"....Play It Again, Sam.......Pharrell......As The Case May Be....."

Everything old is new again.

A while back, one FB friend or another posted a link to this song and commented that

a) they liked the song

b) they were curious as to why

Well, a) you like what you like when you like it because you like it.

b) that's a little trickier, kind of like why you think a joke is funny.

Usually, the fact that it made you laugh would seem like answer enough.

Enjoy the song.

And then I'll tell you the real reason you liked it.

Okay.

Here's the thing.

Pharrell's a talented guy.

Obviously.

Maybe not so obvious, though, to fans under the age of say, thirty, is that he is, also, either a fan of 60's and 70's music or he grew up in a household filled with 60's and 70's music.

Because this tune is, to these initiated into the pop music world by the Fab Four a long time ago ears, a wonderfully catchy casserole of, at least, two fairly iconic attitudes/presentations of 60's and 70's pop.

Bobby McFerrin's sing along, while not syrupy, optimism.

And Marvin Gaye's way with a groove.

To wit...

 

 

 

 

 

a) me, too.

 

b) that's why.



"....the "A" word...."

Fifty years.

That should be the mandatory minimum.

Tell you what and why shortly.




Not long ago, John Carter Cash uncovered, "among a huge stash of Johnny and wife June Carter's effects," the master tapes for an album his father recorded in the early 1980s but never released. The album, called Out Among the Stars, will finally come out in March, and, according to Rolling Stone, it features duets with June Carter and Waylon Jennings.

The first track to be released is "She Used to Love Me a Lot," which you can hear below.

For country fans, for that matter for music fans, the arrival of a "new" Johnny Cash album is obviously a pretty noteworthy occasion.

And, regardless of your particular musical tastes, preferences, et al, there's no reasonable argument to be made in opposition to the observation that this guy, among a very select few, deserves the title "legend".

If, for no other reason, because he contributed his country music artistry to the culture, and the world, for fifty years.

And even now, ten years after his passing, the interest in his past work continues while the excitement about "new" material is considerable.

Legend, indeed.

In fact, I'll go you one better.

Artist.

A word that, for the loose change in my portfolio, gets doled out far too often with far too little criteria, a term that almost automatically becomes an adjective in front of the name(s) of almost anybody who manages to get a song recorded and/or made available to the masses.

No matter the song.

No matter the singer.

No matter how much it actually matters.

Johnny Cash mattered.

And matters still.

As for the latest, the newest, the hottest, the "greatest"....

Here's a thing.

Get back to me in fifty years.

When there's buzz about new material of yours being discovered.

When your fifty career has come to an amazing, poignant, stunning, once in a lifetime conclusion.

Like this career did.

Then we'll talk "artist".

Till then, listen...and learn.