Tuesday Tunes 253: More Work

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You may be still working, but I’m not – I retired nearly twelve years ago so am free to do what I like! But I thought it only fair to brighten the day for those of you still with your noses pressed hard to the grindstone with some more work tunes. As with last week’s first set, these are about work rather than having the word in their title, but you’ll get my drift, I’m sure.

As I did last week, I’m starting with a golden oldie:

Sam Cooke only lived to the age of 33: he was shot and killed at a motel in Los Angeles in December 1964, after it was claimed that he burst into the office wearing just a shoe and a jacket, demanding to know the whereabouts of the girl he had brought there. The manageress claimed to have shot him in self defence and, while his family disputed it, she passed a polygraph test and her version was eventually accepted for an inquest verdict of justifiable homicide. It brought to an end a successful career, though there were a couple of subsequent album releases and a number of compilations. He was blessed with a wonderful voice, and whatever the circumstances it was a shame that we lost him so young. Chain Gang was first released as a single in July 1960 and became his first big hit in the UK, where it reached #9, though he had several chart hits before this one, and some later which did slightly better. This one got to #2 in the US, following in a long run of hits which had begun with his #1 debut since, You Send Me. The track also featured on his album Swing Low, which was released in February 1961 but as far as I can tell didn’t make the charts anywhere.

You may have seen my A Classic Album post last Friday, which featured Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Cosmos’ Factory. This was on the album which preceded that:

As the video showed, that was CCR with Cotton Fields, from their Willy And The Poor Boys album, which was released in October 1969 and peaked at #3 in the US and #10 in the UK, though it fared best in Canada and Australia, getting to #2 in both. It sold 2m copies in the US – not bad when you consider that it was their third album of the year, and their fourth in seventeen months! They didn’t release this as a single in the main markets, though it did make #1 in Mexico. The Beach Boys did a version in 1970 and got a UK #5 out of it, but I’ve always preferred CCR’s. You may well know that the song was written and first recorded in 1940 by Huddie Ledbetter, aka Lead Belly, so it has become something of a standard down the years.

I was in two minds about including this one, but as a couple of you mentioned it in comments last week I thought I should play to my crowd (!) and put it into this week’s set:

Dolly Parton, of course, with 9 To 5. This was, as you probably know, written by her as the title piece for the December 1980 movie of the same title, in which Dolly starred alongside Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dabney Coleman. The movie was made on a budget of $10m and grossed over $103m, so I think it can be described as a hit! This song was released as a single just ahead of the movie, in November 1980, and reached #1 on both the US Hot 100 and their Country chart. It also made #1 in Canada but somehow only got to #47 here in the UK, though it has sold 1.8m here and gone 3x Platinum. Go figure! It also went 3x Platinum in the US, where it sold more than 3m, and achieved the same status in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This was also the lead track on her album 9 to 5 and Other Jobs, which came out in November 1980, a couple of weeks after the single, and peaked at #11 in the US and #15 in Canada, also making #1 on the US Country chart. Not a hit here, though.

This next one just has to be in a set of songs about work. It may be overplayed, including by me, but it is just too good to leave out:

Money For Nothing was a track on Dire Straits’ fifth album, Brothers In Arms – yes, that one! This was released in May 1985 and has become one of the most successful albums of all time: it spent 14 weeks at #1 in the UK Albums chart, 9 weeks in the US, and 34 weeks in Australia. Wikipedia’s listings show an unbroken line of #1 for every country they cover, and its sales have been phenomenal: 9m in the US, 4.3m in the UK, over 1m in each of Australia, Canada and France, and more than 30m world-wide. Five of its nine tracks were released as singles, all of them making the UK singles chart. This was the second, in June 1985, and it got to #1 in the US and Canada, and #4 in the UK. The intro vocals and some of the back up were provided by the distinctive voice of Sting, who performed with the band during their appearance at Live Aid in 1985. The video was also the first to be played on MTV Europe at its launch in 1987. Overall, a pretty good track record!

And to close today, how about another classic:

As you probably don’t need me to tell you, The Beatles included Taxman as the opening track on Revolver, their seventh album, which was released in August 1966 and, of course, went to #1 in both the UK (7 weeks) and the US (6 weeks), as well as in Canada, Australia, Sweden, West Germany and elsewhere. We got the full 14 tracks whereas North America only had 11, due to the record company’s policy at the time of deciding what they thought was best for their market. I’ve said it before, but I think that was disrespectful: if a band chooses to make an album they should be allowed to include all the tracks they want on it. But it didn’t harm its sales, as it went 5x Platinum in the US, 2x Platinum in the UK and Canada, and Platinum in Australia, selling more than 5m in the US and 600k in the UK. Everyone I knew seemed to have it! The song was written by George Harrison – his quota for an album as permitted by the two big boys – and was his protest against the high marginal tax rates paid by top earners like The Beatles which, under Harold Wilson’s Labour government, amounted to 95 per cent of unearned income (i.e. interest on savings and investments) above the top threshold – the “one for you nineteen for me” reference in the lyrics. They refer by name to Wilson, who had just been re-elected as prime minister in the 1966 general election, and Edward Heath, the Conservative Leader of the Opposition. But we had just won the World Cup, so euphoria was the order of the day, until we realised what the new government was planning to do to the pirate radio stations we all enjoyed so much. ‘Twas ever thus – governments seem to see their role as taking away people’s happiness!

And on that note maybe I should call it a day for this set. No real surprises here, I think, and I expect most if not all were known to you, but they are none the worse for their familiarity. Have a great week, and I’ll see you again soon. Take care 😊

 

66 thoughts on “Tuesday Tunes 253: More Work”

  1. Great job again with the songs!
    It was sad about Sam Cooke. We saw a documentary about him a while back. He was talented.
    Wow, on how much Dolly’s Nine to Five movie made!
    Of course, Dolly’s song is my favorite. 😉

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  7. Good line-up, Clive! I LOVE me some Sam Cooke, the CCR I remember well, though it wasn’t my favourite of theirs, LOVE the Dolly Parton one, and can live with Taxman. The only one I didn’t know was the one by Dire Straits, and that’s predictable, since I never cared for their music. Fun post!!!

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    • P.S. When I tried to view this post, it initially told me that it didn’t exist. So next I tried going to Reader, and IT told me I didn’t have permission to view this post. I ended up just going to your site and clicking on the post, then it worked fine. WordPress 🙄

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      • Thanks for persisting. That was my fault. When I first posted this the Taxman video was missing, even though it was there in the preview. In attempting to recover it I tried, among other things, duplicating the post, editing it out and in again, and then republishing. Still didn’t work so I deleted it! But it meant that followers got two emails for the post, the second of which was for the deleted version.

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  8. Clearcut favorite for me this week—Money for Nothing. The Sam Cooke tune was the first one that came to mind last week, so I wasn’t surprised to see you chose it today. Not that I’m a big fan, but I also thought of the group, Men at Work.

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    • I thought you might like that one! Sam Cooke was a given, at some point. Thanks for that thought, but I rarely go for the band names for these. I had them in mind, though!

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  9. Pingback: Tuesday Tunes 253: More Work – JAMES KEDZE BLOG

    • Thank you, Cindy, that’s kind of you. This one was actually harder than usual, as one of the videos disappeared after I posted it and it took a while to get it back!

      Poor Sam did meet a tragic end, didn’t he.

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  12. You put fantastic songs together, Clive. I have not heard most of them in ages and it was so good to hear all of them again. Such a tragic story about James Cook. I loved his songs when even they were published way before my time.

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  13. Nice choices. My favorite is dem cotton fields. I have never even seen a cotton field but the song does remind me of my summer childhood in the Catskill Mountains of NY State and running round barefoot beneath the sun,

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  18. Great songs, Clive, all ones I know and love! So cool to close out with Taxman …. a great George Harrisong. I wonder if anyone would have noticed if you went with the excellent parody of Money For Nothing by Weird Al …. an interesting notion!

    Enjoy your Tuesday, Clive 😊

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  19. All good songs! I still have my vinyl album Revolver! I liked the CCR Cotton Fields Back Home song. It’s one I’ve known for years, but maybe not by them? Anyway, the video was good, as it looks just like home to me, as we have cotton fields all around us. 🙂

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    • I’m glad you liked them, Barbara. I had the CCR album that song was on, and told all my mates they were better than The Beach Boys when they had a hit with their version the following year. The song has been around since 1940 so you may well have heard another version. And a nice link for your area, too 👍

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      • I got curious, so looked a little further. Seems they used as they say ‘poetic license’ a bit, because Texarkana is farther than a mile from Louisiana! A lot more miles! Also, wanted to know how far Texarkana was, in E. TX, to where I am in W.TX – 479 miles, and takes about 9 hours to drive from here to there. Yep, TX is big! haha 🙂

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      • Well done on the research! At this distance it’s just a name to me, though 😊

        That’s not far shy of the distance you’d drive to go from top to bottom of the UK!

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    • That’s probably why I prefer the CCR version, much though I love both bands. Money For Nothing has probably been overplayed but I still like it too, and the video is great.

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