159: Smokey Robinson & The Miracles: ‘Ooh Baby, Baby’

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – ‘Ooh Baby, Baby’

I couple of weeks ago I remarked about the BBC radio series ‘Castaway’, in which sundry celebs select songs to take to a desert island, “Many of the interviewees choose music they associate with landmark events in their lives. Not I, said Jeff. Music’s too important to confuse it with life.”

But since I ain’t on no desert island, and I have world enough and time to indulge myself in gooey nostalgia, I’d like to talk about one of the most evocative pieces of music in my emotional archive, a song that retrieves for me a time and place in my past better than any ol’ hypnosis or truth serum or Kodachrome snapshot. It’s The Motown Magic. Hey, it’s the mojo.

The year is 1966, and I’m in my freshman year at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Seriously. Now you might wonder what a fidgety Jewish boy from Cincinnati was doing in a unflinchingly white bred Republican Methodist college of 1400 tucked away in the foothills of the Allegheny range, nary a Semite in sight.

Allegheny College

Good question. I guess, in retrospect, I was trying to become something I wasn’t – someone who could swim in the middle of the stream. Even in high school, I was marginal. Not a bad kid, but certainly not Model Student of the Year. I was Maynard, not Dobie. I hung with the off-base crowd, the singers and the actors and the writers and the out-on-the-back-stoop smokers. The ones who not only listened to The Beatles, but even The Rolling Stones! The ones who had been seen (outside school, of course) wearing blue jeans. The rebels sans cause. The ones pointedly disliked by Miss Davis. And Mr Aug. And Mrs Whittaker. And Mr Duffy. And Charlie (“I’d rather have ten gonorrheas than one syphilis”) Smith, the assistant football coach and teacher of Senior Health. The list goes on, but I’ll spare you.

Smokey Joe’s Cafe

Thankfully time came to choose a college. Surprise, surprise, my grades were underwhelming, but my board scores were surprisingly good. (I won’t even mention the math teacher who was convinced that I’d cheated or there was a clerical error, because there was no way in the world that jerk could have gotten a score like that.) I almost went to Antioch College, but I drove up there one snowy day and saw a guy wearing a sport jacket with nothing underneath it.

That was a bit too much (too little, actually) for me, so I decided to go the straight and narrow. Why not choose the path of least resistance?, I asked myself. Become a middle-class WASP. Enjoy the same television shows and books and movies and music that everyone else does. Go to a good school, get a good job, lead a good life. Okay!!

Miracle

So I just squeezed under the scholastic cut of this very selective, very private school, probably on some cultural diversity clause (this was the time of the Civil Rights Act, after all). This is what I found:

There are girls’ dorms and boys’ dorms. Girls don’t go in boys’ dorms, boys’ don’t go in girls’ dorms. The two best fraternities don’t accept Hebrews. Dress dinners every weekday evening and Sunday lunch, at which the boys wear a jacket and tie and the girls a skirt and heels. Sit alternate boy/girl, and the boy slides in the girl’s chair for her. Coeds are allowed to sit on the sumptuous lawns, but are required to maintain an angle of at least 45° relative to the ground. In other words, no reclining. Because we all know what happens when coeds recline.

Miracles

I wrote a letter to the school paper expressing some dissatisfaction with these draconian bylaws. That was the end of my career in The Path of Least Resistance. Fellow students and staff stared at me – well, like I wasn’t wearing any shirt at all under my sport jacket, so I started wearing my father’s WWII fatigue jacket and an American flag tie to the dress dinners. The Dean of Students called me in and said (gently), “Jeff, I think both you and I realize that Allegheny College isn’t the place for you.” “Yes, Mr Cabot-Lodge,” I said, “I think you have a point there.”

But I needed to hang around to finish the school year. I began to grow a scraggle of a beard and roam the streets of Meadville (of which there weren’t too many). I soon found myself on the wrong side of the tracks, habituating Smokey Joe’s Cafe, a modest emporium patronized by Meadvillians of the Afro-American persuasion. It had two very memorable fixtures. First, a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” carding policy. Second was a juke box with a rich stock of R&B music.

Rebel sans cause

I spent a lot of time there, getting acquainted with the local brews and the husky, misty music, both of which were somewhat of a revelation for Barefoot Boy with Cheek. I don’t remember the names of any of the beers (I guess we don’t need Mr Cabot-Lodge to figure out why). But I sure do remember The Song that I learned at the knee of Jimmy’s Jukebox, wishing with all my heart and with all Smokey’s soul that I had a girl to love as much as he loved the girl he had wronged so painfully. But I didn’t, so I spent those days not going to class, nursing my beer, and wondering what was going to become of my life.

I’m not even going to ruin The Song by dissecting it historically or discographically or flight-of-the-fancily. I don’t want to interfere with your memory or with mine. You can read all about its soul brother companion piece, the magnificent ‘The Tracks of My Tears’, which I discussed in SoTW 028. Both are from the album “Going to a Go-Go”, together with the fine title song.

Miracle

But nothing compares to ‘Ooh Baby, Baby’. For me it conjures that particular bar & grill at that particular crossroads. But I imagine there ain’t a person of my generation for whom any song can rival the unadulterated, luscious gush of emotion that is Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ ‘Ooh Baby, Baby’.

I did you wrong, my heart went out to playBut in the game I lost you, what a price to pay–

I’m crying.

Ooh baby baby

Mistakes, I know I’ve made a few

But I’m only human, you’ve made mistakes too
Im crying.

Ooh baby baby. 

I’m just about at the end of my rope

But I can’t stop tryin’ I can’t give up hope
‘Cause I feel that one day I’ll hold you near
Whisper I still love you until the day is here
Oooh, I’m crying.

Ooh, baby baby

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154: Laura Nyro, ‘Save the Country’

Laura Nyro – Save the Country (Stereo Single)

Laura Nyro – Save The Country (Mono Single)

Laura Nyro – Save the Country (Album)

Laura Nyro – Save the Country (Live TV performance)

I learned something this week: you can appreciate music even when missiles are falling on you. Well near you, anyway. Certain music you can appreciate even because missiles are falling near you.

I live in southern Israel. My city had 86 missiles shot at it over eight days from our neighbors in Gaza. There’s an Israeli-developed anti-missile system called Iron Dome. It detects the missile, sets off alarms in the targeted areas. This is what it sounds like from my room. Everyone runs for ‘safety rooms’ made of reinforced concrete. Poets in the heat of inspiration. Kids on potties. Couples in flagrante delicto. Barbers in the middle of a haircut. Everyone.

Iron Dome

After half a minute’s warning, the whoosh of the Iron Dome. Then we wait 10 seconds for the boom. It might not come at all. Or it might happen up in the air above an open field outside of town. Or it might be among the 1/3 of the incoming rockets that aren’t caught, and it might fall on your next-door neighbor, or on you, or on your children. That’s the bad time, those 10 seconds.

There are people around the world who say that Israel’s at fault in this conflict. I’m here to talk about music, not to shout polemics, but let me just say that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza to the recognized international border seven years ago; that Israel’s rationale for the sea embargo is to prevent Hamas from stockpiling missiles; and that anyone who thinks one side is all wrong and the other is all right in a conflict as complex as this one is too biased to talk to.

Velvet Dome

On one level, I dealt with the 86 sirens and the explosions with equanimity. No tears, no screaming, no bed-wetting; I’ve had a pretty full life. But still, I do feel a certain indignation, deepening with each day of sirens and explosions. Stop shooting at me! I don’t want to hurt you! Stop trying to hurt me! This war stuff is crazy!

And a sound track emerged:

I got fury in my soul, fury’s gonna take me to the glory goal –

In my mind I can’t study war no more.

Save the people, save the children, save the country, now!

It’s ‘Save the Country’ by Laura Nyro (1947-1997). I’ve known it intimately since for 44 years, but it never resonated as strongly as during those sirens and explosions. It’s a furious demand for an end to violence, sung in her unique street gospel style. ‘I will not tolerate this evil! I personally am going to fill this world with love, goddamit, and if you keep shucking your ugly, I’m personally gonna kick your ass!!’

I’m reminded of a story my college friend Steve told me. He was in a bad place, dropped acid in the worst possible circumstances, and took off on a Bad Trip. He told me that he felt The Devil was about to envelop him. But he did have the presence of mind to sit himself down and put on “Eli and the 13^th Confession”, knowing that Laura would protect him; she knew all about fending off Lucifer. That’s sort of how I felt this week. Laura’s unbridled love would protect me. Together with Iron Dome.

Come on people, come on children,
Come on down to the glory river.
Gonna wash you up  and wash you down, gonna lay the devil down.

The song and the atmosphere that evoked it sent me on a binge of listening to Laura Nyro (not that I need much of a push). I listen to her frequently and intently and passionately. She is one of my very favorite artists. I usually confine myself to her masterpiece “Eli and the 13^th Confession” and to “Spread Your Wings and Fly: Live at the Fillmore East”, recorded in 1971 but released only in 2004. Here’s ‘Save the Country’ from that show. While we’re at the Fillmore, here’s ‘Walk on By’, a knock-out ‘Spanish Harlem’, and the sublime ‘Emmie’.

This time I revisited her entire oeuvre, particularly enjoying the 1970 “Christmas and the Beads of Sweat” (including ‘When I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag’ and ‘Up on the Roof’) and this hour-long low-quality video “Live in Pittsburgh” from 1994. It begins inauspiciously – overweight (from chemotherapy?); in Pittsburgh; in daylight; at a low point in her career and nearing the end of her life; on electric piano (why in heaven’s name?) accompanied only by 3 singers; and including songs dedicated to Animal Rights, Native Americans, and her own menstruation (no kidding). But amazingly, it’s a knockout.

Here’s ‘Save the Country’ from that show. And just for good measure, here’s ‘Dedicated to the One I Love’ and from her first album ‘Blowin Away/Wedding Bell Blues’. Oh, and one I never appreciated before, ‘Oh Yeah, Maybe Baby (The Heebie Jeebies)’.

And here’s a fine 10-minute film with and about Laura made by her long-time lady partner in 1995.

Up On The Roof

It reminded me just how much I love and admire and am inspired by Laura Nyro. She’s a major artist. Together with Joni Mitchell, the two most accomplished women to emerge from the rock idiom. Joni is an artisan, a craftswoman, a perfectionist, every song a finely cut gem. Laura is all soul and inspiration, a look-ma-no-hands roller-coaster trip.

If Laura was too quirky to be fully appreciated during her prime years, recognition of her talent and influence has been growing by quantum leaps in recent years. Elton John, guesting on Elvis Costello’s TV show, said “This is music so far ahead of its time that it still sounds unbelievable – the soul, the passion, the audacity of her rhythmic and melody changes was like nothing I’d ever heard before.” Rickie Lee Jones told me how deeply indebted she is to Laura. This year Laura was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bette Midler.

‘Save the Country’ was Laura’s response to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy on June 5, 1968 (Keep the dream of the two young brothers). I remember the event and its context well. It was a trying time, difficult to maintain your equilibrium let alone envision peace. Not Universal Harmony. Just let-me-get-through-the-day-unscathed peace. The song was originally recorded  that summer as a single, her first release after her monolithic second album, “Eli and the 13th Confession”, then subsequently in a different version on her follow-up “New York Tendaberry”.

Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro

Laura was having a lot more success in the late 1960s as a songwriter than as a performer. She had bleached hit treatments of her songs by Three Dog Night (‘Eli’s Coming’); Barbra Streisand with “Stoney End”, “Time and Love”, and “Flim Flam Man”; Blood, Sweat & Tears and Peter, Paul & Mary with “And When I Die”; and especially The 5th Dimension with “Blowing Away”, “Wedding Bell Blues”, “Stoned Soul Picnic”, “Sweet Blindness”, “Save The Country” and “Black Patch”.

Columbia President Clive Davis and Producer Bones Howe appreciated Laura’s talent and wanted to help her take off commercially. Bones Howe, on ‘Save the Country’: “She was excited about it when she did [the single version]. But when she stepped back she said, wait a minute, that’s not me. It was too produced, too pop for her. She wanted to do ‘Save the Country’ just sitting at the piano. She said ‘you make records that sock it to the people. I can’t sock it to the people. I just don’t do that.’”

I’ve always felt closer to the single version. I find it a finely fashioned pop funk production. To tell the truth, I’ve never succeeded in snuggling up to “New York Tendaberry”. I find her slow, rambling songs (‘December’s Boudoir’ and ‘Woman’s Blues’ from “Eli”, most of “Tendaberry”), hard to follow – diffuse, unfocused, less engaging than when she’s being melodic. The first half of the Tendaberry ‘Save the Country’ is solo piano, and is fine. At mid-song it shifts gears in typical Nyronian fashion, to my taste to too hysterical a tempo, the orchestration overbearing.

The version that grabbed me most strongly this time is the rare TV appearance (1968, I’m guessing), in unfortunately low quality. She takes beautiful rhythmic liberties, she swings and sings and rocks and smiles. She lays the devil down. She makes me believe – even as the sirens are wailing and the explosions are shaking my walls – that we can build the dream with love. That’s what music can do. Thank you so much, Laura.

Come on people, come on children,
Come on down to the glory river.
Gonna wash you up  and wash you down, gonna lay the devil down.

 Come on people, come on children,
There’s a king at the glory river.
And the precious king, he loved the people to sing
Babes in the blinking sun, saying “We Shall Overcome”

I got fury in my soul, fury’s gonna take me to the glory goal –
In my mind I can’t study war no more.

Save the people, save the children, save the country, now.
Come on people, come on children,
Come on down to the Glory River.
Gonna wash you up  and wash you down,
Gonna lay the devil down.

Come on people, sons and mothers,
Keep the dream of the two young brothers.
Got to take that dream and ride that dove.
We could build the dream with love.

I got fury in my soul, fury’s gonna take me to the glory goal –
In my mind I can’t study war no more.
Save the people, save the children, save the country, now.

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Tags: Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, Eli and the 13th Confession, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, New York Tendaberry, Pittsburgh, Save the Country, Spread Your Wings and Fly

146: Hamilton Camp, ‘Pride of Man’

Lightfoot — Pride of Man
Pride of Man (Quicksilver Messenger Service)

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

Last week we wrote about ‘Early Morning Rain’, a song written by Gordon Lightfoot (b . 1938), the Canadian folksinger-songwriter whose muscular acoustic guitar/string bass/soft drums trio greatly influenced Bob Dylan (“Bringing It All Back Home”, “John Wesley Harding”). My friend Avi Katz, a wonderful illustrator and all-round repository of knowledge from the names of carpentry tools to the real worth of a popular painter, pointed me to ‘Pride of Man’, a fairly obscure song written by Hamilton Camp in 1964, which presaged 9/11 graphically and conceptually.

Flash of fire ten times brighter than the day…

I don’t go in for imaginary stuff. I’m an old-school meat-and-potatoes kind of guy: if I can’t hold it or chew it, I don’t want to hear about it. I read no science fiction or fantasy. So when someone tells me that a 1964 song describes a 2001 event, I don’t even bother to scoff. Except when it’s Avi, because Avi’s a lot smarter than me. So I checked it out. Know what? ‘Pride of Man’ (©1964 by Hamilton Camp) vividly describes the September 11 attacks (©2001 by al-Qaeda).

The song was a minor hit in 1966 for Gordon Lightfoot on his debut album, and in 1968 for Quicksilver Messenger Service (one of the leading San Francisco bands together with Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead).

Hamilton Camp

Who is Hamilton Camp, you may ask. I admit I had only a foggy recollection of him from Back Then (but then most of my memories from BT are pretty foggy). It turns out Bob Camp (1934-2005) was evacuated from London during the Blitz and became a child actor in Hollywood.  He played in a trillion movies and TV shows, including a messenger boy in the 1953 version of “Titanic”, the uncredited second clerk in “The Graduate” (although I looked and could only find Buck Henry at the desk) and  in two episodes of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” as Leck, a Ferengi) and sang folk music with Bob Gibson and by himself.

He changed his name to Hamilton after joining the Subud spiritual movement, founded in the 1920s in Indonesia, now with 10,000 followers worldwide (including Jim>Roger McGuinn). “His soul had an argument with itself and the side that won decided to stop killing itself, to stop singing for release and to start singing for love.” Okay. I guess you can’t argue against singing for love. Hey, maybe I’ll change my name. How about, um, Isaac? Anyway, Ham’s most famous song was indeed ‘Pride of Man’:

Hamilton Leck

Turn around, go back down, back the way you came
Can’t you see that flash of fire ten times brighter than the day
And behold the mighty city broken in the dust again
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again

It’s hard to not picture the firefighters trying to climb the stairs of the Twin Towers, the song admonishing them that their attempts to combat the explosion will be for naught.

Turn around, go back down, back the way you came
Babylon is laid to waste, Egypt’s buried in her shame
Their mighty men are beaten down, their kings have fallen in the ways
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again

Our purpose here isn’t to quibble with the details of the song (the Egyptian pyramids are still standing, Egypt has never been associated with ‘shame’ in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Egypt metaphor is just a one-time toss-off in this stanza). Bob/Hamilton is by all accounts a Minor Prophet. But let’s take a look at that Babylon metaphor.

Pride of Man

Genesis begins with three stories – the Creation, the Deluge, and the Tower of Babel. Why the flood? “And God saw the earth, and behold it was corrupted, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on the earth.” Boom, reformat the global Hard Disk, let’s try again.

After the flood, Noah was pretty depressed (daunted I suppose by the major cleaning task facing him and Mrs Noah), so God saw fit to promise him that he would never again resort to such drastic measures, that the world would continue to revolve. But He just turned around, and lookee wa’ happen: at the beginning of Genesis 11, ‘the entire earth was of one language, and one speaking’. A whole bunch of Noah’s descendants started dwelling in close proximity (that gregarious, tribal tendency I suppose), real estate got scarce, and the engineers figured out how to make bricks. “And they said, let’s build us a city and a skyscraper with its top all the way up in the sky, and we’ll make a name for ourselves, so that we won’t scatter all over the earth.”

You know, on the face of things, that doesn’t sound so bad to me. But God came down to check out The Tower, and He took a different view: “Here, one people and one language for all of them, and this is what they start doing? Now nothing will stop them from all their scheming. Let’s go down and babble up their language, so they can’t understand one another’s language. And God scattered them all over the face of the earth, and they stopped building that city.”

Pride of Lions

As anyone who’s taken high school French knows, differences in language are indeed a giant barrier to worldwide cooperation, even with Google Translate. I don’t profess to understand the Babel story completely, but it’s clear to me that there is a dynamic here, a dialectic. My Pooh understanding of the story tells me that there’s nothing inherently wrong with Man’s ambition, nor with his drive to create cities. The problem isn’t with the action itself, it’s with Man’s character. God created those Babylonians, just like He created us, and He knows if we’re going to be bad or good. Let’s rephrase that–He knows we’re going to be bad. So he decides at the very beginning of Earth Ver. 2.1 to lead us not into temptation: no skyscrapers, guys, it’ll only get you into trouble.

Turn around, go back down, back the way you came
Terror is on every side, though the leaders are dismayed
Those who put their faith in fire, in fire their faith shall be repaid
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again.

Turn around, go back down, back the way you came
Shout a warning to the nations that the sword of God is raised
On Babylon that mighty city, rich in treasure, wide in fame
It shall cause thy tower to fall and make it be a pyre of flame
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again.

Oh thou that dwell on many waters, rich in treasure, wide in fame
Bow unto a god of gold, thy pride of might shall be thy shame
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again.

Whose side is Hamilton Camp on here? In his prophecy, is he saying that al- Qaeda is the arm of God, that the World Trade Center is the symbol of Man’s hubris, his challenge to the supremacy of God? That’s a pretty uncomfortable reading of the 1964 song, and a very troubling way of looking at the events that took place eleven years ago this week.

And only God can lead the people back into the earth again
Thy holy mountain be restored, Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord.

Reb Chaim of Brisk

Sunday night begins Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New Year. It’s a time for reflection, for each of us to perform חשבון נפש (spiritual accounting). That’s a very difficult task, making sense out of all this. For a helping hand I usually turn for perspective to the wisest man I’ve read, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the grandson of Reb Chaim of Brisk (1853-1918), the founder of the modern Yeshiva approach to learning.  ‘The Rav’ himself (1903-93) was born in a shtetl in what became Lithuania, earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in Germany in 1932, then moved to Boston where he became a community rabbi. In 1941 he succeeded his father as head of the yeshiva at Yeshiva University in New York, where he taught until his death. He ordained over 2000 rabbis, and is considered to be the seminal figure in Modern Orthodox Judaism (a camp with which I identify), which advocates a synthesis between strict observance to Jewish law, the study of Torah, secular scholarship, and involvement with the community at large.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, ‘The Rav’

In addition to his achievements as a community rabbi and Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Soloveitchik was a profound philosopher. Perhaps his most influential work has been “The Lonely Man of Faith”, a 110-page treatise reconciling the fragmented, existential modern perception of the world with religious faith. I find it brutally honest, painfully truthful, and a source of great consolation.

The Rav analyzes the two stories of The Creation (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2), the Adam of each. He probes the dichotomy, the seeming contradictions, between the two Adams.

Adam the first is created in the “image of God”, referring “to man’s inner charismatic endowment as a creative being. Man’s likeness to God expresses itself in man’s striving and ability to become a creator.” It is he who has the “mandate to subdue nature”. “Man acquires dignity through glory, through his majestic posture vis-à-vis his environment.”

“While Adam the first is dynamic and creative…, Adam the second is receptive and beholds the world in its original dimensions.” “ Adam the second perceives the world as it is created and asks not ‘how?’ but ‘why?’” “He wants to understand the living, ‘given’ world into which he has been cast.” “He asks: ‘What is the purpose of all this? What is the message that is embedded in organic and inorganic matter, and what does the great challenge reaching me from beyond the fringes of the universe as well as from the depths of my tormented soul mean?”

Our challenge in this world, The Rav argues, is synthesize these two paradigms in our lives. To build, and simultaneously to remember our insignificance. Pride leads to a fall, Hamilton Camp reminds us. What would God say about the al-Qaeda attacks? I’m not privy to that. I never thought of the WTC as a symbol of man’s pride, and I do think of al-Qaeda as a horrifying example of where self-righteousness can lead. But I do understand that we of the West are not the only inhabitants of this earth; and that this earth has become so small, and that we have overcome so many of the boundaries of speaking in 70 tongues, that we really do need to find ways to ensure that we accommodate all of God’s children. Our boundaries are no longer those of our town. We all have global responsibilities. What’s the נפקא מינה of that, the operative conclusion? I don’t know. My assumption is that תיקון עולם, Tikkun Olam, fixing the world, begins with fixing oneself. So while I’m praying during Rosh HaShana, I’ll try to give thought to my own human tendencies to excessive pride as an individual and as a citizen; and to my desires to make some kind of statement while I’m here; and how to best reconcile the two. I’ll try to come up with a plan to make myself a better person in the year to come.

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Tags: al-Quaeda, Avi Katz, deluge, flood, Gordon Lightfoot, Hamilton Camp, Lonely Man of Faith, Noah, Pride of Man, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Reb Chaim of Brisk, Rosh HaShana, September 11, Soloveitchik, Subud, Tower of Babel, Twin Towers

132: James Taylor, ‘Enough To Be On Your Way’

James Taylor, ‘Enough To Be On Your Way’

This week was the fifth anniversary of my sister’s death, at 62, from lung cancer. She was a denizen of Marlboro country all those years, and succumbed to statistics. Madie was five years older than me, and I loved her dearly. Never, not once in our entire lives, did we fight. Not when we were kids, not when we were adults. As youngsters, we had the age and sex differences to keep us apart, and a mutual enemy to keep us together. As adults, there was a literal ocean between us. From 21, when I left the US, for almost 30 years, I saw her only a few times for a few days each. We would talk on the phone for a short time a couple of times a year, and exchange only sporadic aerograms.

She never came here to visit me in the life I made for myself. For many years it was logistically and financially impractical, and then she got sick. But I understand that she really didn’t want to come, so strongly did she resent my having moved to “the other side of the world”. She loved me simply and deeply and purely, as I did her. She wanted me near her on occasion, in the hard times, in the good times, as she went through her life. But I had removed myself, and she never overcame the resentment of that fact.

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Tags: Alex Taylor, Enough to be On Your Way, Hugh Taylor, James Taylor, Kate Taylor, Livingston Taylor, Sweet Baby James