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, 2/2/25) Song 756: Windy by The Association, written by Ruthann Friedman You can find a YouTube video of it here. Over the past week, in my area we had a couple of breezy days where we had some major amounts of moving air that brought down a few tree branches, so it seems like the appropriate moment to feature this gusty ride, which first raised listeners' ears in the summer of 1967. At that point I got to hear the top 40 on the transistor radio, which I would often do in the back yard during the warmer weather, since that way, I wouldn't have to make noise near the folks who disparaged the devil's music. In my HS years, I also had a friend who sold me cheaply his singles when he got tired of hearing them, so I might have had this 45 in my collection soon after it dropped from the charts. Giving that disc lots of spins on my single player would have moved me to start reaching out to capture a moment.
(Sunday, 1/26/25) Song 755: Song for a Winter's Night by Gordon Lightfoot, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Not long after I got to Northwestern University in the late summer of 1969, I started hearing and learning a lot more about the music I liked. Being a singer/songwriter type myself, I added some LPs to my collection by folkies like Judy Collins and that new James Taylor fellow. In the fall of 1970, I expanded my interest in the Gordon guy and soon had a few of his 33s in my stack, including The Way I Feel, which contains this gem. It didn't take long to learn the lines and melodies as the disc got plenty of spins on the turntable. Living in the Chicago area for most of that decade, during the darker months I would often notice when the snow was softly falling, and then, when the morning light would steal across my window pane, I could tell where some webs of snow were drifting.
(Sunday, 1/19/25) Song 754: Year of the Cat by Al Stewart, written by Al Stewart and Peter Wood. You can find a YouTube video of it here. During my childhood years in the 1950s and 1960s, my family would visit friends and relatives who had both feline and canine companions, and while I always enjoyed a pet's company, I soon figured out that, if given the choice, I would rather hang out with a cat than a dog, although my own family could not have either kind of pet at the time. When Mr. Al decided to let us know what the year 1976 would become, I shared an apartment with a few friends on the south end of Evanston, IL, and spending a lot of time at a driver's wheel regularly, I got to hear the anthem quite a bit as it topped the charts. Depending on who rode in the vehicle, I sometimes would sing along with it, but other times could not do so, even though I might have wished that I could. Of course, back in that era I had no interest in contemplating a crime, and I usually didn't bother asking for explanations, so even when I found that I had thrown away my choice and lost my ticket, I still enjoyed riding along with those meowsome lines.
(Sunday, 1/12/25) Song 753: A Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon & Garfunkel, written by Paul Simon. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Those of us who reside in the northeastern section of the U.S. will probably in the next couple of months see a substantial amount of white stuff falling from the sky and accumulating in areas along the ground, so this folkie anthem pretty well describes a lot of what we'll see in the near future. While I might possibly have heard the piece when it climbed the charts in October of 1966, soon after I began my sophomore HS year, I would get to know it quite well after it appeared on the S&G 1968 Bookends LP. I did not have 33s at the time, but my closest friend Ed did have all four of the S&G discs, and every time I visited him during our senior HS year, which I did quite often, he would play all of those records at least once, so during my final HS year I got to hear Paul and Art a lot more than any other music stars. While I looked around for my possibilities that year, when I headed out to college the next year, that truly became the springtime of my life as an adult.
(Sunday, 1/5/25) Song 752: Devil's Angle by Patti Rothberg, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it here. This time around, it's been eight weeks since my last personal friend song post, instead of seven, as it usually is, because I didn't, and couldn't, do a song post last week. I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Patti in a recording studio back in 2003 - my studio partner David worked with her, and he introduced me to her at a recording studio one night. I soon got to enjoy her music, and when she released her Black Widow CD in 2013, she sent me a copy. I appreciated that gift, but unfortunately, when I played it on a CD player, the machine messed up the first track, which is the title tune. I never played another record on that player, but I was able to convert the other BW songs into mp3s and I got to hear the album that way via my mp3 players. Of course, long before the first time I heard this tune, I already understood how it feels looking for an angle for a new way to be, and perhaps, now that the new year has arrived, maybe a substantial number of people currently find themselves making that kind of search.
(Sunday, 12/22/24) Song 751: Little Saint Nick by The Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love. You can find a cool YouTube video of it here. When this yuletide anthem arrived 61 years ago, I might possibly not have heard it, since I didn't start paying much attention to the radio until after the Beatles rocked my world a couple of months later, but maybe I did hear it then and I just don't remember doing so. When the green wreaths started appearing the next time around, though, I definitely did get to hear it, and sing along with it when it rode the airwaves. While my folks disparaged the devil's music, this kind of tune could become an exception to the rule, so if the car radio featured it as we all rode along, heading somewhere around the time of year when the air gets cold, they would allow my brothers and me to sing along with run run reindeer and celebrate a real famous cat all dressed in red.
(Sunday, 12/15/24) Song 750: Paint it, Black by The Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. You can find a YouTube video of it here. The week with the shortest day of light in the northern hemisphere seems like an appropriate time to feature this RS anthem, despite the fact that it actually first appeared around the opposite point of the global illumination cycle. Near the end of my freshman HS year, as we students began to enjoy summer vacation in 1966, the circling five that had become major British competitors to the Fab Four got our attention with their advice to apply a dark tone to our surroundings. Similar to the previous summer when their complaint about a lack of satisfaction (Song 256) got us teenies singing along, during that warm season our transistor radios had us chanting about seeing a red door and wanting it to get painted black, and also wanting to see the sun blotted out from the sky, although I doubt that any of us actually would have wished for such a dark reality.
(Sunday, 12/8/24) Song 749: Purple Rain by Prince, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it here. As we in the northeast section of the U.S. get close to the end of the fall season, our precipitation might look darker than it had a few months earlier, but I don't expect the downpour to take on a lavender tone. Back when the Orwellian year arrived, I lived in Berkeley, CA, and most of the music that I paid attention to at the time came from the singer/songwriter group that I hung out with there, but I also did still listen to the radio sometimes, particularly when I rode in one of the cars I obtained during that stretch. It didn't take long for Mr. Prince's anthem to grab my ears and if I rode in a car by myself, I soon could sing along with his lines. Back then, we knew times were changing, and we would have liked to reach out for something new, but I did not see anyone bathing in the purple rain, and perhaps I should feel good about that.
(Sunday, 12/1/24) Song 748: All Along the Watchtower by Bob Dylan, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it here. About a year and a half after I had the experience of hearing the Jimi Hendrix version of this tune, which I featured last week, I had the unexpected privilege of getting to hear the songwriter's original recording of it. My folks dropped me off in the parking lot of Bobb Hall at Northwestern University in early September of 1969, and when I got up to the floor of my dorm room, I met another student who had a room close to mine, and he invited me to come in and hang out with him, which I did. His name was actually Smiley, and he soon put his John Wesley Harding LP on his turntable, so then I got to hear Mr. BD's voice for the first time. My initial reaction to hearing Bob was to think that his rough singing sound explained why he had greater fame as a songwriter than a performer. Living in that dormitory, though, it didn't take long to get to hear a lot more of Mr. Dylan's recordings, and my appreciation of his talent quickly moved past any critique of his vocal tones. Before long, I also concluded that even when there's too much confusion in my area, personally, I COULD get some relief.
(Sunday, 11/24/24) Song 747: All Along the Watchtower by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, written by Bob Dylan. You can find a YouTube video of it here. When this wild story came along during the cold months of my HS junior year, back in early 1968, I listened to the TOP 40 as often as I could, and I especially liked hearing Mr. Hendrix's newest hit. Already being a songwriter myself, I paid attention to who wrote the songs I enjoyed, and this quickly became the third Dylan tune I really appreciated. Peter, Paul and Mary had introduced me to Blowin' in the Wind and I met Mr. Tambourine Man by riding along with the Byrds, so Jimi gave me an even bigger reason to find out more about the Bob guy. Of course, at the time I didn't know anyone who thought life is but a joke, and I wondered if when I became an adult a couple of years later, I might actually get to do a visit all along the watchtower and to hang out while all the women came and went. I did not know then that I would spend most of the next decade living in the Chicago area, where, around this time of year, I would often hear when the wind began to howl.
(Sunday, 11/17/24) Song 746: November Rain by Guns N' Roses, written by Axl Rose. You can find a cool YouTube video of it here. I had moved from California to Brooklyn a few years before this snappy forecast came along and I hung out with the Fast Folk bunch a lot, but I also still listened to the radio and got moved by some of the more magnetic chart toppers. This piece actually became the longest song ever to reach the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 at the time in early 1992 and would hold that distinction for a number of years. Of course, nothing lasts forever and over time, hearts can change. Meanwhile, given the weather forecast in my area, I'm not looking forward to it, but it seems quite likely that at least once or twice this week I'll have the privilege of walkin' in the cold November rain.
(Sunday, 11/10/24) Song 745: Out of Luck by Ilene Weiss, 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 roaming ballad comes from another one of my Fast Folk colleagues. In the summer of 1987 I did a trip to NYC, intending to move there the following year, and during that visit, I got to see Ilene do a set at Folk City which quickly turned me into an IW fan. Not long after I moved to Brooklyn in September of 1988, I joined the Manhattan Fast Folk circle and soon had a copy of Ms. Weiss's Nine Songs Basically cassette, which included this moving excursion, and which got a lot of spins on my player. It didn't take long to understand how it might feel if I made a crazy deal but I also figured out that after my loss of innocence, I would want to say la la la la la la la a lot!
(Sunday, 11/3/24) Song 744: Autumn Leaves by Roger Williams, written by Joseph Kosma. You can find a cool YouTube video of it here. Anyone living in the northeast area of the U.S., or somewhere else with a similar climate, can understand the implications of this tune's title, and has probably seen plenty of examples of the term in the last few weeks, as I have. The YouTube video here comes from an appearance by Roger Williams on the Ed Sullivan Show on January 1, 1956. At some point in that era, my folks got our family's first TV, and very soon, we got to see the Ed Sullivan Show regularly, so it's possible that we might have witnessed that appearance. However, I'm not sure if we even had the tube when Mr. Williams appeared on the show on the first day of 1956. The descending piano riffs he features in the piece do sound quite familiar, so it is possible that I did get to see and hear that segment, though I also might have experienced a rerun of the sequence on a later date. My family at the time had an upright piano sitting next to the TV back then, and even before we got the tube, I had spent some time pounding my fingers on that keyboard, so it's possible that I might have figured out those descending riffs myself and given my own family a musical sense of autumn leaves.
