A Change Is Gonna Come

A request from a reader. And perfectly timed, too, because I'm moving and this is my change. I hate to cheapen this deeply meaningful and significant song with comparisons to moving to a new and better house, but in the end it's just a song, you know.

Oh, and by the way, Ike Turner beat his wife in case you didn't know.

Wiki P:"A Change Is Gonna Come" is a 1965 single by R&B singer-songwriter Sam Cooke, written and first recorded in 1963 and released under the RCA Victor label shortly after his death in late 1964. Though only a modest hit for Cooke in comparison with his previous singles, the song came to exemplify the sixties Civil Rights Movement. The song has gained in popularity and critical acclaim in the decades since its release.

PLAY: A Change Is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke
PLAY: A Change Is Gonna Come - Otis Redding
PLAY: A Change Is Gonna Come - Neville Brothers
PLAY: A Change Is Gonna Come - Aretha Franklin
PLAY: A Change Is Gonna Come - Tina Turner
PLAY: A Change Is Gonna Come - Campbell Brothers
PLAY: A Change Is Gonna Come - Soul Survivors
PLAY: A Change Is Gonna Come - Cold War Kids
PLAY: A Change Is Gonna Come - Leela James

People Get Ready

My weakness for gospel is once again on display. This being the season to celebrate a little Special Someone's birthday, I suppose that weakness is actually very contemporary.

"It was warrior music," said civil-rights activist Gordon Sellers. "It was music you listened to while you were preparing to go into battle." Mayfield wrote the gospel-driven R&B ballad, he said, "in a deep mood, a spiritual state of mind," just before Martin Luther King's march on the group's hometown of Chicago. Shortly after "People Get Ready" was released, Chicago churches began including their own version of it in songbooks. Mayfield had ended the song with "You don't need no ticket/You just thank the Lord," but the church version, ironically, made it less Christian and more universal: "Everybody wants freedom/This I know." -RS

And god damn, Curtis Mayfield is the SHIT. You can hear him solo on the original, or the greatest version ever that features his band, The Impressions, with some incredible backup and harmonies.

Praise Curtis!

PLAY: People Get Ready - Curtis Mayfield
PLAY: People Get Ready - Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions
PLAY: People Get Ready - Aretha Franklin
PLAY: People Get Ready - Dionne Warwick
PLAY: People Get Ready - Al Green
PLAY: People Get Ready - Spencer Bohren

Mary, Don't You Weep

I don't know why I like spirituals so much. I shouldn't. But the old Negro spirituals almost always sound great, and this is no exception.

Written even before the Civil War, Mary in this song isn't Jesus' girlfriend; it's Mary of Bethany who begged and begged for Jesus to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead. Most of the song, though, is about the Exodus from Egypt ("Pharaoh's army got drownded...") with the obvious freedom references that made it popular during slavery and the civil rights movement as one of the many "freedom songs."

The Swan Silvertones' version is the earliest one I could find (the song was first recorded in 1915 by the Fisk Jubilee Singers), but it is by far the most popular. The band was started in 1938 by a West Virginian coal miner, but this song was recorded in 1962.

The Springsteen version is from his recent Seeger Sessions which I think is a great piece of work. I have no idea who Mike Farris is, but for a white guy, he's pretty soulful.

Enjoy.

PLAY: Mary Don't You Weep - The Swan Silvertones
PLAY: Mary Don't You Weep - Bruce Springsteen
PLAY: Mary Don't You Weep - Mike Farris