Tuesday Tunes 163: US Cities

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Sometimes I can be a little vague about what has prompted my theme for the week: this is one of those times, but I do at least have an idea where it came from! So, for what may or may not be a fairly random choice, I give you songs which feature the names of US Cities in their titles. The US is a big country, in case you hadn’t noticed, and it has loads of cities so this was a pretty easy one for me. The problem was in whittling it down to just five songs! Still, there’s always another week for more.

In keeping with the American spirit (!), let’s start with a British band:

Mott The Hoople were an English rock band, formed in 1969 in Hereford. They had released several albums to moderate chart success here, but with no hit singles, until David Bowie offered them his song All The Young Dudes. It was a massive hit, and they transformed into a glam rock band on the strength of it. All The Way From Memphis was a track on their album Mott, which was released in July 1973, reaching #7 in the UK and #35 in the US. They had a string of hit singles here in a brief period from 1972 to 1974, of which this was one: released in August 1973 it peaked at #10 in the UK and received a lot of radio airplay in the US without reaching the chart. The band lost both lead singer Ian Hunter and lead guitarist Mick Ralphs after this, and though the remaining members carried on they were nowhere near as successful without their two main members. Hunter went on to have a long solo career, while Ralphs joined a new band called Bad Company. You may have heard of them! He wrote several of their best known songs, some in partnership with Paul Rodgers.

I think this next one was probably the prompt for today’s theme, as I recall thinking about it the other week when I played another song from this album as part of Song Lyric Sunday, and my post was picked up by another blogger who shared his own piece about it. For those who like a song with a story behind it, this is perfect:

The Only Living Boy In New York has long been my favourite track on Simon & Garfunkel’s superb album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and this video with images of 1970s New York is a great accompaniment for it. The album was released in January 1970 and was a huge hit, reaching #1 in the US, the UK, and just about anywhere else you look, and has sold more than 25m copies. This track was released as the B-side to the single of Cecilia, in April 1970: that got to #4 in the US and #51 in the UK. The story behind the song is that Paul Simon wrote it as a thinly veiled message to Art Garfunkel, referencing in the first verse a specific incident where Garfunkel went to Mexico to act in the film Catch-22. Simon was left alone in New York writing songs for Bridge over Troubled Water, hence the very lonely feelings that gave the song its title. Simon speaks to Garfunkel in the song as “Tom,” a reference to their early days when they were called Tom and Jerry, and encourages him to “let your honesty shine . . . like it shines on me”. The multi-tracked backing vocals of the pair of them, recorded in an echo chamber, give the song a feeling of ethereal beauty and a timeless quality. Rather ironic, perhaps, in that this was the reason behind the duo splitting up later that year! And if you want to see the post that prompted me to include this one, it was by the excellent John Rieber, and you can find it here.

With all of those American cities to choose from, you’d have thought that I wouldn’t need to use one of them twice, wouldn’t you? Wrong! This is one of my all time favourite songs:

Walking In Memphis was the opening track on Marc Cohn’s debut album, which was called simply Marc Cohn. Well, why not? It was released in February 1991 and peaked at #38 in the US and #27 in the UK, and went on to win him the 1992 Grammy for Best New Artist. This track was issued as a single in March 1991, and got to #13 in the US and #66 in the UK. It was re-released six months later over here, and reached #22 the second time round. The album is absolutely fantastic, and is to this day one of my favourites: not a dud track on it, and some real gems amongst them. And a word of warning: please don’t mention the abomination that was Cher’s cover version of this, an object lesson in removing all of the heart and soul from a song and attacking it with a sledgehammer. And where exactly is ‘Memfuss” anyway?

This next tune is another with a story attached to it. But it needed a Brit to tell it:

I went with the audio-only version of the original album track, as there were many videos which attributed it to CSN&Y, when as you can see it was on a Graham Nash solo album. Songs For Beginners was his first solo effort, released in May 1971 and getting to #13 in the UK and #15 in the US. I say ‘solo album,’ but he had a huge cast of supporting musicians and backing vocalists. Neil Young is credited with playing piano on three tracks, David Crosby with guitar on one, but there is no sign of Stephen Stills, and none of them are listed on backing vocals. The song was released as a single in parallel with the album, and made #35 in the US. It wasn’t a hit in the UK: in fact, he has never had a solo chart single here. I’ve taken the story behind Chicago from Wikipedia:

The title and lyrics of the song refer to the anti-Vietnam War protests that took place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the subsequent trial of the Chicago Eight, where protest leaders were charged with conspiracy to incite a riot. The first line of the song, “So your brother’s bound and gagged, and they’ve chained him to a chair”, refers to Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, the sole African-American defendant, who was gagged and chained to a chair in the courtroom following repeated outbursts in protest of rulings by Judge Julius Hoffman.

The line “Won’t you please come to Chicago just to sing?” refers to Nash pleading with bandmates Stephen Stills and Neil Young to come to Chicago to play a benefit concert for the Chicago 8 defense fund.

The band played the song live in concert throughout their career. It is a powerful piece.

I’m closing today with another long time favourite, and it is a classic pop hit:

Nutbush is where Tina Turner grew up, but I think she may have been taking a large degree of poetic licence when writing this song: Wikipedia describes it as a rural unincorporated community in Haywood County, Tennessee, approximately 50 miles northeast of Memphis (them again!). It gives the voting population in 2000 as being 259, which in my view probably doesn’t qualify it for city status. And given that Tennessee is known as one of the worst states for voter suppression I guess the number may be even lower now! Ike and Tina Turner released their album Nutbush City Limits in November 1973, making a relatively lowly #163 in the US Albums chart, though it did get to #21 on the Soul albums listing. The title track had already been released as a single the previous August, peaking at #22 in the US but doing much better elsewhere, including the UK where it got to #4, selling more than 250k copies in the process. I’ve always thought it was great, though it marked the beginning of the end of them as a duo. Fun fact: this was one of two songs (the other was Whole Lotta Rosie) that Brian Johnson sang as part of his first audition before joining AC/DC.

So there you have it, my first set of songs about US cities. Five songs, three cities and a tiny place raised to city status by the fabulous Tina Turner, just for her song. I have loads more that I could have played, but I can assure you that Sinatra wouldn’t have been among them: I can’t stand ‘Noo Yoick, Noo Yoick!’ Maybe I’ll come back for a second set if nothing else crops up, who knows. I sure as hell don’t!

Have a great week, and I’ll see you again soon 🎶

62 thoughts on “Tuesday Tunes 163: US Cities”

  1. Pingback: The First Day After August | Take It Easy

  3. It’s too bab you want the city names in the title, because Dancing in the Streets would have given you lots of American city names to sing. And a few other songs like I Been Everywhere give you names of lots of States, but I have to say the very virst song I thought of when I started to read the post, after getting only as far as “I give you songs which feature the names of US Cities” put a pargicular jope i my mind to hear a certain song, only to have that hope dashed by the next three eords: “in their titles.”
    But seeing as I never let rules stop me, I am going to play my song anyway, because it more than mentions the two most popular cities in America’s names in it — New York city, and the abbreviated name of Los Angeles.
    I hadn’t heard it for years, so thank you for making me l6sten to it again. Now it’s your turn to listen.

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  4. Its been a while since I listened to Mott the Hoople, thanks for the memory ,Clive and no one better to finish a post than Tina, A little disappointed that Frank won’t get an airing as I am a fan of ole blue eyes…I hope your week is going well Clive and the sun is still shining 🙂 xx

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  5. A fun theme and songs are popping into my head. Will see if you do them. 🙂 Walking in Memphis is my fav from this group. Such a great song. I will give you a hint, there is another Memphis song that I like even better. 😉

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  6. Tina is the standout, she kicks ‘Nutbush City Limits’ along so well.
    The US has the romance of the road going for it- I mean you hear San Francisco, or Lodi, Tallahassee or even Tulsa and it sounds romantic. You can’t do the same in the UK- I mean ‘Walkin’ In Weston-super-Mare’ or ‘Rolling Into Cleckheaton’ is simply laughable.

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  8. Yeah, Nutbush City Limits! Lately, we went to concert of Zucchero and one of his background singers (gosh, her power voice was awesome) sang that song in between when he took a short break. Love that song!

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  9. I enjoyed hearing all those again. The Graham Nash ‘Chicago’ one was especially nice to hear. I gather he and Crosby are friends again. I love hearing those voices together! I look forward to more American cities and possibly a revisit to one or two of those.

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    • Thanks, Paul, glad you enjoyed them. Graham Nash was on the record as having said they wouldn’t get back together as he had a poor relationship with Crosby. I don’t know if they spoke again but nothing was said publicly, as far as I know. We’ll never know now, after Crosby’s death in January.

      I may well do this again, as there are many to choose from. Definitely no Sinatra, though 😊

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  10. Out of these five, the clear runaway for me is Walking in Memphis. What a magical piece of music! It was fun to see a young and energetic Tina Turner. My brother Tom was nicknamed Mott by one of his college friends. (I later learned the connection was that one of his buddies liked Mott the Hoople. and Mott spelled backwards was nearly Tom.)

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    • His first song, on his first record: what a way to announce yourself! All of his albums are great, this one especially so. I used another clip of Tina for my tribute post, similar vintage and equally enthusiastic! I like that Mott connection too 😊

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    • I’m not surprised that most were unfamiliar. A couple were album tracks and all apart from Marc Cohn were from 1969/73. Glad you enjoyed them, and that sounds like a good idea for a post!

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    • You’re right, loads have done it though most have probably never been there!

      London Calling is great, and was at least written by a British band, but there have some real clunkers by both British and other writers.

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  14. I’ve never heard that Graham Nash song. John Rieber wrote a recent post regarding the S&G song, which is where I first heard of it. I remember that Mott the Hoople song when I was a teenager – a blast from the past, lol.

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