Freda Payne – Bring the Boys Home

I ran across this song a couple of months ago. In 1971 it was banned by Arm Forces Radio. I thought this would be a good post for Memorial Day.

From her 1971 album Contact. The song reached #12 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart on June 5th 1971.

From Wikipedia

“Bring the Boys Home” is a song recorded by rhythm and blues singer Freda Payne in 1971 during the Vietnam War era. It was an anti-war song that was aimed at the sending of troops to fight in an increasingly unpopular war.

The song was produced by Greg Perry and released on the Invictus label. It was backed with “I Shall Not Be Moved”. The song came out at a time when soldiers were returning to America dead and in body bags. A higher than normal amount of the soldiers were black. The soldiers were only boys at the age of 20, which was the average age that many of them were killed. In spite of the healthy amount of airplay it received in the US, the US Command from the American Forces Network banned it. The reason given was that it would be of benefit to the enemy. 50,000 copies of the album Contact were pressed before it was added to the album after it became a hit. It replaced “He’s In My Life” which was the first track on side 1.

The Soul Source section of the May 22 issue of Billboard named it the best new record of the week.

Bring the Boys Home

Fathers are pleading
Lovers are all alone
Mothers are praying
Send our sons back home (tell ’em ’bout it)
You marched them away
Yes, you did now
On ships and planes
To the senseless war
Facing death in vain

Bring the boys home (bring ’em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring ’em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring ’em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring ’em back alive) (why don’t you)
Turn the ships around (everybody oh)
Lay your weapons down

Can’t you see ’em march across the sky
All the soldiers that have died
Tryin’ to get home
Can’t you see them tryin’ to get home?
Tryin’ to get home
They’re tryin’ to get home
Seesaw fire (tell ’em ’bout it
On the battlefield
Enough men have already
Been wounded and killed

Ooh, ooh
Tryin’ to get home
Can’t you see them tryin’ to get home? (Have mercy)
Ooh, ooh
Tryin’ to get home, tryin’ to get home

Bring the boys home (bring ’em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring ’em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring ’em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring ’em back alive)
What they doing over there, now (bring ’em back alive)
When we need them over here, now (bring ’em back alive)
What they doing over there, now (bring ’em back alive)
When we need them over here, now (bring ’em back alive)
Bring ’em home, bring ’em home (bring ’em back alive)
Bring ’em home, bring ’em home (bring ’em back alive)

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Angelo Bond / General N. Johnson / Gregory S. Perry

Dorothy Moore – Misty Blue

I came across this song last year, I barely remembered it. Even though several artists have recorded it I believe this is the best version. This was the most successful recording of the song. The song peaked at number 3 on Billboards Hot 100 chart on June 12, 1976.

From Wikipedia

“Misty Blue” is a song written by Bob Montgomery that has been recorded and made commercially successful by several music artists. Although Montgomery wrote the song for a different artist in mind, it was brought first to the attention of Wilma Burgess in 1966. It was recorded by Eddy Arnold the following year, both versions were top 5 Country Hits. A decade later, blues artist Dorothy Moore released the highest-charting version of the song and it reached the top ten in several different radio formats. Following Moore’s revival of the track, numerous artists re-covered the tune, including country artist Billie Jo Spears. Spears’s version would also go on to become a successful single release. Numerous other artists and musicians of different genres have recorded their own versions of “Misty Blue”. The song is now considered both a country music and blues standard.

Bob Montgomery originally wrote the song for Brenda Lee, recalling, “I wrote ‘Misty Blue’ in about twenty minutes. It was a gift and it was perfect for Brenda Lee, but she turned it down. Her producer Owen Bradley loved the song and as he couldn’t push her to do it.

Prior to Moore’s blues version of “Misty Blue”, fellow blues singer Joe Simon cut the song. Released in 1972, Simon’s version of the song only became a regional hit.

It was through the Joe Simon version that Malaco Records owner Tommy Couch was familiar with “Misty Blue” which Couch would record in 1973 with Dorothy Moore, a native of Jackson MS who had recorded a number of tracks at the Malaco Studios in Jackson. Moore would recall receiving a morning call at her home from Couch inviting Moore to Couch’s studio to hear a song he deemed perfect for her: (Dorothy Moore quote:)“I didn’t have a car at the time, so I took the bus to Malaco [where] I listened to the song [and] liked it…The rhythm section [was] there [so] we decided to record it. They had the lyrics typed out and [put] in front of me. And we did that record in one take. ‘Misty Blue’ was meant for me” – although Moore admits: “I recorded it just like I did any other. I didn’t say: ‘This is a hit.’ I never saw [great success] coming.”

Evidently reluctant to release the track themselves, Malaco Records shopped Moore’s “Misty Blue” to major labels without success, with the track remaining “in the can” until November 1975 when the cash-strapped Malaco Records used the last of its resources to press Moore’s “Misty Blue” which they released themselves. When Moore was advised of her recording’s belated release by Couch (Dorothy Moore quote:)“I [asked to] come in [to the studio] and add one thing to it. I had a copy of the recording [and had realized] the intro was too long – and [so] I put that ‘mmmm-ooh-a-ooh’ over the first few notes.” Also Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section veteran Jimmy Johnson overdubbed his rhythm guitar work on to the 1973 track. Malaco Records did shop the updated track to Florida-based TK Records whose owner Henry Stone passed on releasing Moore’s “Misty Blue” while agreeing for TK to act as national distributor for Malaco’s own release of the track which Stone began promoting heavily via his own independent network.

After receiving its initial airplay in Chicago and Washington DC, Moore’s single broke in the southern states in April 1976 and three months later it was nominated for a Grammy Award. In 1976 the single reached number 2 on the R&B chart and 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as number 14 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Billboard ranked it as the No. 19 song for 1976.

Misty Blue

Oh, it’s been such a long, long time
Look like I’d get you off of my mind
But I can’t
Just the thought of you (just the thought of you)
Turns my whole world misty blue (misty blue)

Oh honey, just the mention of your name (just your name)
Turns the flicker to a flame
Listen to me good, baby
I think of the things we used to do
And my whole world turns (misty blue) misty blue

Oh baby, I should forget you
Heaven knows I tried (you know I tried)
Baby, when I say that I’m glad we’re through
Deep in my heart I know I’ve lied
I’ve lied, I’ve lied (just the thought of you, misty blue)

Oh honey, it’s been such a long, long time
Looks like I’d get you off of my mind
But I can’t
Just the thought of you (just the thought of you), my love
My whole world turns misty blue (misty blue)

Oh, oh, I can’t, oh, I can’t
Oh, I can’t forget you
My whole world turns misty blue
Oh, oh, my love
My whole world turns misty blue (misty blue)
Baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, I can’t forget you
My whole world turns misty blue

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Bob Montgomery

Dan Fogelberg – Same Old Lang Syne

Free Fallin'

From his 1980 album, The Innocent Age. The song peaked at #9 on Billboards Hot 100 chart on February 20, 1981.

From Songfacts.

As Fogelberg tells it on his official website, the song is totally autobiographical. He was visiting family back home in Peoria, Illinois in the mid-’70s when he ran into an old girlfriend at a convenience store.

After Fogelberg’s death from prostate cancer in 2007, the woman who he wrote the song about came forward with her story. Her name is Jill Greulich, and she and Fogelberg dated in high school when she was Jill Anderson. As she explained to the Peoria Journal Star in a December 22, 2007 article, they were part of the Woodruff High School class of 1969, but went to different colleges. After college, Jill got married and moved to Chicago, and Dan went to Colorado to pursue music. On Christmas Eve, they were…

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Counting Crows – A Long December

From their 1996 album, Recovering The Satellites. The song peaked at #5 on the US Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart and #1 on the Canadian RPM Top Singles chart.

From Songfacts

During the taping of a VH1 Storytellers performance, lead singer Adam Duritz talked about the song: “In the middle of December of ’95 my friend Jennifer got run over by a car, just creamed. And I spent that whole month, while we were just beginning the record and most of January and February in the hospital. Each morning and early afternoon then I’d go to the studio, the house where we were recording, and we’d play all afternoon and all night.

It was a very weird time because there is a lot of stress, not that it’s a big deal being a second album, but any album. They’re just not that easy to make. It’s a very stressful process, especially when you’re first starting out. I spent a lot of time in the hospital which is pretty weird. But one day I just left the studio about 2 in the morning, and I went to my friend Samantha and Tracy’s house which is Hillside Manor, that’s what we call it anyway, it’s just a little house and I sat there talking with them. I woke them up, got them out of bed and made them talk to me for a couple hours, then I went home to my house. I wrote this song between about 4 and 6 and then went to the hospital the next day, and came to the house and I played it for the guys before dinner and taught it to them after dinner.

We played it about six or seven times. It was take number six. We just stopped, that was it. We recorded the song, it was done. We all went into the kitchen and had a cold beer, I grabbed Brad our engineer and ran back out about five minutes later, had him play the tape three times, just recorded all the harmonies, and we’ve never touched it since, that was it. It’s a completely live song except for the harmonies.

It’s a song about looking back on your life and seeing changes happening, and for once for me, looking forward and thinking, ya know, things are gonna change for the better – ‘maybe this year will be better than the last.’ And so, like a lot of songs on the end of an album it’s not about everything turning out great, but it at least it is about hope… and the possibilities.”

Courteney Cox, who was starring in Friends at the time, is the girl in the video (not her first – she was in Bruce Springsteen’s video for “Dancing In The Dark” and Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “Good Intentions”). She and Adam Duritz met on the set and dated for a while. Duritz, dated Cox’ Friends co-star Jennifer Aniston in 1995.

Lawrence Carroll directed the video, which finds Duritz playing a grand piano in the woods and does some serious longing. Carroll used many of the same elements – words scrawled on walls, cutaways to pretty girl looking plaintive – in the Collective Soul video for “Precious Declaration.”

A Long December

A long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can’t remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin’
Now the days go by so fast

And it’s one more day up in the canyons
And it’s one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven I wish you would

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

And it’s one more day up in the canyons
And it’s one more night in Hollywood
If you think you might come to California I think you should

Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it’s one more day up in the canyon
And it’s one more night in Hollywood
It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean I guess I should

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Writer/s: ADAM FREDRIC DURITZ, BEN G MIZE, CHARLES THOMAS GILLINGHAM, DANIEL JOHN VICKREY, DAVID LYNN BRYSON, MATTHEW MARK MALLEY
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group

Darlene Love – Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)

From Wikipedia

Upon release, the song did not find commercial success but in later years, it has gone on to become a Christmas standard. It charted for the first time on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2018 and has since peaked at number 16. It has also peaked at number seven on the Holiday 100 chart. The song has been covered by Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé, and U2, among others.

From Songfacts

Through the mid-’60s, Phil Spector was focused on singles, with his definition of an album being “two hits and ten pieces of junk.” He took a different approach, however, when he recorded a Christmas album in 1963, putting a great deal of effort into every track. The only original song on the album was Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” which he wrote with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Spector issued the song as a single when the album came out, but unfortunately this was the same day US President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. This seriously dampened the holiday mood; the single, as well as the album, were withdrawn.”Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” lay dormant throughout the ’60s and ’70s, but in the ’80s, covers and media uses helped introduce the song to a new audience, and radio stations started adding it to their holiday playlists. It eventually became a Christmas classic, but it took decades.

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

The snow’s coming down
(Christmas) I’m watching it fall
(Christmas) Lots of people around
(Christmas) Baby please come home

The church bells in town
(Christmas) All ringing in song
(Christmas) Full of happy sounds
(Christmas) Baby please come home

They’re singing “Deck The Halls”
But it’s not like Christmas at all
‘Cause I remember when you were here
And all the fun we had last year

Pretty lights on the tree
(Christmas) I’m watching them shine
(Christmas) You should be here with me
(Christmas) Baby please come home

They’re singing “Deck The Halls”
But it’s not like Christmas at all
‘Cause I remember when you were here
And all the fun we had last year

If there was a way
(Christmas) I’d hold back this tear
(Christmas) But it’s Christmas day
(Please) Please, (please) please
(Please) Please, (please) please
(Please) Please, (please) please
(Please) Baby, please come home

Baby, please come home
(Christmas) Baby, please come home
(Christmas) Baby, please come home
(Christmas) Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
(Christmas) I need you, I need you
(Christmas) Please come home

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Ellie Greenwich / Jeff Barry / Philip Spector

Eagles – Please Come Home for Christmas

Free Fallin'

The song peaked at #18 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978. I had no idea it was a cover originally recorded by blues singer Charles Brown in 1960. It peaked at #76 on Billboards Hot 100 chart in 1961. It appeared on the Christmas Singles chart for nine seasons, hitting #1 in 1972.

Please Come Home For Christmas

Bells will be ringing this sad sad news
Oh what a Christmas to have the blues
My baby’s gone I have no friends
To wish me greetings once again

Choirs will be singing “Silent Night”
Christmas carols by candlelight
Please come home for Christmas
Please come home for Christmas

If not for Christmas by New Years night
Friends and relations send salutations
Sure as the stars shine above
But this is Christmas yes Christmas my dear

The time of year to be with the ones you love
So won’t…

View original post 48 more words

Stevie Wonder – Someday At Christmas

The title song from his 1967 album. The song reached #17 on Billboards Hot 100 chart on December 18, 2015

From Songfacts

This was written by Motown songwriters Ron Miller and Bryan Wells, the team that also wrote Wonder’s songs “A Place in the Sun” and “Yester-me, Yester-you, Yesterday.” They wrote it for Wonder’s Christmas album, which contained several Christmas standards mixed with some new songs.
This is one of the first Christmas songs with a social and political message. Released during the Vietnam War, it takes a stand for peace and for equality and compassion. John Lennon sent a similar message in his 1971 song “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).”
In late 2015, Wonder performed the song with Andra Day for an Apple TV commercial. In 2016.

Someday At Christmas

Someday at Christmas men won’t be boys
Playing with bombs like kids play with toys
One warm December our hearts will see
A world where men are free

Someday at Christmas there’ll be no wars
When we have learned what Christmas is for
When we have found what life’s really worth
There’ll be peace on earth

Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime

Someday at Christmas we’ll see a Man
No hungry children, no empty hand
One happy morning people will share
Our world where people care

Someday at Christmas there’ll be no tears
All men are equal and no men have fears
One shinning moment my heart ran away
From our world today

Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime

Someday at Christmas man will not fail
Hate will be gone love will prevail
Someday a new world that we can start
With hope in every heart

Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime
Someday at Christmastime

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Bryan Wells / Ronald Miller

Donny Hathaway – This Christmas

The song was released as a single on December 9, 1970. The song had reached #38 on Billboards Hot 100 chart on December 13, 2019. This is the very first time the original version has been on the Hot 100 chart.

From Songfacts

Hathaway wrote this soulful Christmas song with Nadine McKinnor. It evokes the spirit of the holiday, as he’s looking forward to spending the season with friends and family. In the memorable chorus, he sings:

And this Christmas, will be
A very special Christmas, for me
Like many Christmas songs, this one took a while to find an audience. Released as a single in 1970, it went nowhere, but later became a modern holiday standard, covered by a wide range of artists including Destiny’s Child, Aretha Franklin and Lady Antebellum. Chris Brown.

This Christmas

Hang all the mistletoe
I’m gonna get to know you better

This Christmas
And as we trim the tree
How much fun it’s gonna be together

This Christmas
Fireside’s blazing bright
We’re caroling through the night
And this Christmas will be
A very special Christmas for me

Presents and cards are here
My world is filled with cheer, and you

This Christmas
And as I look around
Your eyes outshine the town, they do

This Christmas
Fireside’s blazing bright
We’re caroling through the night

And this Christmas will be
A very special Christmas for me, Yeah

Shake a hand, shake a hand now

Fireside’s blazing bright
We’re caroling through the night

And this Christmas will be

A very special Christmas for me

Merry Christmas
Shake a hand, shake a hand now
Wish your brother Merry Christmas
All over the land now

Yeahhh
Merry Christmas
Merry, Merry Christmas
Yeahhh

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: HATHAWAY DONNY E / MC KINNOR NADINE

The Youngsters – Christmas In Jail

I thought I would get a little demented this Christmas. Of course, the song never charted but was played on the Dr. Demento show and is also played on The Bob and Tom show. The song was released in October of 1956.

Christmas In Jail

Christmas in jail
Christmas in jail
Had a little too much to drink
Ain’t got no bail
Ain’t got no bail
And spendin’ New Year’s Eve in the clink.

I was in the wrong lane
Feelin’ no pain
Zoomed my car to seventy-five
Ran right into
You can guess who
And say I’m lucky to be alive.

Merry Christmas!
Happy New Year!

They’re singin’ down the street
While everybody’s havin’ Christmas turkey
They give me bread and water to eat.

Christmas in jail
Christmas in jail
Wore my shoes out pacin’ the floor
Got rocks in my head
I wish I was dead
Ain’t gonna drink and drive no more.

Merry Christmas!
Happy New Year!

They’re singin’ down the street
While everybody’s havin’ Christmas turkey
They give me bread and water to eat.

Christmas in jail
Christmas in jail
Wore my shoes out pacin’ the floor
Got rocks in my head
I wish I was dead
Ain’t gonna drink and drive no more
Ain’t gonna drink and drive no more
Ain’t gonna drink and drive no more.

Merry Christmas!
Hic! Hic! Hic!

Bobby Helms – Jingle Bell Rock

Free Fallin'

The song was recorded in October of 1957 at Owen Bradley’s studio in Nashville, TN. It peaked at #6 on Billboards Best Sellers chart and #13 on Billboards Most Played C&W by Jockeys chart.

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