it’s an equally egregious oversight.

1. that’s what we called low-rise jeans, younglings