Saturday, October 20, 2012

Saturday mornings tunes: Looking out on the morning rain


A little something for what appears to be the beginning of the rainy season here in Oregon.

The story is that Brill Building prodigy Carole King's demo recordings of her songs were passed around as the ultimate party tapes among the cognoscenti of the recording biz in the late '60s and early '70s. Her 1971 quadruple-Grammy album “Tapestry” ended up number 36 on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums of all time.

I believe that Michael Jackson's ”Thriller” bumped “Tapestry” off the monster-sales charts about a decade later, but I really don't remember seeing The Gloved One doing any of his hit singles off that album with just a piano and upright bass.


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Aretha Franklin's version of this song is magnificent, immortal. But at the moment I can only think of one other song in which one diva stole a definitive song back from another: Gladys Knight singing “The Way We Were.”

I may have to dig that one out before too long.

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