I’m goin’ to Memphis where the beat is tough
Memphis, I can’t get enough
It makes you tremble and it makes you weak
Gets in your blood, that Memphis Beat
~Jerry Lee Lewis – Memphis Beat
I love Memphis and there many great songs with “Memphis” in their lyrics.
Here are 21 wonderful songs… Memphis it is.
1. Bob Dylan – Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot becomes prime minister (and virtual dictator) of Cambodia after Prince Sihanouk steps down (April 2).
Israeli airborne commandos attack Uganda’s Entebbe Airport and free 103 hostages held by pro-Palestinian hijackers of Air France plane; one Israeli and several Ugandan soldiers killed in raid (July 4).
19-month civil war ends in Lebanon after threatening to escalate to global level (Nov.).
US: US Supreme Court rules that blacks and other minorities are entitled to retroactive job seniority (March 24).
US: US Supreme Court rules that death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual and is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment (July 3).
US: Jimmy Carter elected US President (Nov. 2).
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Movies: Rocky, Taxi Driver, Network, All the President’s Men
Deaths: Agatha Christie, Andre Malraux
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My rules:
Only one song per artist/group
The song must be released that specific year
Songs from live albums not allowed
Restricted to only 20 songs
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As usual.. a lot of wonderful music was released in 1976, again hard to pick only 20.
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Isis – Bob Dylan
Released on the album “Desire” – Jan 5, 1976. It was written by Bob Dylan in collaboration with Jacques Levy.
– I married Isis on the fifth day of May But I could not hold on to her very long So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away For the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong
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Here is a great live version from 1976:
Sing Me Back Home is the fifth studio album by singer and songwriter Merle Haggard, released in 1968 on Capitol Records.
“Sing Me Back Home follows the blueprint of Merle Haggard’s first three albums, balancing a hit single with album tracks and a couple of covers, but there is a difference. Where the previous album Branded Man was a transitional album, hinting that Haggard’s talents were deepening substantially, Sing Me Back Home is the result of the flowering of his talent.”
– Thomas Erlewine (allmusic)
Merle Haggard appeared on Austin City Limits nine times over the course of his legendary career. Here’s “Sing Me Back Home” from his appearance in 1978:
A shitload of great music was released in 1968, here are my 20 chosen songs.
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Madame George – Van Morrison
Madame George is the album’s whirlpool. Possibly one of the most compassionate pieces of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I’ll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too.
-Lester Bangs
A song from the album Astral Weeks, released in 1968. It was recorded during the first Astral Weeks session that took place on September 25, 1968 at Century Sound Studios in New York City with Lewis Merenstein as producer.
In 1974, after he had recorded eight albums, Morrison told Ritchie Yorke when he asked him what he considered his finest single track and the one that he enjoyed the most that it was: “Definitely ‘Madame George’, definitely. I’m just starting to realize it more and more. It just seems to get at you… it just lays right in there, that whole track. The vocals and the instruments and the whole thing. I like that one.”
– Down on Cyprus Avenue
With a childlike vision leaping into view
Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe
Ford and Fitzroy, Madame George
Marching with the soldier boy behind
He’s much older now with hat on drinking wine
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
The cool night air like Shalimar
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A lot of wonderful music was released in 1967, here are my 20 chosen songs.
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All Along the Watchtower – Bob Dylan
Written and recorded by Bob Dylan. The song initially appeared on his 1967 album John Wesley Harding, and it has been included on most of Dylan’s subsequent greatest hits compilations. Since the late 1970s, he has performed it in concert more than any of his other songs. Different versions appear on four of Dylan’s live albums.
– There must be some kind of way outta here Said the joker to the thief There’s too much confusion I can’t get no relief
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Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash’s legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, conflicted conscience, and jail.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)