Dave Elder's Favorite Songs Playlist
What's my favorite song? That's a tough question, and this playlist is my answer. I don't know that I could ever pick just one song. These are the cuts that I listen to, and that mean something to me. I have lots of memories and stories tied up with them, and I share a portion of those tales on this list. Surely you will recognize some of the tracks here, but probably you'll find some that you don't, and hopefully I can help you discover some good music. You might notice that some numbers are missing, including number 1, and that's because the linked videos are no longer available, so those songs have been removed from the list.
This page only includes a few recent bits. If you'd like to read some older ones, the previous link below will take you to the post before the last one, on my Blogspot runway, which has links to earlier writings. The Master List page has links to all of the playlist Blogspot articles. However, my earliest playlist rambles, before Song 185, only live on this website, since I didn't start posting on Blogspot until February of 2014.
-Dave
Recent Songs
(Sunday, 9/13/26) Song 838: Wrong End of the Rainbow by Tom Rush, written by him and Trevor Veitch. You can find a YouTube video of it here. During the summer of 1970, I listened a lot to that Taylor guy's Sweet Baby James LP, and when the autumn arrived and I returned to Northwestern University, I began to add more singer/songwriter 33s to my collection. That fall I heard a couple of tracks on my favorite local FM station from an interesting Tom fellow that got me to add a pair of his albums to my stack, including the one that featured this misdirectional conclusion. At the time, I did not do as many performances as he did, so I did not get to experience a rainbow life from show to show, but when I developed a romantic connection in that era, fairly soon I also lost my love, so I certainly did come to understand the sad shade of a smile!
(Sunday, 9/6/26) Song 837: People Got to Be Free by The Young Rascals, written by Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Around this time of year 58 years ago, as I got ready to begin my senior HS year, I began hearing a group of youthful tricksters spreading the radical idea that all members of human civilization worldwide deserve independence and sovereignty, and I certainly agreed with that moving perspective. Even though my parents and grandparents did not approve of the devil's music, if they had heard me singing along with this anthem when it emerged from a radio speaker, I think they would have expressed agreement with the basic idea repeated in the chorus, and I feel certain that I would remember such an incident if it had happened! For most of my life, I have understood that Love can move a mountain and make a blind man see, and while I would like to see Peace in the valley now, I also understand that a certain group of powerful figures do not want the train of freedom to arrive any time in the near future.
(Sunday, 8/30/26) Song 836: Cookie Jar by Joe Canzano, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's tasty ride comes from a fellow who was one of my neighbors when I lived on the NJ farm in the 1994-1996 period that appears in my song video As Long as Merle is Still Haggard (which you can hear and see on YouTube by clicking on the title). I had known him a few years earlier when I resided in Brooklyn, and we did have musical exchanges a few times when he became one of my songwriting buddies. He gave me a copy of his CD Riot On Spaghetti Drive, which features this tune, when he released it about a year after I moved to that NJ farm. While in the past my sugary dreams had gone too far, I did come to understand then that it could get tough for me to get my point across, but I decided to continue trying to do so anyway!
(Sunday, 8/23/26) Song 835: A Hard Day's Night by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. You can find a cool YouTube video of it here. After the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, I did pay attention to their fellow British Invaders as well, but I also continued to keep an eye (and ears) on them, and during the summer vacation of that year, I really liked hearing about their difficult time period! I soon found out that they had a movie for which the tune served as a title and a theme, and I would have liked to see (and hear) that film, but my family did not approve of viewing a movie in a theater, so the only ones I got to see back then were the ones that appeared on TV. The radio did give me some chances to hear the moving anthem, and then later, in my young adult years, I did get to view the classic film! During my school years, I tried to be a good boy, working like a dog on homework, but even when I did, oftentimes I could NOT spend the night sleeping like a log!
(Sunday, 8/16/26) Song 834: Lights of Downtown by The Long Ryders, written by Stephen McCarthy. You can find a cool YouTube video of it here. When this enlightening description started emerging from radio speakers at the end of the summer of 1985, I resided in a comfortable home a few blocks from the downtown area of the city of Berkeley, CA, which I shared with five of my singer/songwriter colleagues. A few years earlier, soon after POTUS Reagan ended the federal funding for mental health institutions in early 1981, the number of homeless people wandering around that downtown area greatly increased, and when Mr. Ron essentially said that homeless people choose to live on the street, I got a very different impression from the ones I saw and heard wandering through the Lights of Downtown Berkeley, though, at the time, I had no idea what caused their insanity! Now, however, I DO have a much clearer understanding of such mental problems, so I share that understanding in my book Expecting the Broken Brain to Do Mental Pushups, and you can get a copy from Amazon of the most recent edition of it by clicking on the title.
(Sunday, 8/9/26) Song 833: Ripple by Grateful Dead, written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. You can find a cool YouTube video of it here. In the fall of 1970 I began my sophomore year at Northwestern University, and in the Evanston apartment that I shared with three fellow students, I had a friend who had become a big fan of the GD quintet and he liked introducintg me to their new vision of a moving wave. Being a word-game player myself, during that era I gave the band the nickname The Dreadful Grape but I did like hearing their excursions. As I developed my own style, I hoped to have songs to fill the air, wanting my words to glow with the gold of sunshine. Regularly heading down a road somewhere between the dawn and the dark of night, I often found a path that was for my steps alone.
(Sunday, 8/2/26) Song 832: Good Rockin' Tonight by Elvis Presley, written by Roy Brown. You can find a YouTube video of it here. I probably did not get to hear this anthem during the era when it rode the charts, since my folks had no interest in the sounds coming across the air waves. When the Fab Four rocked my world a decade later, I became more focused on the Top 40 and at a certain point, I found out that both John and Paul had been big fans of the Elvis guy, so when, as a young adult, I began acquiring a collection of 33s, I did add a few EP gems to the pile, including one that featured this hit. When I got that disc riding on the player, I heard the news and that would rock away all my blues.
(Sunday, 7/26/26) Song 831: Stray Cat Blues by The Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. You can find a cool YouTube video of it here. Soon after the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, a bunch of their fellow British Invaders did tunes that climbed the charts, and when the summer of the following year arrived, their circling pebble colleagues grabbed my attention with their complaint about inability to acquire gratification. That anthem made them the top competitor to the Liverpool quartet, and three years later they continued to rock hard while J,P,G & R headed in a psychedelic direction. I might have heard this accusation on the radio during my final HS senior-year months during the winter and spring of 1969, but I definitely did get to hear it regularly in the fall of that year after I moved into a room of a dormitory at Northwestern University. The guy who resided in the room across the hall from me had a very large album collection and a high-quality record player, and the RS five ranked as his favorite band, so I got to hear plenty of their songs that I already knew, plus some other interesting ones that I didn't initially recognize. At the time, I was very far from home, but I did not miss my mother, since I could, and would, regularly get to visit her and the rest of the family in the coming years. I was no mad-brained bear and I certainly had at least one friend who was wilder than me!
(Sunday, 7/19/26) Song 830: If She Knew What She Wants by The Bangles, written by Jules Shear. You can find a YouTube video of it here. While I had, by my mid-twenties, gotten beyond many of the male supremacist ideas that I inherited growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, in the spring of 1986, a female quartet proved that their gender could rock just as strongly and compellingly as my side of the divide. Initially, I think it did surprise me, but I really liked hearing them making their lively points. Around seven years earlier, ! had gotten crazy for this girl in that neighborhood, and if she knew what she wanted back then, I would have tried giving it to her. I found out, though, that she had so many ideas traveling around in her head that she didn't need anything from mine.
(Sunday, 7/12/26) Song 829: Ask Questions by Jack Hardy, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's rhythmic advice comes from another one of my Fast Folk colleagues. In fact, he was one of the initial founders and central figures of the group. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I would regularly join the gathering at his Manhattan apartment on Houston Street on Thursday in the early evening where we would each share our latest compositions. While I did get to hear some impressive Jack tunes, I don't think I heard him do this one back then. I do get his point, though, that history has eyes and history has ears, and that therefore, we regular citizens should climb up the hill to the capitol and dare to hold them accountable. One of the best ways to do that is to ask questions!
(Sunday, 7/5/26) Song 828: Over You by Gary Puckett & The Union Gap, written by Jerry Fuller. You can find a YouTube video of it here. When the end of the summer of 1968 arrived and I began my senior HS year, I started hearing about a Gary guy's frustrated efforts to distance himself from an obsession over a former romantic partner. I soon learned his chorus lines and would often sing along when I heard the anthem rising from a nearby radio. Ironically, during that era I developed a close friendship with an attractive young woman in my age range who had become a nearby neighbor when her family moved in to a house they bought about a half mile from my parent's place. I wasn't losing any sleep over her at the time, but I also didn't know how to play the romantic game, so the precious moments we knew did not have the kind of reverberations that the ones from Gary and his former lover did have.
