U2’s powerful song “Pride (In the Name of Love)” commemorates this date in 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was in town to support striking sanitation workers, and the day before he had given his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
U2’s song, which was from The Unforgettable Fire (1984) album, recounts the assassination: Early morning, April 4 Shot rings out in the Memphis sky Free at last, they took your life They could not take your pride
The shooting occurred at around 6:01 p.m. on this date, so why does “Pride (In the Name of Love)” refer to “early morning”? I have seen various explanations.
Some wondered whether at the time of the shooting, the band was in Dublin. In that city, the time is six hours later than Tennessee time, making it just after midnight and “early morning” in Ireland. But then the date for them would have been April 5, and the song still has the correct Tennessee date of April 4.
The time change could have been poetic license, but most likely it was an error. Perhaps the error occurred due to Bono’s memory of when he heard the news.
Sources note that Bono eventually recognized the mistake years later and began singing “early evening” instead of “early morning.” For example, in U2’s performance at the 2009 concert to celebrate the inauguration of Pres. Obama, Bono sang the “early evening” lyrics. Most recently, on U2’s Songs of Surrender release of new recordings of old songs including “Pride (In the Name of Love),” Bono again used the “early evening” line.
This energetic Chicago performance also uses the historically accurate time of day starting at around the 2:15 mark:
John Legend recorded a moving version of “Pride (In the Name of Love)” for King (2008), a series on the History Channel. His version, which also appears on the CD Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement, is less bombastic than the U2 version, but it is still powerful.
Legend replaces the “early morning” line with the words “late afternoon.” Thus, he gives us a third time option in the lyrics to “Pride (In the Name of Love).” Check it out, with the time of day mentioned at around the 2:20 mark.
Unfortunately, I listened repeatedly to the U2 albums The Unforgettable Fire (1984) and Rattle and Hum (1988). So,I always expect to hear “early morning” as in the original music video.
Either way, it is still a great song about a great man. And, the time of day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed is much less important than what he accomplished in his life in the name of love.
I love Buddy Miller’s music, and I love Bill Frisell’s jazz guitar playing. So when I heard they were working together, along with guitarists Marc Ribot and Greg Leisz, and singers that included Patty Griffin and Julie Miller, it did not take me long to plop down my money for the CD, Majestic Silver Strings. I own all of Buddy Miller’s eight albums, and I admire his other work too. This new album, released earlier this month, continues his excellence.
In recent years, as Buddy Miller has worked on producing other artists and backing them up, he has not released as much of his own music as he otherwise might. But he continues to make great music, and this new album is no exception. Majestic Silver Strings differs from his other albums by adding a large number of guests and a more atmospheric sound from the excellent guitarists on board, but it is still great music. While some versions of the songs stay close to their country roots, other versions stray further from traditional country, such as the outstanding reworking of Roger Miller’s “Dang Me” by Chocolate Genius that gives the song new force and power over its humorous roots. The album is full of excellent music, no matter how you label it. But you will not hear this album on most commercial music radio stations, which generally ignore the great work done by both Miller and his wife, Julie Miller.
Majestic Silver Strings features covers of a number of classic country songs — such as “Cattle Call” and “Bury Me Not On the Lone Prairie” — as well as some originals. While there is an emphasis on the instrumentation, there are also excellent vocals by Buddy Miller along with Patty Griffin, Julie Miller, Shawn Colvin, Emmylou Harris, Lee Ann Womack, and Ann McCrary. Because of the number of guest artists, Majestic Silver Strings is in many ways more like a tribute album than a one-artist album. So like most tribute albums, there are a variety of sounds from song-to-song. Sometimes that works on albums and often it does not, but here the excellent musicians throughout make this album more cohesive than many other multi-artist albums. My favorite tracks on the album include Shawn Colvin singing “That’s the Way Love Goes” and Lee Ann Womack singing “Return to Me,” neither of which would sound out of place on the Grand Ole Opry stage or in a smoky jazz nightclub.
Conclusion? If you do not mind variety and a little jazz atmosphere mixed in with your music, you will most likely love Majestic Silver Strings. If you are looking for something that sticks closer to great traditional country sounds consistently throughout an album, you might want to start with one of Buddy Miller’s other albums, like the excellent Cruel Moon. You cannot go wrong either way.
Bonus Bill Frisell Video: If you are not familiar with Bill Frisell’s outstanding guitar work, while his home is in jazz, he often incorporates country music elements into his work. Additionally, he has covered songs by artists that include Bob Dylan and Madonna. Check out his take on the classic song “Shenandoah” from his Good Dog, Happy Man album.
The federal trial of Barry Bonds began in March 2022 in San Francisco. Part of the trial focused on Greg Anderson, who started being Bonds’s trainer in 2000 and who allegedly supplied Bonds with steroids and then refused to testify against Bonds. Like Pres. Bill Clinton before him, Bonds had legal troubles that centered not on his actions but on the issue of whether he lied about them. The case examined whether Bonds lied to a grand jury when he said that he thought the substances Anderson gave him were legal. (UPDATE: Following the trial, the jury did not reach a verdict on the perjury accounts but found Bonds guilty of obstruction of justice and he was sentenced to probation.)
Outside the legal debate about perjury, though, an ongoing debate continues about Bonds’s baseball legacy. One of his biggest defenders has been Giants fan and singer-songwriter Dan Bern. In addition to writing some articles about Bonds, Bern has written at least four songs about the slugger: “73,” “Asterisk Nation,” “Rincon,” and “Year By Year Home Run Totals Of The Great Barry Bonds.”
Dan Bern’s Songs About Barry Bonds
My two favorites of these songs are “Rincon” and “Asterisk Nation.” “Rincon” is about a journey to a town to see where Bonds may or may not have a contact for buying steroids, or at least that is how I interpret the beautiful song.
“Rincon” paints the most complicated portrait of Bonds among Bern’s songs. It is a more personal story, more about the narrator than about Bonds, and its ambiguity also makes it one of Bern’s most human and best songs. Like all great songs, it is about something deeper than what you might hear upon the first listen.
“Asterisk Nation” is a much more pointed commentary, where Dan Bern tells us that if we want to point the finger at Bonds, then maybe we should also be pointing it at ourselves. “Asterisk doctors, Asterisk patients, Asterisk erections, Asterisk elections, Asterisk wars. . . Telling Asterisk truths to an Asterisk nation.” Don’t many of us take pills, caffeine, alcohol, medication, etc. to alter the way we exist? And, if so, is it so wrong that Bonds may have used a drug that was not illegal at the time to make him better at his job, like you having that afternoon cup of coffee?
Dan Bern’s song also evokes a new movie released just a few days before the trial of Barry Bonds begins. The movie Limitless (2011), starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro, is about a man who is given a drug that lets him use 100% of his mind. If you could take a drug that would give you super-human abilities, would you?
There is not a video for “Asterisk Nation” on YouTube. But you may listen to the song from a Dan Bern live performance from 2006 below.
Finally, Dan Bern’s “Year by Year Home Run Totals of Barry Bonds” is brilliant for how simple it is. The song recounts exactly what the title suggests, listing those home run totals. While the 73 home runs in 2001 does stand out, the list illustrates that Bonds was smashing a lot of home runs even before the era where we suspect he was using performance-enhancing drugs.
In the video below, Bern performs “Year by Year Home Run Totals of Barry Bonds” as a sing-a-long at a school. (His lesson to the kids is how they may use a song to help them remember pieces of information, like a list of numbers.)
Defending Barry Bonds?
I do not completely buy Dan Bern’s defense of Barry Bonds. One must wonder whether or not it is fair for some players to use steroids against the rules when there is a limited number of spots for major league baseball players. If some use steroids, other potential major league players may lose their jobs to cheaters. And is it fair if someone who holds a record does not get credit because someone else did not play by the rules?
Still, Dan Bern does make me see Barry Bonds in a different light. I now see Barry Bonds as a tragic human being. During his run at perhaps the greatest record in baseball, he must have anticipated for years the glory of the moment. Instead, as the time approached and left, he was treated like a pariah, perhaps partly deserved, perhaps partly not.
Then, when he wanted to continue playing after the 2007 season, no team would hire him when he was still playing great baseball. And why is he so hated while Lance Armstrong is so loved? I am sure racial biases are at work, but there are other complex factors too.
Sure Bonds did whatever he did for himself, but we all gained the entertainment, both from his incredible playing and from later having fun debating about steroids. Ever since he was a kid with a professional baseball-playing father, Bonds learned that society would pay him large amounts of money to run around on a field and hit a ball with a stick. If society is set up so we pay millions of dollars to people who play games, while social workers and teachers barely scrape by and other people are homeless, is it such a great sin by comparison that he took some medicine to play better? Is his sin worse than ours for creating such a society?
Barry Bonds was always there for our entertainment, and like the rest of us, he is a flawed human being. His steroids helped entertain you, and I received a topic for a blog post today. And we do not even have to suffer the health consequences from taking the drug.
While I enjoy discussing the morality issues involved because I love baseball and debates about morals, what it ultimately comes down to for me is one question: Who am I to judge him? And perhaps the most interesting part for me is wondering whether he has any regrets and whether or not he would do everything the same if starting all over again. Maybe some day we will get answers to these and other questions from him, but probably not for a long time, if ever.
I am going to try to cleanse my mind of thoughts about tainted baseball records by watching a video from the 1996 Home Run Derby before Barry Bonds allegedly started using steroids, back when we were all much more innocent. Man, he was good against. . . Mark McGuire.
What do you think of Barry Bonds? What should be done with his home run record? Leave a comment.
For our readers who are country music fans, Chimesfreedom notes that Ferlin Husky passed away Thursday at a Nashville-area hospital from congestive heart failure. He was 85. You may know some of his famous songs, “Gone”, “A Dear John letter,” and “Country Music is Here to Stay.” Depending on your age, you may remember some of his television and movie appearances.
But you may not know this information about him, which is from Husky’s website: “Born near Flat River, Missouri, in a town so small it was prone to be mistaken for a fly-speck by map makers, he left home for a hitch in the Merchant Marines and D-Day found him under forty-eight hours of continuous battle-fire during the invasion of Cherbourg. He was later awarded a citation as ‘Volunteer Gunner’ as a result of his action during the battle.”
I did not know that he was there at D-Day. Most of what I know about him is from his recording of this song, “Wings of a Dove,” which is a country music classic.
Here’s to you Ferlin. May you be flying on the wings of a snow-white dove.
What is your favorite Ferlin Husky song? Leave a comment.
Tonight, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will induct the class of 2011: Darlene Love, Alice Cooper, Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Tom Waits, Leon Russell and record executives Jac Holzman and Art Rupe. Darlene Love was the voice for several great hits for Phil Spector that were labeled under the groups the Crystals, the Blossoms, and Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans. For her performance at the induction, she said she plans to perform “He’s a Rebel,” “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and “(Today I Met) the Boy I’m Gonna Marry.”
I hope she performs a Christmas song. Her song, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is one of the greatest songs of all time. David Letterman has featured her performing the song on his show every December since 1986 (with one year showing a repeat performance). She has had a great career, with a possible new album and a movie of her life on the way. But I never tire of hearing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” even if it is March.
Bonus Inductee Video: Tom Waits singing “Hold On.”
Who is your favorite among this year’s inductees? What song do you want to hear them perform? Leave a comment.
