SONG OF THE DAY

“On Saturday Afternoons in 1963” by Rickie Lee Jones (Rickie Lee Jones, Warner Brothers Records, 1979). Written by Rickie Lee Jones.

LYRICS

The most as you’ll ever go
Is back where you used to know
If grown-ups could laugh this slow
Where as you watch the hour snow
Years may go by

You saved your own special friend
‘Cuz here you need something to hide her in
And you stay inside that foolish grin
When everyday now secrets end
Oh and then again
Years may go by

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

– After arriving in California in the mid-1970s, Jones started writing songs more seriously and by 1977 had met singer-songwriters Chuck E. Weiss and Tom Waits, who became her lover during this period.

– A demo containing songs for the album including “The Last Chance Texaco”, “Easy Money”, “Young Blood” and “After Hours” did the rounds in 1978 and earned Jones a record deal with Warner Bros. Records. Recording sessions during 1978 yielded eleven songs for inclusion on an album, with two, “On Saturday Afternoons in 1963” and “After Hours,” recorded live on December 22, 1978.

– By June 1981, the album had sold over two million copies in the US alone.

–  The album cover contributed to the image of Jones as a cool beret-wearing beatnik; it was reported at the time that Jones was a heavy drinker and also a drug addict, and she and Tom Waits were known as rock music’s bohemian couple.

– She was featured on the August 9, 1979 cover of Rolling Stone magazine, becoming one of the most successful music stars of the year.

– Her grandfather, Frank Jones, who lost a leg as a boy playing by the railroad tracks, learned to dance and execute flips with his peg leg and became a vaudevilliansinger/dancer/comedian under the name Peg Leg Jones. His wife, Myrtle Lee, was a chorus girl, and the two of them traveled the vaudeville circuit when not home in Chicago with their four children.

– Richard Loris Jones, Rickie Lee Jones’ father, was four when his mother was killed by a truck in front of him. The children were put in boarding schools, and Richard ran away to Boys Town when he heard about the filming going on there, and does appear for a moment in the documentary short that precedes the film Boy’s Town.

- In 2001, Jones was the organizer of the web community “Furniture for the People”, which is involved in gardening, social activism, bootleg exchange and left wing politics.

– She has produced records (including Leo Kottke’s Peculiaroso).

– Warner Bros. knew Jones was “the real thing” and obtained a spot for her on Saturday Night Live the week of her release. Saturday Night Live portrayed her amidst garbage cans. Five months later she sold out two Carnegie Hall shows.

– Warn Brothers had also filmed for her what came to be an early music video — a twelve-minute, three-song movie, in which Jones was depicted as kind of girl next door street character.

– With Time magazine dubbing her “the Duchess of Coolsville” in its review of her first show, Jones’ image was solidified.

– Sometime in November 1979, Francis Ford Coppola asked Rickie Lee to collaborate with Waits on his upcoming film, One from the Heart, but she balked, citing the recent breakup. Francis responded that it would be perfect for the film, since the two characters are separated, and he asked her to reconsider. She refused. Waits called in November, but Jones did not return his call. A month later, Waits met his wife, a secretary at Zoetrope. They never spoke to each other again.

– Jones secured five nominations at the Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female, Song of the Year (“Chuck E.’s in Love”), and Best New Artist, which she won at the January 1980 ceremony. She was also voted Best Jazz Singer by Playboy magazine’s critic and reader polls.

– Rolling Stone remained fervent supporters of Jones, with a second cover feature in 1981; the magazine also included a glowing five-star assessment of Pirates, which became a commercially successful follow-up by reaching US #5 on the Billboard 200. More importantly, is the fact that in America “Woody and Dutch…” became a kind of commercial mainstay. The finger snaps and jive talk beat were imitated in advertisements for McDonald’s, Dr. Pepper, and others.

– A number of television and movies had licensed her work in these years, including Thirtysomething, Frankie and Johnny, When a Man Loves a Woman, Jerry Maguire, Friends with Money and the French film Subway.

– Renewed interest in Jones led to the three-disc anthology Duchess of Coolsville: An Anthology, released through reissue specialists Rhino in June 2005. A lavish package, the alphabetically-arranged release featured album songs, live material, covers, and demos, and featured essays by Jones as well as various collaborators, as well as tributes from artists including Randy Newman, Walter Becker, Quincy Jones, and Tori Amos.

– Also in 2005, Jones was invited to take part in her boyfriend and collaborator Lee Cantelon’s music version of his book The Words, a book of the words of Christ, set into simple chapters and themes. Cantelon’s idea was to have various artists recite the text over primal rock music, but Jones elected to try something that had never been done, to improvise her own impression of the texts, melody and lyric, in stream of consciousness sessions, rather than read Jesus’ words. The sessions were recorded at an artist’s loft on Exposition Boulevard in Culver City. When Cantelon could no longer finish the project, Jones picked it up as her own record and hired Rob Schnaf to finish the production at Sunset Sound in 2007, and the result was the The Sermon on Exposition.

– For her next project, Jones opted to finish half-written songs dating back as far as 1986 (“Wild Girl”) as well as include new ones (the 2008-penned “The Gospel of Carlos, Norman and Smith,” “Bonfires”). Jones released Balm in Gilead on the Fantasy label in November 2009. The album also included a new recording of “The Moon Is Made Of Gold,” a song written by her father Richard Loris Jones in 1954. Ben Harper, Victoria Williams, Jon Brion, Alison Krauss and the late Vic Chesnutt all made contributions to the album.

VIDEO OF THE DAY