Go on, take a teenage trip. Listen to this song like a 17-year old burger-flipping cretin overdosing on hormones, cruising down the boulevard, looking for the heart of Saturday night, bouncing in the driver’s seat, pounding the steering wheel in time, shouting out “Take a goo-ood look at my face!” Nobody will know, and you’ll feel better than you have in a long time.

The lyric consists entirely of names of obscure baseball players from the late 1940s and early 1950s. You don’t have to be a baseball fan to feel here the magic that only music can create–what our adult heart does with the treasured memories of our youth.

Written and sung at 22 and a half, a month before he died. At that age, Lennon was recording ‘Love Me Do’ and Dylan had just finished his first album of original material.

Nobody talks about The Fleetwoods anymore. In my eyes, that’s a tragedy, because so often when I’m feeling like Mr Blue their songs come softly to me. They were the first group to have two records top the Billboard Hot 100 in a single year! No one can take that away from them. I hope no one would want to.

When young Billy Strayhorn played for him backstage, the legendary Duke Ellington was very impressed: “I’d love to have you in my organization. I’ll call you.” But no call came, so Billy, literally hungry, took the chance of showing up at the Duke’s door. Not wanting to go empty-handed, he took the note the Duke had written: “Take the ‘A’ train…”

In which Jeff calls Sir Paul “the Prince of Plastic, the Sheikh of Shallow” (utter blasphemy!) and presents the one song from Paul’s 30something post-Beatle CDs that deserves to be visited and revisited, because it’s
uniquely mature, straightforward, honest and heartfelt.

The only #1 hit written by a sitting Vice President.
And it wasn’t Mike Pence or Spiro Agnew.

In which Jeff is reminded that Sam Cooke takes a back seat to no one, not even to Smokey Robinson; and that the sweetest fruits are often those closest to the roots.